Cooking Experiences

I don't much like turkey, and neither do my in-laws.  So for the last several years we've been doing something else entirely for American Thanksgiving ... and because I do most of the cooking, without meat.   Usually I do something around a specific ethnic theme.  Past Thanksgivings have included: Turkish food, Austrian food, and Cioppino. 

This year, it was time for Cajun/Creole.  Accordingly we requested every New Orleans cookbook available at the San Francisco Public Library, and I went browsing for recipes.  I'll have cookbook reviews later; in the meantime, click through for pictures.

Yes, it's that time of year again ... the time when we go through fourteen pounds of flour and two entire rolls of baking parchment.  Given friends, family, Kris's clients, and my coworkers, we're baking a ton of cookies and pumpkin bread in order to have something for almost everyone (except those with gluten allergy).

While other years have been all family recipes, this year's cookies were diverse; Kris made a family recipe, one from a fiction site she reads, and another from Smitten Kitchen.  I made an Italian cookie recipe from Nick Malgieri.

The whole list of cookies is available on the holiday cookies page.

Since we live in San Francisco, we keep a sourdough starter. Here, it's very easy to get one started and even easier to keep it going ... we just have to make something with it every 3 weeks. I'm not going to explain the care and feeding of a sourdough starter now, but I will give you a basic sourdough bread recipe. I will give you a bread recipe, though ... (continued)