I usually make a corn casserole. Always wanted to use a few hatches in there; but a few of my guests just can’t take that little bit of heat.
Nice menu! Hopefully some of that yummy hits the floor for your dachshunds.
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I used to do the sourdough/roasted chestnut dressing, too💕
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Keep it simple?
I ended up buying a 15 lb turkey today. Which is too big for us, but I didn’t want to be running around looking for a smaller one tomorrow.
I’ll keep it simple.
Bread stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, roasted sweet potatoes and cauliflower cheese for Thanksgiving Sunday.
Dinner rolls from a small town bakery.
Pumpkin tarts from the farmers’ market.
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I don’t use Italian chestnuts; it’s Chinese fresh water chestnuts … they stay crunchy.
It’s a Charlie Palmer recipe minus the cranberries, I add pieces of peeled apples. I buy Acme sourdough, cut into pieces, toasted a bit in the oven. Fresh chives, sage, parsley, thyme.
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Oh, that’s an interesting take; dressings/stuffings don’t typically have the crunch factor. I like that idea!
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All my friends love it, leftovers good cold even!
The outer part is like bark and a bitch to remove, bird’s beak knife does a good job. I love the cooked celery, onion, shallots, garlic but so nice to have this crunch.
If it’s impossible for you to find fresh, 2nd choice would be canned, slice horizontally.
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Put the spring back in my step.
This is what I need! I’m not going tradish this year. Fam wants each head of (cooking/baking) household to prepare a “what do you want on the table” item.
I’m making brisket and shirt ribs.
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In Japan, water chestnuts (慈姑・read as “kuwai”) are ONLY (and I’m not exaggerating!) eaten as part of the traditional New Year’s meal called “osechi”. Finding them canned isn’t easy any time of the year and finding them fresh is nearly impossible.
I was talking about water chestnuts with a proprietor of a Chinese grocery in Shizuoka, Japan because I love them thought that her store might carry them either canned or fresh, but she said they didn’t stock either. I mentioned that I would sometimes see fresh ones in Japanese department stores just before New Year’s (traditionally NO cooking is done in Japan on the first 3 days of the New Year). She seem happily surprised and said that if I saw them, I should tell her.
Sure enough, I saw a pack of 3 in Matsuzakaya Dept. Store for about ¥700 (around $5.00) and bought a pack. Because she seemed so happy, I thought I’d give it to her as a gift. I went to her store to give the package to her and she said they were different from water chestnuts in China and that even as a gift, she didn’t want them. And then she practically shooed me out of the store. I never felt comfortable going in again when she was there and if I needed something only available in that store, I had to walk by to see if she was there (it was a small store with usually only one person on duty.) One time I desperately needed hoisin sauce and there was no other place to find it and she was on duty. I couldn’t find it and sheepishly asked her for a jar. She rudely said they never carried it…yet, I’d bought it there before.
To bring an extremely and unnecessarily long story to an ending, I was stuck with the package and never having made them in the traditional Japanese way, found a Kikkoman recipe and made them. It was a lot of work and because of that and the cost, never made them again.
Here before and after photos and I’m sorry for always being so verbose.
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This could be interesting
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What do you think inspired her behavior?
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I have no idea. But ONLY speaking from my personal experience, many Chinese shopkeepers in Japan have a tendency to be a bit brusque…especially compared to Japanese shopkeepers. I think or feel (again, ONLY speaking from personal experience) that culturally, the Chinese language in general (and I’m not sure that it can be said of the myriad of Chinese dialects) seems to be more “frank” than other Asian languages…especially Japanese where beating around the bush is practically a sport.
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I get the language thing (I live very close to Manhattan’s Chinatown, and I do a lot of shopping there). But it seems like she refused to sell you something, which is beyond just being overly direct.
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These look different from the ones I find in Chinese markets in SF, here they are dark brown.
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Could be she was superstitious about something here.
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I should have specified that we were speaking in Japanese and that I had 2 Chinese students that I taught English to and that 1 (from Amoy) of the 2 (the other being from Shanghai) spoke Japanese very differently.
As for her refusing to sell me something, the item was actually not on the shelf (though it had been there on past visits) and she wasn’t actually refusing to sell me something, But it was clear to me (and would have likely been clear to anyone) that she didn’t want my business.
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I looked up Chinese water chestnuts vs Japanese water chestnuts and indeed the Chinese ones are brown (which, besides the pointed top, do look just like regular chestnuts!) the Japanese ones are the color I bought.
That being said, she could have at least tried to make the ones I bought for her. However, I have to constantly remind myself that too many human beings do things which are too difficult or even impossible to understand. I would say that it’s my #1 frustration in life.
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That could very possibly be the reason.
Right, that’s my point. Why not? The superstition that @Aubergine mentions? She was insulted that you didn’t care enough to bring her the “right” water chestnuts?
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At one time I taught advanced ESL to adults, night school. Loved it. One topic we discussed was was superstitions and sayings in their various countries. Very eye opening.
A big building in SF financial district had the address of 444 Market. New Asian owners changed the front door to the side street, Front, so as not to have 4’s … rhymes with Chinese word for death.
I have an educated friend originally from Hong Kong who won’t buy used clothes because they could have been from a dead person, would never buy a house on a dead end street.
Sayings: The squeaky wheel gets oil. In Spanish they say the baby who doesn’t cry doesn’t get to nurse (verb: mamar)
We say The early bird gets the worm … I noted: but what does the early worm get?
We say: Don’t send a boy to do a man’s job. In Spanish: Don’t send a woman …!!
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