So much cooking!

I have been doing a lot of cooking lately, and sadly not a lot of photo-taking before stuffing it all in all in my mouth. Here's a run down:

First there was Thanksgiving. I make "my" stuffing every year, which is actually inspired by a stuffing my dad makes, and I don't know from whence that was inspired. It is composed of wild rice, long grain rice, mushrooms, chestnuts, dried cranberries, onions and celery. Gluten free! Not that anyone cares.... I will post a recipe at some point. Maybe next Thanksgiving. I also tried making my own pie crust this year, using the good ol' Crisco recipe (but I used Smart Balance shortening instead). It was a little dry, and once baked had a kind of sandy texture. I'm told by pie maker-extraordinaires that that has to do with the fat I used so I'll be trying butter next time. Filled with my trusty pumpkin pie filling.

Then there was a delicata squash lying around. With a more delicate taste and skin, it worked as a great replacement for butternut squash in a winter minestra. And it has my favorite ingredient: Kale!

Finally just this weekend, I attended the bridal shower of a friend. The host requested that we bring a homemade dish and print out the recipe for the bride - nice idea. I made two recipes that were new to me but pretty simple: smoked salmon dip and mini crab cakes. My notes are this: an electric mixer with a paddle fixture would have been great, but I used my [cheap] trusty food processor and it worked fine. For the crab cakes, I used canned crab and of course they would have tasted better with fresh dungeness or, if you're on the east coast, blue crab. I ended up adding bread crumbs to the crab mixture in addition to the buttered crumbs, and for those buttered crumbs I used about half the butter that the recipe calls for. I used a mini muffin tin and baked them for 30 min rather than 20, with the last 2 min under the broiler. I'll also say this: use low fat or non-fat sour cream if you must but DO NOT use reduced fat cream cheese. It has a distinct 'lite' taste that will contaminate everything. Just don't. Everything turned out great and I got a lot of compliments!