Happy Thanksgiving! :)

To the fellow Canadians, its our long weekend to celebrate the very awesome holiday Thanksgiving.

Whether you had your celebrations Saturday (last night), Sunday (tonight) or Monday (tomorrow), I just wanted to take the opportunity as I do every year to remind you of how great you all are.  You’ve been around here for whatever duration it is for the last 3+ years that I’ve been in the blogosphere.

Honestly, some days especially of late, it feels like the world is going to collapse when I need to get these posts up and do everything actual real life needs me to tend to, but I always sit down and remember to relax all over again when I’m typing these up.

There’s honestly a lot to be thankful about every year.

Although this year wasn’t all the great, it still feel grateful to have the people that I love in my life: my mom, my boyfriend, my best friends, who have stuck around me through so much.

I’m going to keep this extremely short and wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving, no matter who and how and when you celebrate it 🙂

I also want to give all of you (Canadian or not) a massive THANKS for being the amazing you.  I’m happy to see some of you come back to the blogosphere and to know some of the new bloggers, meet a blogger and also for all of you that I may not have meet but have talked so often in comments and through your posts that I feel like I know you 🙂 Thats the power of our little blogosphere! I’m thankful for all of you because you all are the reason I’m still around you.  Even if this is extremely therapeutic for me, I’m not sure how enthusiastic I would still be.  Especially since, its because all of you that I try to do better and find new segments to keep things interesting. Trust me, my brain is still moving through a ton of new ideas which I plan on launching a fraction of by 2015!

Thank you for being here, having stopped by, commented, liked, followed, emailed, hosted any blog event. I may mostly be behind in reading your posts but I always get there!

Our Thanksgiving turkey

What I’m really is that I’m thankful for all of you!  Thank you, Happy Thanksgiving, eat lots of turkey and have lots of fun with your loved ones.  I’m sending all of you some virtual hugs! 

Stay awesome, my lovelies! 🙂

Thanksgiving Dinner: Honey Garlic Chicken Thighs

This year, I decided to kick it into gear and make an actual Thanksgiving Dinner for me and my boyfriend.  Every year its tradition for us to go on a hike. This year we did another event (I’ll post it up real soon)  the night before so we took it easy: went out for a little shopping and then came back to prepare for dinner.  Dinner had its problems and some of the food was delayed.  I wasn’t too happy about that but still, my boyfriend was very encouraging and patient with it all.  After all, the food all turned out pretty tasty.

So are you wondering whats on the menu for my Thanksgiving Dinner yet?

Here it is:

Minestrone Soup (as the recipe before, still without turkey and pasta included)

Penne Rigate with Pesto

Oven Baked Turkey Thigh (that was  big one….)

Honey-Garlic Chicken Thighs/Drumsticks (recipe below)

So the star of this post is in fact, the Honey-Garlic Chicken Thighs/Drumsticks.  Originally this recipe is made for Chicken Thighs and to be made on the grill.  However, its too cold for the grill, even if I had one so I just did it in a pan.  Also, I used Chicken Legs so I split it down the middle and had 4 thighs and 4 drumsticks.  Please note that you need to marinate the meat at least 4 hours and preferably overnight so budget your time accordingly.

Here’s the recipe from Looneyspoons Collections by Janet & Greta Podleski:

Recipe name: Honey, I Shrunk My Thighs!

Makes 6 servings

Ingredients:

12 bone-in chicken thighs, skin removed (about 3lbs/1.4kg)

1/2 cup liquid honey

1/4 cup hoisin sauce

3 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

3 tbsp reduced-sodium soya sauce

1 tbsp minced garlic

2 tsp gingerroot

1/2 tsp each ground curry and ground coriander

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

 

Directions:

1) Arrange chicken thighs in a shallow glass dish.  Whisk together all remaning ingredients in a small bowl and pour over chicken.  Turn pieces to coat both sides with marinade.  Cover with plastic wrap and marinate in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours or overnight.

2) Preheat grill to medium setting.  Remove chicken from marinade and place on a grill rack that has been lightly brushed with oil.  Grill thigs for about 10 minutes per side.  Be careful not to burn them.  Serve hot.

Easy, right? I’m starting to really appreciate easy cooking since I’m not that good at it.  This one is awesome. I love learning near marinades for chicken.  I already have one which is similar and I used that one for the turkey this time, adding  a little twist of course.  For this chicken, I also had to make some adjustments to the marinade.  I didn’t have lemons so I couldn’t squeeze fresh juice but I used lemon juice.  I also used normal soya sauce and omitted cayenne pepper.  Everything else remained the same for the marinade.

For the cooking, well, I simmered the chicken in a pan instead of grilling it, for about 20-30 mins on low-medium heat.  It turned out amazing.  My boyfriend is already asking me to do this a second time.  Even though, it turned out that there were little time frame errors and this meal took a bit longer to do.  It was still a nice result. This is a nice little recipe and I do recommend for you to try it out my way.  I’m sure the original will taste awesome too.

Whether you do it in the grill or in the pan, tell me how  it turns out.  Are you going give this a shot eventually one day?

 

 

Sunday Cooking Part 1: Minestrone Soup

Sunday is my day to cook dinner.  Most other days, my boyfriend does the honors because of work schedule of course.  With dragonboat season being on break right now and work calming down a bit, I’ve had time to research and make a decent meal from scratch.  After talking about it for a while, I finally cracked down and made Minestrone Soup.

I’ve never made soup before.  The closest thing to soup I’ve ever made was simmering chinese vegetables and then it would turn into a nice little soup once you put in ginger.  So this was fun but had so much preparation.  I think I spent 30 minutes just chopping all the ingredients and vegetables, etc.  Other than that, it was pretty easy to do.

I found this recipe in a newsletter from my gym (that I used to go to).  I don’t understand why they still have me on the list, but at least its healthy.  It was originally a Turkey Minestrone Soup but my boyfriend and I both prefer Vegetable Minestrone Soup. So as usual, I’ll post the actual recipe and then show the modifications I had done.  I have to translate from a French recipe so if you see any measurement errors, please inform me.

Turkey Minestrone Soup

Makes 8 servings

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 big onion, diced

2 medium carrots, diced

8 branches of celery, cut in pieces

8 cups (2L) of no-fat chicken broth

3 1/2 cups (871 mL) canned conserved tomatoes, diced

2 cups (500mL) cooked turkey, in cubes

2 2/1 cups (500mL) canned white beans, drained and rinsed

2 cups cooked macaroni (preferably whole wheat)

1 teaspoon dried basil

Salt

Pepper

2 cups spinach, chopped coarsely

Directions:

1) In a big pan, fry garlic and onions in oil for 3 minutes on high heat.  Add the vegetables (carrots and celery), broth, tomatoes, and basil and bring it to a boil.

2) Reduce the temperature and let simmer for 30 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

3) Add in the turkey, the beans, macaroni and the spinach and let it cook for around 5 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Here’s what I did: I made Vegetable Minestrone.  I didn’t use turkey instead I made another dish which I will post up tomorrow.  I didn’t add macaroni, spinach or basil.  No macaroni because my boyfriend didn’t want it and well, I just forgot to buy spinach altogether (and the basil too).  Also, I replaced the white beans with green ones and I bought them fresh instead of canned.  That didn’t affect the taste in the end.  Believe me on that.  It had plenty of taste as is.  Also, in my terms, I always believed that beans are considered vegetables so I just added it along with the carrots and celery.  I don’t think it made too much difference.

In the end, it turned out really good.  The taste was perfect, there was lots of veggies, everything was balanced, not too sour either.  I think we’ll be exploring more soups.  Meanwhile, Part 2 is coming up tomorrow!