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The best roasted turkey I ever had was cooked in an oven with a broken thermostat. The oven temperature kept climbing and cooked the bird in half the expected time, but it came out surprisingly moist and tender. And we didn’t burn the house down, either.
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A very simple thing but I made my first apple rum cake (wouldn’t really call it a pie) for my family for Christmas! I never cooked for my family before, I’m not much of a cook, and I messed around with the recipe quite a lot (replacing sugar with sweetener and some maple syrup, using oat flour, adding some cinnamon and ground nuts on my own, etc.) but it turned out pretty tasty so I’m fairly proud of myself.
(Then, after telling us she wouldn’t be baking anything, my grandma showed up with three cakes, so nobody cared about these. * facepalm * This is how one goes from a sense of achievement to “why did I even bother”.)
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That’s basically what we ended up doing. But we lost an hour or so, so dinner was late.
Not as evenly mid rare across the whole cut as I was shooting for. But we have 2 or 3 people who like it medium verging on well, so it worked out. And we ended up with a lot more rendered fat for Yorkshire pudding. Currently have a quart of the stuff chilling in the fridge.
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For the holiday, I sent out care packages to several people I know. I made an old favorite and two new ones. Since I was shipping them, I picked things that I thought would travel well and survive to their destination. I packed them in reusable but disposable plastic containers, and I believe they all arrived in ok shape.
The old favorite was Scotcheroos , a recipe I learned from my wife’s family, years ago. It’s layer of candied rice crispies, covered with a layer of “frosting,” made by melting chocolate and butterscotch morsels together for a couple of minutes in the microwave. Certainly not haute cuisine, but it’s a requirement in her family that when two or more are gathered together, a batch of scotcheroos must be made. Though I was thwarted and couldn’t send out as many as I wanted to. There was a local run on the butterscotch morsels. I went to at least half a dozen grocery stores in a 5 mile radius around my house, and I couldn’t find them anywhere. Ends up, every store I went to had them on sale, and every store was sold out. Either a lot of scotcheroos were being made, or more likely, I suspect, someone in the area bought them all up with the idea of selling them on the internet.
Which led to the next new item … Chocolate Pretzel Morsels . This is something my wife discovered when I made a batch of Scotcheroos and had too much of the frosting left over. Dipping little pretzels in the liquified chocolate and butterscotch morsels and letting the air dry. A nice little holiday hors d’oeuvre. Though, with the shortage of butterscotch morsels this year, I ended up mixing chocolate and peanut butter morsels. Just as good in this case. Maybe even better. Use the pretzels that are 1″ long and thick around as your thumb.
The last item was Paula Deen’s Pecan Praline Morsels . Three ingredients – heavy cream, brown sugar, and pecan halves, roasted in a hot oven until the liquid evaporates. Really easy to make, and really irresistible. I considered adding a bit of cayenne, but my wife nixed the idea. For what it’s worth, a single 2 cup bag of shelled pecan halves cost $8.99 this year.
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In the land of milk and honey. Almost literally. Homemade simple syrup with coriander, black pepper, and juniper berries; a squeeze of limequat (it’s what I had in the house—a squeeze of lemon would be fine); a shot of vodka; an ice cube; top up with whole milk. Small sips, but it doesn’t last long enough—soooo tasty. Next time I should make with honey, so I can be literal.
(It counts as food if it’s a serving of milk, right?)
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What, no butter? 
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I’m having trouble finding authoritative-sounding sites on this (no thanks, fruityblends. com), so I’ll ask the bbs hive mind:
Does blending for smoothies destroy all that many nutrients in fruit and vegetables?
I know juicing much is a bad idea, because it removes fiber, making the sugars digest (too?) quickly.
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The sugars digesting quicker really isn’t that much considering what your tummy uses to break things down. Fiber is good for other things like the health of the lower GI tract and keeping regular.
As far as nutrients go they are still going to be there as the only way to break that down would be cooking and unless you boil the hell out of them the loss versus the ease of digestion is a wash.
Carrots are actually better cooked as the body can actually access the stuff left without having to spend all that time breaking down the carrot fibers to get to them so while some vitamins and such are lost when cooked we get more nutrition out of the cooked ones.
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The rate at which sugars become available and enter the bloodstream can be measured and compared using the glycemic index, but making a smoothie out of fresh fruit shouldn’t be a problem. Generally speaking, foods that have a lower glycemic index are better for you (see link for references).
Making a smoothie is largely a mechanical process rather than a chemical one, and assuming it doesn’t heat up and you’re not filtering anything out it should be fine. It will depend on what other ingredients you put in, but most things you add to a smoothie (esp dairy and any fats) will generally lower the glycemic index compared to many fruits.
Adding fats to things can lower the rate of sugar absorption in strange ways. My youngest is a T1 diabetic and when his glucose is too low he has to have an instant sugar hit - juice or sweets usually - but chocolate doesn’t help because the fat content makes it too slow to absorb.
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Interesting! I keep hearing how good a decent olive oil is for us, unless we cook with it. I’ve considered adding some of it to smoothies, since I don’t use it much in raw form otherwise. Maybe a good idea with coconut oil too?
Edit: I usually toss half an avocado in there, which of course has fat, so might also have the effect you describe on sugars.
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Thanks, I’d heard that about cooking carrots, though not the why of it. I’ve also heard that broccoli is better for us if cooked.
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The other thing that will have a positive effect on glucose uptake is (as @TobinL points out) fibre, so avocado should be doubly good.
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No more than chewing does.
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Dietary fiber is not literally “fibers” that can be chopped up to make them not fiber. Some fiber is soluble in water, while others are only “fibrous” on a microscopic level, anyway.
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Yeah, the fiber still exists in the smoothie. It’s chopped finer than it would be if you ate the whole fruit - that seems to make a difference. Or it could be that the smoothie just allows you to quickly and efficiently consume more carbs than chewing all the fruit you just threw in that blender. I totally avoid them. T1 diabetic.
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Un-possible!
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Does Mexican food exist across the pond? I could see that becoming popular with those who favor hot curries. Of course, there’s always kebabs (we’d say “gyros” here).
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Sacrilege! Gyros and kebabs are not the same! Burn the witch! 
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