Pangsgiving, fangsgiving, whatever

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

The Maine thing, part I

Prior to my impending departure from the Great State o' Maine, I thought perhaps I should pass along some insider information in the event some of you gentle readers ever found yourself vacationing in Vacationland. You can go here, here, here and here for some previous tidbits too.

This will be the greater Portland edition. Portland is the largest city in Maine - which under no circumstances means actually "large" - and has a bunch of fun stuff to do and see and eat and drink. (Next installment: eating and drinking beyond Portland!)

Breakfast means Becky's Diner - just get there well before 9:00 a.m. on the weekends to avoid a half hour (minimum) wait. If you're just looking for coffee and a pastry, try Arabica or Coffee By Design for the former, and Standard Baking Co. for the latter. And stop by Two Fat Cats Bakery (practically next door to CBD on India Street) for cookies, cupcakes or fabulous pies to go.

Non-breakfast meal options abound in Portland. Some of my favorites are: Yosaku (sushi), the Front Room (no reservations and BUSY - but worth it), Shays on Monument Square ($5 pineapple martinis), Flatbread Company (hippie pizza), the Foreside Tavern, Dogfish Cafe, Katahdin and Vignola (the last two are spendy but really good, the two just ahead of them are way more reasonable and still good). If it's nice weather and you absolutely must have a lobster roll (or steamers or fried clams or etc.), head out to the Lobster Shack at Two Lights. You won't believe the piece of real estate this little place sits on.

Ah, beer. Maine has about a kajillion micro- and craft brewers; in Portland alone there's Gritty's (Portland's original brewpub), Sebago, Seadog, Shipyard, Geary's ... Your best bet, however, is to go to the amazing beer bar, The Great Lost Bear. They have 65 taps: order a sampler - they let you pick your own - and figure out which Maine breweries you want to roadtrip to that way. I do recommend that you eat beforehand, however, as the Bear's cuisine is not that, um, good.

Portland-area readers, what are your favorites? What have I missed that people need to know about?

Mouse Family Thanksgiving 2007

I love Thanksgiving but - oof - I sure do eat a lot! We had another epic dinner at my parents' house: nineteen people, including Mr. Mouse and me, the Mouse-in-laws, my brother, my Maine uncle, aunt and cousins, and two sets of good family friends. The food was just outstanding as it always is. Cheese, crackers, crudites and raw oysters to start: if you've never tried raw oysters with a dab of wasabi and splashed with saki, you're missing a treat - briny and sweet and with a bit of a bite from the wasabi.

My folks make the two turkeys, the mashed potatoes, gravy (my dad makes great gravy - full o' giblets) and the dressing. Usually we have two different kinds of dressings, one that's my grandma's recipe (heavy on the sage - mmmmmm) and one that's got tinned oysters, but this year the tinned oysters were way off so we went with shellfish-free dressing instead. Everyone else brings the sides. We had roasted root veggies (carrots, parsnips, yams and potatoes - maybe salsify?) with a cream sauce, green beans, sweet potato casserole, a great green salad with apples and bleu cheese, cranberry-orange relish and cheesy-onion bread. The recipes for the green beans and the sweet potatoes are below; I'll post the roasted root vegetables as soon as I get the recipe from my aunt/mom.

And finally, pies, spectacular pies, my favorite part of the meal. I'll take pie over cake any day of the week. It's no wonder that I'm loving Pushing Daisies where pie plays a starring role! We had two pumpkins, two pecans, one blue-blackberry, one pumpkin ice cream, one banana cream, one mincemeat (with REAL mincemeat - venison and all!), one five-layer coconut cake (okay, not technically a pie, but still dang tasty and so moist) and twenty-four of those little pumpkin-coconut tartlets, which no one even bothered with because there was so much else to indulge in. Just amazing. I haven't had banana cream pie for years and I can't even tell you when (if ever) I've had real mincemeat. So, so good. And since Mr. Mouse doesn't like pie (blasphemy!), I get to eat all the leftovers we brought home. Guess I shouldn't stop trotting on the treadmill quite yet.

Here are the two recipes I promised. Enjoy them. The beans are wicked easy (you can do them ahead of time which is great) and the sweet potatoes are the best you'll ever taste. If I'm wrong, let me know; if I'm right, let me know too. In fact, I'd love to hear your T'giving stories/favorite pies/any of it.

Green Beans with Tapenade Dressing (from Martha Stewart Living, June 2000).

Coarse salt; freshly ground black pepper
1 lb. green beans
1/4 cup black olive tapenade
1 clove garlic, minced (or more to taste)
1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

Bringa medium saucepan of salted water to a boil. Plunge trimmed beans into boiling water and cook until bright green and tender, 2-3 minutes. Drain, and rinse in cold water to stop the cooking. Transfer beans to a serving bowl and toss well with tapenade, garlic, parsley and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Serve at room temperature.

Maryann A's Sweet Potato Casserole (usually doubled for a Thanksgiving crowd)

3 cups mashed sweet potatoes (4 large)
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 beaten eggs
1/2 stick margarine, melted
1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

Combine all the ingredients and spoon into a buttered shallow casserole dish.

For the topping, combine another 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/3 cup flour, 1 cup chopped pecans and 1/3 stick margarine into a crumble. Spread over the sweet potato mixture. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. (Serves eight and can be made ahead and frozen, then thawed and baked before serving.)

Pumpkin and Coconut "Panna Cotta" - from Pim

I read only a couple of food blogs on a regular basis. The one I visit most often is Chez Pim - this woman has a dream life of cooking, eating, travelling for food and writing about all of it. The photographs on her blog are gorgeous.

I've never attempted any of her recipes before since she seems to do a lot of complex French and Asian stuff and I'm just not that good a cook yet. This recipe was timely, however, and had just a few ingredients, all of which were already in my kitchen. (I tend to gravitate towards short recipes.) I used canned pumpkin puree and so my end result did not turn out as brightly colored as hers, but I still think it's tasty. I poured the pumpkin mixture into little individual pre-cooked tart crusts so now my fridge is full of mini-pumpkin pies - so cute! It's definitely different from traditional Thanksgiving-type pumpkin pies because there's no pumpkin pie spice, but the coconut milk adds a silky richness. I never would have thought to pair pumpkin and coconut together - Pim is so clever!

I'm going to take a bunch of the little tartlets into work tomorrow and let my co-workers be my guinea pigs; Mr. Mouse is uninterested in dessert unless it's ice cream. I even poured one into a crust-free ramekin to accomodate my gluten-allergic friend!

Waitress - movie (mini-)review

Anybody who has made their way to this blog has undoubtedly heard of the movie, Waitress. Written, directed and acted in by Adrienne Shelly, this little film has gotten way more press than it would have, had Adrienne not been found murdered in her office on November 1, 2006 [thanks to Wikipedia for the link to the story]. Sadly, she never got to see her magnum opus in its final form. I saw it today, though, and the rest of you should see it too.

Quickie story overview: Keri Russell is a waitress and a pie impressario at a pie diner in an indefinite Southern town, along with Adrienne Shelly and Cheryl Hines. Jenna is trapped in a terrible marriage to Jeremy Sisto (if I were Jeremy's agent, I might try for a role as a likeable character next time - doesn't he always play jerks?) and finds herself pregnant. Not happy about it, she meets her new gynecologist, a delectably dorky Nathan Fillion, and ends up having an affair with him. Andy Griffith is fantastic as the cantankerous owner of the diner.

It's quite different from the movies I've seen recently in theaters (the last was 300, I believe) : no monsters, no axe-murders, no swearing. There's not much suspense and it has a fairly predictable plot, mind you, but this film is a lovely little character sketch with good actors who are clearly enjoying what they're doing. Plus there's lots and lots of nummy-looking homemade pies. And it's just fanned the flames of my Nathan Fillion crush. Mmmmm.