Food for Friday: Thanksgiving Stuffed Rolls

Tags

thanksgiving, thanksgiving left overs

This girl doesn’t shop on Black Friday.  She bakes.  Specifically, she tries to figure out how to clear her fridge of all that Turkey Day food.  As yummy as T-Day leftovers may be, eventually the idea of another round of taters and turkey just makes me go blegh.
Which is why this little trick is so wonderful…

Meet the stuffed roll.  Sure, every culture has their own variation of savory-food-in-bread, all of which have far more interesting names (the pirozhki, the pasty, the samosa, the fatayer, and my personal favorite, the öçpoçmaq)…but at the end of the day, they are all delicious.

The best part about these guys is that you can freeze them until you feel like a Turkey Day reboot!  Just put them on parchment paper on a tray in the freezer for about an hour or so before you pop them off and put them in another container and put them back in the freezer (otherwise they stick together).

All you need is dough for bread or rolls (your preference).  You can whip up a batch of your own bread dough (best bread dough ever) or rolls (like these) or be lazy like me (the last thing I want to do is make fresh bread along with everything else) and buy premade dough.  Either way, you break off pieces of dough slightly larger than a golf ball, flatten them out (make sure your fingers and surfaces are floured, or you it will get sticky), add in your fillings, close up the dough around the filling, and bake according to the instructions of the dough you are using (though the baking time will likely be shortened).  If you want, you can place them in a greased muffin tin…I just bake them on parchment paper on a baking sheet.

The rolls in the above picture feature chicken stuffing, mashed potato, and a rotisserie chicken, along with chicken gravy (as a side, afterwards).  Our plans for leftovers include ham and mac’n’cheese stuffed rolls, turkey cordon bleu stuffed rolls, turkey with stuffing and mashed potatoes stuffed rolls, and some sort of veggie mix stuffed roll.  For most of these, its pretty straight forward…pick out what you think goes well together and stuff!

The only one that needs any extra ingredients or preparation is the turkey cordon bleu, since you need the sauce (recipe to follow) and the Swiss cheese.  For that one, you use turkey, ham, and some Swiss cheese as your stuffing.  You also have the option of adding a spoonful of the sauce on the inside or using it on the side for dipping or as a topping (or both!).

Cordon Bleu Sauce

2 Tablespoons Butter
2 Tablespoons Flour
1/2 cups Whole Milk (or A Bit More If Needed; Whole Milk Is Required)
1/2 Tablespoon Dijon Mustard
1/4 teaspoons Garlic salt
1/8 teaspoons Smoked paprika
1/8 teaspoons Lemon pepper

For the sauce:

Make a light roux with the butter and flour. Slowly pour in the milk while stirring until smooth. Add in the rest of the ingredients and stir. Bring sauce simmer and then turn the heat off.

(this is an adaptation of the sauce from this recipe for Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole, which is one of our family favorites over some egg noodles)

And don’t forget to add some turkey soup to those stuffed rolls!

As we go about this day…

Tags

cooking magic, holiday, stress, thanksgiving

Many of us, on this day, will be cleaning and cooking in a frenzy to put together a meal for family or friends. It is easy to lose sight of enjoying that meal or those people in the hustle and bustle of the day. It is easy sometimes to feel resentful of the time others have to visit and chat while cloistered in the kitchen away from the gathering (though sometimes the solitude is nice as well). It is easy to feel frustrated when people stuff their face at a pace that far outstrips the care and work that goes into preparing such a feast.

It is at this time (and really, any time one prepares a large meal for a gathering) to remember the immense power that we wield, and the sacred task that we are undertaking.

The kitchen is a temple, and all the pots, pans, spices, grains, fruits, and vegetables, as well as the stove, spoons, knives, bowls, and plates, are all Divine objects, full of consciousness, waiting to become part of the Divine, alchemical process of creating a meal. Allow the fire of your soul to become part of the heating element that cooks your food.

As we go about this day, there may be times where we feel harried, impatient, overwhelmed, and just plain cranky. When this happens, stop and breathe. If necessary, pull someone else into the kitchen (or pull someone else out of the kitchen and take their place), and go outside and breathe.

What we do in this space is ritual. It has intention. It is magic. It is transformative. It is the act of worship itself–of service to life.

Though we all guilty (some of us more often than others) from being overly familiar and dismissive of the act of eating and the preceding task of preparing food–perhaps because we see it as common, or because it is transitory and fleeting…or both–it is a simple truth of life that cooking is an intensely sacred life-affirming act of creation.

Whether you are cooking for one or for twenty, for yourself or for strangers, your actions and your intentions matter.

Preparing and cooking food is a magical act, a potent, alchemical process, through which one form is transformed into another form: varied ingredients are deftly combined and subjected to the elements of water, fire and air in just the right proportions, with just the right timing and with appropriate spells—consisting of good mental intentions—to manifest a delicious meal that satisfies both body and soul. A cookbook can be seen as a book of formulas for this magical process, complete with how-to instructions, suggestions, and advice, which, if followed with a cheerful heart and sense of adventure, could result in the most delightful culinary experiences manifesting on the dinner table. Food prepared in this way can even produce a shift in perception of oneself and others, yielding hope and encouragement to move forward through life.

 

 

**All quotes are from Sharon Gannon, adapted from the book, Simple Recipes for Joy, September 2014 (as found here, in its entirety–I cut some of the quote out for being unnecessarily and unhelpfully preachy, IMO)**

thanksperience

Tags

#paganvalues, blessing, Pagan Values, prayer, thanksgiving, unconventional faith

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

~Meister Eckhart

Thank you, thanks-giving, thanking, thanks… What the heck is a “thank” anyhow?*

I’d like to imagine a tangible (and sniffable) “thank” would look something like this.  Chickadee thinks that a “thank” might look like a big, fat, fluffy white cloud floating in the blue sky…or a fuzzy pink and purple ball.  Sharkbait thinks that a “thank” comes on a stick and tastes like chocolate milk.

A “thank” from nature, I think, looks something like this:

Thanksgiving is generally touted as a day to give thanks for the things we are thankful for, whatever they may be.  And that’s fantastic…giving thanks and recognizing our blessings, are (at least in my humble opinion) pretty darn important.  Heck, as days of thanksgiving (to a particular deity) are the basis for an incredibly huge chunk of Pagan holidays and the act of giving thanks (to a particular deity/pantheon) is a major part of Pagan religions, we should all be down with the idea of the ability and active participation of giving thanks to be a quintessentially Pagan value.

But I think that sometimes we can be ungracious (regardless of our religion or faith) in receiving thanks.  We forget to really hear the thanks that are directed our way–both the “thank you” that is explicitly stated, and the ones that are more subtle.  To put it bluntly, we wouldn’t know a “thank” if it was pink and fuzzy and tasted of chocolate milk on a stick and was handed to us on a silver platter.

The world around us creates a thousand thank yous, if only we know how and where and when to find them.  It is in the curve of a baby’s smooth cheek and the bright giggle of a squirmy preschooler wrapped in a fluffy towel after a beach afternoon.  It might be in a meal, or a book, from a grateful look, or a hug, or an audible “thank you”. Thanks are everywhere.

Just because we didn’t hear it in a form that we understood through our narrow filter of the world didn’t mean it wasn’t there.  Really look, and listen, and feel for a change.  Find the thanks that are all around us.

And perhaps in our finding of thanks, we can learn to create our own to share with others (even when we have nothing tangible or direct to thank them for), everywhere we go.  When was the last time someone thanked you just for being you?  For just being there?  Maybe you didn’t notice, because its not something that people usually say with words.

Imagine a world where everything that everyone created was a “thank”.  Imagine a world filled with heart-shaped lavender hand warmers, sea foam and white fluffy clouds, hope-filled pink and purple fluff, and (most importantly) chocolate milk on a stick.  Imagine a world where Thanksgiving wasn’t just a day, or a phrase, but was embedded in our every experience.

Now get off your keester and make it happen…handmade heart-shaped lavender hand warmers aren’t that hard to make.

If the only prayer you ever hear is a thank you, you have been blessed.  And if you didn’t hear it, maybe its because you were listening for mere words.

~thalassa

*(What a “thank” really is–or at least where it comes from, etymologically speaking.)

Of Blessing and Thanks, Prayers for the Day

Tags

blessing, evening prayer, morning prayer, pagan prayers, thanksgiving

No matter the religion, the daily devotional prayer is an important reminder of your connection to the divine and the gifts you receive from the divine…You are building a rope, one strand at a time. Each time you pray and give thanks to your Gods you are adding one more strand to the rope. (source)

Sunrise from Space on the Apollo 11 (image from NASA via Universe Today)

 

Blessing for the Day to Come

Thanks be for the waters that support and surround us
for the land that extends about us
and for the sky that stretches above us
And our center which burns as a living flame
Let us move in the world today
With a heart reflecting a love that is pure
Our mind making decisions that are just
And our spirit exalted in a worship that is true.
Let every action of our bodies be a prayer of our soul.
As I will, so mote it be.

Thanksgiving for the End of Day

I have thrived* today
Through the blessing of the universe–
The light of sun, and radiance of moon,
With the splendour of fire, and the speed of lightning,
Embraced by the swiftness of the wind,
Cradled with the depth of seas,
Supported by the stability of earth and the firmness of rock.
I give thanks to this day,
That its successes be met with joy
and its failures be counted as blessings from which to grow.

*Alternate wording (for those not-so-good days): survived

(both of these are taken from my BoS (Book of Stuff), and I am fairly sure they are modified from prayers I have collected and had long enough that no longer have the original source information)