Homemade cranberry sauce in a can

Add some kitsch to Thanksgiving this year with homemade "canned" cranberry sauce using an upcycled empty can for the mold.

My sister and I have this thing.

Well, to be honest, my sister and have about eight million things. We're like those twins that have their own language that no one else can understand ... but we're not twins. She's two years older than I, but we've always been best friends. (In fact, I told her recently, "You'd better never die because, if you do, there will be no one to understand me!")

So, anyway, one of our things is canned cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving. My first "adult" Thanksgiving was when I was in graduate school. I was attending school in the South, too far away from my parents' home in New England for me to afford to make a quick trip home for the Thanksgiving holiday. And my sister was living not that far away, so we decided to throw our own little Thanksgiving dinner for two.

Even though I had almost no idea how to cook anything and she was only slightly more talented, we went all out in a little apartment kitchen: turkey, stuffing, green beans and cranberry sauce.

In all fairness, let's clarify. We roasted a turkey (poorly), steamed some green beans, mixed up a box of Stove Top stuffing and opened a can of jellied cranberry sauce.

But we were both in agreement that the cranberry sauce was a must-have. You know, because of the the "ssssllluuuupp" noise it makes when released from the can. And, frankly, because it's freakin' shaped like the can.

Broccoli and Brussels sprout slaw with olives

Broccoli and Brussels sprouts slaw with olives and almonds: a healthy, easy, make-ahead side dish for Thanksgiving or any festive dinner.

If you saw my homemade "canned" cranberry sauce recipe last week, you'll understand that we often celebrate a little something I call "Fakesgiving" around Casa de Ninj. This year, we had our Fakesgiving last weekend, just before The Big Day, as we'll be traveling to a relative's house to spend the actual holiday.

But I love our annual Thanksgiving dishes (and the legendary leftovers!) so much that I couldn't bear to miss them this year. So I had my own pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving: Fakesgiving.

(I'll note, it sounds better than a friend's alternative -- "Freaksgiving" -- which, scarily, I think just means dinner with her family.)

Each year, I try to add one new or modified dish to the line up to keep things fresh. Last year, it was apple and herb stuffing muffins. For this year's Fakesgiving, I forwent the traditional green beans almandine for something a little fresher and crunchier: broccoli and Brussels sprout slaw with olives and almonds.

Best Thanksgiving leftovers recipes

Enjoy these eight great recipes for using your Thanksgiving leftovers in delicious new dishes the whole family will love.

Happy Leftovers Week!

If you've been reading my pre-Thanksgiving blog posts, you know The Ninj is all about the leftovers -- so much so that I shared new leftovers recipes even before Thanksgiving day arrived!

Now it's time for the leftovers to have their chance to shine. They were delicious on the the big day, but now they can be so much more. Whether it's a healthy salad, a creamy pasta dish or much more decadent tater tots, The Ninj has got you covered:

Turkey cordon bleu pasta

Use your holiday leftovers in this recipe for deconstructed turkey (or chicken) cordon bleu pasta: quick and easy to make, lighter than you'd think.

As I promised last week, I'm continuing my Thanksgiving leftovers posts this week, despite the fact that Thanksgiving hasn't even arrived yet, because I love using up the leftovers almost as much as preparing the holiday feast. So much so that a reader suggested I make two turkeys this year.

An excellent suggestion!

Since there are only so many turkey sandwiches that you can eat before you get sick of the stuff, I like to change it up with different kinds of dishes, such as last week's turkey, apple and fennel bread salad (I'm still eating it regularly, people -- it's that good). Another great one? Today's turkey cordon bleu pasta.

Yes, pasta! You know, because nearly all my favorite comfort foods are pasta, I swear.

Now, this is not quite the same as the chicken cordon bleu you might be envisioning -- there's no pounding, no stuffing, no breading, no layering and nothing at all French-ish (even though traditional Chicken Cordon Bleu, I'm told, is all-American and has nothing to do with France or the similarly named culinary institute -- go figure). So it's more of a deconstructed chicken cordon bleu. But with turkey. And pasta.

Turkey, apple and fennel bread salad

For this easy, healthy post-holiday meal salad, just toss your leftover turkey (or chicken) in a lemony vinaigrette with whole grain bread, crunchy fennel and sweet apples.

So yeah, I'm going there. There's still a week to go until Thanksgiving, but I'm going to start talking about the leftovers.

You're going to thank me, really. Because, when you think about it, planning for leftovers in advance in really quite smart. It means that you can be sure that

1. Your turkey will be large enough to accommodate the awesome turkey sandwiches and dishes you'll be making over the long weekend
2. You will have all the ingredients you need on hand without having to risk a trip to the grocery store on Black Friday (shudder).

See? It's just smart and strategic to talk leftovers the week before the holiday. Yeah, you're welcome.

And if there's any doubt that Thanksgiving is just as much about the leftovers as it is about the cozy family together time spent cramming in lots of yummy food on a Thursday, let me tell you a true story. Years ago, a former co-worker friend of mine attended Thanksgiving dinner at her cousin's house. Bizarrely (because, remember, this is THANKSGIVING, The Official Day of Over Eating), there was not enough food to feed everyone at the table! (I know, right?) According to my friend, if she hadn't been a thoughtful guest and brought a large tossed salad to the dinner, she would have had nothing to eat, as she gave her son her "portion" of turkey so that at least he would have enough to eat.

Oh, but wait, the story gets better.

Simple apple and herb stuffing muffins

Bake these sweet-and-savory apple and herb stuffing muffins in tins for cute individual portions with lots of toasty edges. A healthy, easy holiday recipe!

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I hope you haven't finalized your menu. Because I've got a new ADORBS take on stuffing for you. Or dressing, if you call it that. I've never understood the big debate over stuffing versus dressing: potato potahto, oyster erster, whatevs.

Now, I suppose these stuffing muffins aren't so new to everyone. I believe they were a big Rachel Ray-Ray thing a few years back (I can just hear her saying "stuffin' muffin" because it's rhyme-y). But they're new to me so I'm excited to talk about them.

Every year for Thanksgiving, my menu is made up of some old favorites that will likely never change (deep-fried turkey, a healthy-ish sweet potato casserole) but I also like to include at least one new dish, just so it doesn't get too predictable and boring.

This year, it's stuffing muffins. I mean, come on, how could I not want these on my table? They are just too freakin' adorable, with their individual-sized crunchy little selves.

If you're like me and you like the crunchy edges of the stuffing the best, you're going to go cray-cray for these stuffing muffins because they are all about the crunchy edges. The whole darned thing is practically one big crunchy edge!

Turkey tetrazzini

Use holiday leftovers in this creamy turkey tetrazzini, comfort-food pasta made with homemade, DIY condensed soup.

This recipe for turkey tetrazzini is a first for me: It's one I'm posting at the request of my readers.

Before Thanksgiving, we were having a discussion on my Facebook page about our favorite Thanksgiving leftovers. You know, the ones that you look forward almost a bit more than the turkey feast itself? For me, it's a tie between all-the-trimmings turkey sandwiches and turkey tetrazzini.

Apparently turkey tetrazzini is a favorite among my readers as well, as many of them asked me to share my recipe.

So here it is -- but with a ninja twist: NO CONDENSED SOUP!

Whoot! Yep, you got it -- no condensed soup.

And the extra bonus? Within the recipe you make your own homemade version of condensed crream of chicken soup, which you can use for any other recipe that calls for canned cream-of-whatevs soup.

Perfect: This means that you, like I, can now stop ignoring 80 percent of the crockpot recipes on Pinterest!

Crockpot white bean chili with chicken and corn

Need a quick dinner? Try this easy set-it-and-forget-it slow cooker white bean chili with chicken or turkey and corn.

With less than a week to go until Thanksgiving, my Facebook feed is full of nothing but pictures of Thanksgiving dishes.

If I see one more photo of pumpkin pie, I may spontaneously combust.

So, since we've all got our hands full with planning the big meal or getting prepped for the over-the-river-and-through-the-woods roadtrip, The Ninj decided you need a break from all this holiday fallderall.

Get out yer crockpot and make yer life easy: whip up a big batch of chili so you can get on with everything else on your list.

I wound up creating this chili based on one that I tasted as part of a chili cookoff a few weeks ago at which I, The Ninj, was asked to be the "celebrity judge" (their words, not mine).

OMG, peeps, someone considers me a freakin' celebrity. I am so stoked.

At the cookoff, I tasted twelve different chili recipes in about fifteen minutes. Dudes: that's a lot of chili that, frankly, all started to taste the same after about six samples.

Except one.

Dried plum and apricot hand pies

Individual dried plum (prune) and apricot hand pies make a delicious holiday snack or dessert -- and a great alternative to pie.

Regular readers know that I am an avid home cook and food writer -- but they may not know that I came to my calling late in life. I spent little time in the kitchen during my childhood and taught myself to cook from cookbooks, and with some tips from my sister, out of sheer necessity in my 20s (basically, I needed to eat). When I read memoirs from other food writers or hear their stories of learning to cook at a young age from a loving, patient grandmother, I can't relate. Although I grew up in a large Italian family that loved to eat, we did so neither reverentially nor adventurously. Family dinners were simply what happened at six o'clock every evening, rather than a celebration of food or culture.

With five children and a full-time job, my mother viewed cooking as a chore, another task that needed doing each busy day. For her, baking a cake meant opening a box of Duncan Hines, and the microwave was her go-to tool in the kitchen. Understandably, special meals were reserved for holidays.

Yet my father adored food.

Again, he did not love food adventurously. A good steak, steamed lobster with lots of butter and anything that sported a heavy cream sauce were among his all-time favorites. But food played a starring role in his life. Whenever he told stories about places or people, they were ultimately about food – the food served at a memorable event, a special dish from a favorite restaurant, his teenaged job termination based on his preference for dipping into the restaurant's ice cream freezer rather than the dishwater.

Sweet and spicy poultry rub

Try this easy recipe for sweet and spicy rub on chicken, turkey, steak, even veggies for tangy BBQ flavor.

I've never been much on rubs. Whenever I see some kind of rub for a steak described on a restaurant menu, I think, "Meh. So what?"

But, as with so many things I have discovered since I started blogging, I didn't know what I was missing.

Well, maybe not on steak -- I'm still pretty much a purist in that department -- but definitely for poultry.

ZOMG, peeps, this is a seriously good rub. Transformational, even. In that it transforms a simple chicken or turkey into a crispy, sweet-yet-spicy bundle of awesomeness.

I don't know about you but, until I started using this rub on chicken, I never ever ever ate cooked chicken skin. Watching other people do it actually grossed me out. To me, it just was NOT something that you ate. It was merely the packaging on the outside that you removed to get to the real food.

As I said, UNTIL I used this rub.

The first time I baked a chicken with the rub, I took it out of the oven to cool and was intrigued by how aromatic and gorgeous the skin was. So I took a little nibble.

SQUEEEEEEEE!

All I can say is that if you like BBQ potato chips, you'll be in heaven.

Pumpkin ginger cupcakes (gluten-free or not) -- and a giveaway

These delicious pumpkin ginger cupcakes with mascarpone frosting can be made gluten-free or not.

Yes, I know it's November and therefore the all-pumpkin-all-the-time blogger recipe pumpkinpalooza should now be over, right?

Wrong.

As I have mentioned before, The Ninj respects seasonality. To wit, I held off this year on pumpkin-izing the blog until October, to give props to apples and pears in September.

And guess what? Pumpkins are still in season, even though Halloween is over and it is November! I mean, hello? Ever heard of pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dessert?

But I'm here to do you one seasonal dessert better, since regular readers know I'm not a fan of pie: pumpkin ginger cupcakes with a creamy mascarpone-cream cheese frosting. Now THIS is a Thanksgiving dessert that I can get behind.

And did I mention these cupcakes are gluten-free? OR NOT!!? And that either way they are moist, not cloyingly sweet and perhaps the most perfect dessert EVAH?

Yeah, I'm pleasing the heck out of everyone with this one, especially for Thanksgiving. Pfffft: Who the hell would eat pie when you can have cupcakes?

Chicken and biscuit casserole

Chicken and biscuits: is there really any more perfect comfort food?

OK, well, yes, a boatload of salted oatmeal cookies would be even more perfect in my book, so I should have clarified:

Is there any more perfect dinnertime comfort food?

I'm excited to share this particular version of chicken and biscuits with you for several reasons:

1) It's the result of a little Ninja-like recipe fusion
2) It's the perfect vehicle for Thanksgiving leftovers (because clearly you realize "Chicken and Biscuits" can easily become "Turkey and Biscuits")

And, since today is Thanksgiving for my Canadian friends (have a happy one, peeps!) and our own version is rapidly approaching, it's also very timely.

Fusion-wise, here's the story. Despite my love of bacon, I'm always trying to work more healthy, veggie-packed dishes into our dinner routine. Unfortunately, as regular readers will recall, Mr. Ninj is not a fan of most vegetables: he has texture issues. Tops on the texture issue list is squash. Even yummy squash like acorn or butternut -- even bathed in maple syrup and butter -- get a big thumbs-down.

Sniff: more foods to add to my ever-growing "recipes to make only when Mr. Ninj is out of town" list.

Therefore,  I came across a "turkey pot pie" recipe that included a sweet potato topping, I figured I'd be OK. I mean, sweet potatoes are just potatoes, right?

Wrong. Apparently they are too closely aligned with squash, both in color and texture.

(I know, right? WTF?)

I, on the other hand, loved the recipe and wasn't quite willing to let it go. Since it billed itself as "pot pie" (the only pot pie-ish thing was the filling, though), I realized I could probably substitute a bready or crusty topping and still be able to keep it in the recipe rotation.

So I pulled out my secret weapon: easy-peasy drop biscuits. I made the "pot pie" filling and topped it with some blobs of biscuit dough and baked that bad boy into a rich, comforting casserole.

Folks, we have a winner.

Cranberry rice and book clubs

Cranberry rice

Are you part of a book club?

I joined my first book club in 1991, just after graduating from college. This was pre-Oprah, so the concept was new to me. Get together with other book lovers to read and discuss books? Oh, happy day: it was like college lit class without the term papers.

I was hooked.
 
Even though we move around a lot (every five to six years, historically), I have been in one book club or another almost continuously since that first one.  Right now, I'm in two clubs: one physical, one virtual.

I joined the From Scratch Club's virtual book club at its inception last year. The first book we read and discussed was Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal.  While we all enjoyed the book and Adler's gorgeous prose, the book club members were ultimately more interested in a "cookalong" type of book and format. The second book we tackled was Alana Chernila's Homemade Pantry; every two weeks we read and cooked recipes from two chapters in the book and shared our stories and creations through Good Reads and Facebook. It was great fun, made even more enjoyable by the author's participation in the discussions and willingness to give feedback and answer questions.

We're now into the third book: Liana Krissoff's Whole Grains for a New Generation; again, we're fortunate enough to have the author joining us our journey. This book will be bit of a challenge for me, as I'm fairly grain-ignorant. Because of the nature of the book, instead of cooking by chapter, we are cooking by grain type.

This week, it's rice -- a nice, easy introduction to the world of grains.

Duck prosciutto

Duck prosciutto

Cook It! 2012: We've had a year of monthly challenges (well, we took November off, understandably, because Caroline's grandmother passed) to make a pantry staple and showcase the final product in a recipe:

• Pasta
• Bread
• Butter
• Cheese
• Lactofermented veg
• Jam 
• Canned fruit 
• Pickling
• Dried fruit 

But now it's time for the final installment (I think) and we're going out with a bang. This month's challenge? Do something cool with meat.

Awwwwwwwwwww yeah.

Regular readers will realized just how excited I was to see this topic, as I have a tendency to add a little bacon or sausage to most dishes (even cookies and ice cream), thus dubbing myself the Meatasaurus.

I'm also obsessed with charcuterie. While you may think of mini quiches or spinach dip when
someone says "party appetizer", I think meat: proscuitto, salami, pate.

I think I might take my own life if Mr. Ninj suddenly decided to become a vegetarian. Or even said, "Let's cut back on our meat intake a little."

Good thing there's not a chance in hell this would ever happen.

So, realizing that the latest Cook It challenge would give me an opportunity to offer some homemade charcuterie at Thanksgiving, I dove right in and purchased the DIY Meatasaurus Bible, otherwise known as Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Poleyn.

Homemade tater tots (Secret Recipe Club)

Homemade tater tots: Don't bother to buy them frozen -- you can make them easily from leftover mashed potatoes.

Homemade tater tots

It's time once again for another reveal day for the Secret Recipe Club (SRC).

Here's how the SRC works: each month I am assigned another member's blog (a different one each month). I then pick any recipe from that blogger's site, make it and write about it here. There's also a link hop at the end of the post so that I (and you) can check out all the other participating blogs and their great recipes.

The blog I got to explore and cook from this month is Finding Joy in My Kitchen, written by the very prolific SnoWhite, who notes that her blog is all about "finding joy in cooking wholesome meals." Believe me, if you're looking for some good wintertime comfort food, you will have lots of choices from SnoWhite.

I love that Sno started her blog simply to show her mother, living far away, what she was cooking; my blog started similarly after I moved away from North Carolina. See how the SRC brings cooks together?

As Sno's site has so many great recipes (example: eight, count 'em EIGHT, different lasagna recipes!), it was definitely difficult for me to decide which one to choose. But I've recently been cooking out of The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making (as part of the From Scratch Club's virtual book club), which has me focused on making my own version of foods that we often buy pre-packaged.

So when I saw Sno's recipe for homemade tater tots, I knew I'd found my match!

Black Friday turkey sandwich buns

Homemade sandwich buns, perfect for burgers or day-after-Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches.

Sandwich buns

We still have two days to go before the big day and I'm already thinking about the Thanksgiving leftovers.

Via some Facebook chatter, I learned I'm not alone in cooking way too big a bird every year just so I can have tons of extra turkey. Nor am I the only crazy that has actually cooked an entire second Thanksgiving meal after the big day because on the main day I was a guest in someone else's house and needed to create my own carcass to make quarts of turkey stock.

Leftover obsession can become unhealthy, though. True story: a few years ago, one of my friends left her relative's Thanksgiving table starving and had to microwave a Lean Cuisine once she got home because the aforementioned relative had preemptively put "leftovers" aside before serving the meal, leaving not enough food to feed her guests.

Just so we're clear, I'm not that obsessed with leftovers. Cripes, I didn't think anyone could be that obsessed with leftovers. That's just bat-shit crazy, not obsessed.

Anyhoo...

Banana toffee bit cookies

Banana toffee bit cookies

As a food blogger, I should be posting about Thanksgiving recipes right about now.
I mean, everyone else is.

Which is exactly why I'm posting about cookies instead.

Now, don't misinterpret my meaning. I love Thanksgiving; it's my ultimate favorite holiday.  Any day that is all about eating good food, spending time with people you love and being grateful for all the crap you already have, rather than just running out to buy more crap that no one needs, is a perfect day in my book.

(True story: when we tried to eliminate the adult gift-giving on my side of the family a few years ago, my dad threw a hissy fit because, as he put it, "Christmas is all about gifts: just look at the wise men!" Sigh.)

But I swear, if I see one more picture of turkey or sweet potatoes in my news feed, I may scream.

So today I share with you a very unholiday-ish cookie recipe.

Red pepper pumpkin soup

Enjoy this easy recipe for red pepper pumpkin soup -- for lunch or dinner, it's a creamy sipping soup that will warm your body and spirit.

Red pepper pumpkin soup

Before you say, "Two soup recipes in a row?", let me point out that, here in Vermont, it is 21 degrees and has already snowed -- before election day.

So yes, soup again.

But I'm giving you a lovely, seasonal soup that is so delicious and easy it would be appropriate to serve at the Thanksgiving table, if you serve a soup course.

So you really can't complain.

(And if you do, well ... no soup for you.)

I love red pepper soup. I have a go-to red pepper soup recipe that I make quite a bit, so I almost didn't try this recipe. I worried that the addition of pumpkin and sweet potato might disqualify it as a sipping soup, which is what my red pepper soup is: a soup that is comforting as well as nourishing, a soup that you drink from a coffee mug in front of the fireplace rather than from a bowl at the kitchen table.

But, being all ninja-like, I threw caution to the wind and tried it.

I think you'll be glad I did.

Maple ginger cookies

Two sweet recipes in one week: y'all are so lucky, I swear.

My posting options were mac and cheese, chicken stew or these wicked awesome cookies. Here's what I considered when choosing:

• It's a Friday before a long weekend (for some -- happy thanksgiving to our Canadian friends)
• The mac and cheese photos sucked
• The chicken stew involves prunes

So cookies it is!

No big story behind these cookies. I was just perusing some neglected cookbooks last week (I feel a little guilty if I ignore some of them for too long -- am I the only one?). I focused on my copy of Cooking With Shelburne Farms because, with its focus on seasonal Vermont foods, I figured I'd find something awesomely appropriate for fall (and more photogenic than the strata).

Aaaaaaaand I was not disappointed.

The authors called these cookies gingersnaps but I don't think that's really accurate: they're soft and not nearly as spicy as gingersnaps.

Regardless, they are wicked.

Strawberry-rhubarb chutney: a recipe

Strawberry-rhubarb chutney, not compote

I've been calling this recipe a compote all week but then had a second thought.

It could be a chutney.

(I honestly didn't know what makes them different.)

Hello, Google.

Here it is: chutney is made of cooked fruit and vegetables (not just fruit) and contains vinegar. A compote, on the other hand, is simply fruit cooked in sugar syrup.

So this strawberry-rhubarb bad boy is in fact a chutney.

I stand corrected. And so does the title of my post now.

This strawberry-rhubarb CHUTNEY is very easy to prepare and so perfectly seasonal right now. I served it with some roasted chicken breasts (it cooks while they do): absolutely the perfect accompaniment. I'm sure it would also be fabulous with pork tenderloin.