CityMama™

Dear Santa 2009

I shake my fist at you and your commercials, PBS Kids Sprout!!!

Turkey soup where the leftover stuffing--not the turkey--gets to be the star

I have to admit that while I love Thanksgiving, I'm not really a fan of turkey, especially leftover turkey. I have a few small slices of dark meat with my turkey dinner, and I might pick a few more bites of the carcass, but I don't look forward to turkey sandwiches, salads, casseroles, and soup for days. 

I do love soup though, just not turkey soup with the usual starches--noodles or rice. Today I was looking for a quick and easy soup to make with the turkey bones and stumbled upon this recipe for turkey vegetable soup with stuffing dumplings.

The stuffing dumplings are brilliant because they are seasoned enough (mmm, salty, herby goodness) to stand up to the slightly gamey turkey broth. I used twice as many carrots and celery for the soup (because I like a carrot-y turkey soup), added in some leftover corn, and made dumplings from the quart container we had of leftover stuffing.  The result was a light, clear soup chock full of veggies (and not so much turkey) and light, fluffy, flavorful dumplings.

Hope you try it!

Saw "Food Inc". over the Thanksgiving holiday. I've been putting it off because I knew it would make me incensed and angry at the food industrial complex in this country and around the world (just as "King Corn" did, just as "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" did, just as Michael Moore's movies do). I'm now reading "Everything I Want to do Is Illegal," by Joel Salatin of Polyface farms, my new hero. It's the only (purchased) gift I am giving this Christmas.

Before and After

Hope yours was just as good!

Thanksgiving Week Recipe Round Up!

 

Savory corn pudding.  A Thanksgiving must-have. (Recipe below)

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and I have done enough Thanksgiving posts over the years that I'm delighted to share my favorites with you!

Remember last year's Great Thanksgiving Side-Dish-stravaganza?  (I asked Twitter for their favorite side dishes and pulled together some A.MA.ZING recipes.)  Looking for a special side dish to serve on Thanksgiving? Look no further than these spectacular recipes. Here are some examples:

• Walnut, Blue Cheese, and Cranberry Tart
• Southern Fairytale's Yellow Squash and Zucchini Casserole
• Spicy Hot Pepper (from Auntie Charlene's CSA) and Fresh Corn Pudding
• AMomTwoBoys' Three Cheese and Prosciutto Cauliflower Gratin
• Suebob's Chestnut, fennel, and shallot confit

If you just make one side dish this year, consider: the Creamy Brussels Sprouts pictured above.  Bunny helped me make these this afternoon because we were craving them!

Looking for an easy and elegant soup starter? I love Butternut Squash and Apple Soup with Curry and Sage.

And from the CityMama/FamilyFood (my old food blog) archives:

Green Beans with Persimmons, Pancetta, and Hazelnuts
Roasted King Trumpet Mushrooms
Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Balsamic Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Steamed Artichokes
The best damned gratin you will ever eat.

I'll also be posting Thanksgiving-related recipes over on my Cooking Mama column on Delish.com.

Here are two unusual uses for leftover turkey when the last thing you want to be eating is leftover turkey:

• A Mad Men-esque Turkey Tetrazzini
• Chinese-style Turkey Jook (thick rice soup; jook rhymes with "shook")

And finally, if you want to peruse my Thanksgiving posts where I cover everything from what we ate to how I set the table, just click on my Thanksgiving and Holiday, Celebrate categories.

May your holiday be full of laughter, love, and great food. Please leave a note below and let me know what you look forward to cooking and/or eating this year. And as always, I am so thankful that you are here reading this, and that we have this space to be inspired and to share together.

Peace,

Stefania

I will cut you!

I will cut you!
Originally uploaded by citymama

Or, if you prefer, the alternate Mochamomma-inspired title, "CityMama will cut a bitch."

It's me in my tiny kitchen, trying to take a serious "I'm a food blogger" promotional photo for a feature that will soon appear is appearing on Houzz. Except that when it's Bad Kitty taking the photos, this is what you get. (PS I am laughing because the photos on Houzz are all very pristine and Martha Stewart-design-y and the photos that I provided are...so not. I'll link you when it's up.  Take a peak into my kitchen below!) 

By the way, I'm pretty sure that my kids will exactly zero of the "prop baby eggplants" that I am putting into my tagine.

At Home With CityMama: Stefania Pomponi Butler's Retro and Eclectic Home

houzz- kitchen design, bathroom design, landscaping and more

Protect Women's Reproductive Rights: Strike Down Stupak!

Note: As I am putting this post together, I am getting news that the new senate bill doesn't include Stupak language.That could change any moment. We need to keep up the pressure.

Just as the country is on the brink of making a crucial and historic overhaul of our health care system, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Michigan) forced a poison pill into the House health care reform bill. The Stupak amendment would bar coverage for abortion under any plans that use federal funding. It would be the most far-reaching abortion restriction in decades – more severe than the Hyde Amendment.

Millions of women who have access to abortion services would no longer have it. Women receiving tax subsidies could not even use their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion. In most cases, low-income women would have NO ACCESS AT ALL to abortion services.

If the bill passes with the Stupak amendment, it would break President Obama’s promise that women would not be harmed by health care reform. Women would be worse off than they are today.

We cannot let this stand, and our window to do anything about it is closing fast:

Please call Sen. Dianne Feinstein and let her know that you do NOT want any Stupak-related abortion-coverage-ban language in the Senate bill.

Please call Sen. Barbara Boxer and Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (in Nevada) and THANK them for vowing to keep this language out of the current Senate bill.

1) Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office: 202-224-3841 (To e-mail Sen. Feinstein, follow this link: http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.Home )

2) Sen. Barbara Boxer’s office: 202-224-3553 (To e-mail Sen. Boxer, follow this link http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/ )

3) Sen. Harry Reid’s office: 202-224-3542 (To e-mail Sen. Reid, follow this link: http://reid.senate.gov/contact/offices.cfm )

*  For more information about the Stupak amendment, go to: http://www.prochoicepower.org/get-involved/
*  You can also find some very poignant stories about women the Stupak amendment would affect by going to www.rhrealitycheck.org
* You can see Rep. Lois Capps’ (author of the Capps amendment) response to the Stupak amendment by checking out her comments on the Huffington Post today: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-lois-capps/stupak-pitts-goes-beyond_b_365254.html 

Please help us save health care reform and make sure women are not left out! Your calls are what make the difference!

Note: This post was written by my friend Sue Hutchison, Communications Director/Writing Specialist at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, San Jose CA. She has graciously allowed me to reprint it and hopes that YOU WILL, TOO. If you've wanted to blog about this important issue but haven't had the time to put your thoughts down--here you go! Please cut, copy, and paste the above post into your emails, Facebook notes, and blog posts. Tell all your like-minded friends to do the same. We must strike down the Stupak Amendment and its anti-women's reproductive rights language.

Adorable hipster owl reamer, $7.95 on sale at Anthropologie. It didn't come home with me, but maybe it should have.

Caldo Verde

I don't know what it is about this simple soup, but there's something magical in it. Something about the combination of kale, potatoes, and linguica (what I grew up calling Portuguese sausage in Hawaii) work together to create an addictively light soup that is perfect for a fall weekend lunch or simple mid-week dinner.

I gather my caldo verde ingredients at my local farmer's market where we are lucky enough to have a sausage vendor who makes sausages that are out of this world. If you can't find linguica near you, you can order it online. Just Google it.  (Linguisa is also great fried and served with eggs so get two packages!)

There are a million variations of how to make this soup.  My sister does it one way, I do it another, but in the end, the kale, potatoes, and linguica remain constants. If you like potatoes, add more. If you like a meatier soup, add more linguica. Portions of the three main ingredients are flexible, but simplicity is the key. Here's one delicious way to do it.

 

Caldo Verde ingredients waiting to go into the pot.

CALDO VERDE

In a soup pot, saute:

3 cloves of minced garlic

1 large yellow onion, diced

in a little olive oil (maybe 3-4 tbsps) over medium heat until the onions are translucent.

Add in:

2-3 russet potatoes, peeled and diced into 1-inch cubes (or 6-8 smallish Yukon Golds, peeled and diced into 1-inch cubes).

1 package of linguica, sliced (the kind with 2-3 sticks to a package, about 10-12 ounces)

1 bunch of lacinato kale, sliced into thin, noodle-like threads

1.5 quarts of water

Bring to a boil. Simmer until potatoes are very tender. Season with sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste. Serve.

Note:  Some people like to take a potato masher to the soup when it's finished cooking to smash up some of the potatoes.  That's yummy, too.

New reviews up on CityMama's Stuff People Send Me

I know your time is valuable and so is mine. Here are four bite-sized reviews of some great free stuff people sent me recently.

And I promise I will get to my backlog of recipes (and actually publish them) this week.