Thanksgiving foods

     First things first, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
     Everyone knows that a huge portion of Thanksgiving is about the food. Some people's portions and varieties of food vary, but, overall, they are generally the same: turkey/ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, acorn squash, cranberry sauce, and baby onions. People also tend to have salads, but that's a post in and of itself. Afterwards, people indulge in a large spectrum of desserts; From the favorites of pumpkin pie and apple pie to cheesecake to occasionally baklava.
     Of course, what would be a Thanksgiving without turkey or ham! The size and (of course) cook time varies with the size of the family. I heard a person on the radio saying that they purposely cooked an extra turkey because there wasn't going to be any leftovers; Who doesn't like the next day turkey sandwiches? I hear that a ham leaves a lot of leftovers. The thing about ham, oppose to turkey, is that with turkey you can just microwave the gravy, but ham generally has its own sauce (like asparagus) which is one more thing you have to make, also less people like ham than turkey. If you have a turkey, you need to make sure you put it in the refrigerator days in advance, so it has time to thaw.
     Some people stuff the turkey with stuffing while others just leave the stuffing on the side. There are several downsides with cooking the turkey with the stuffing in it; For starters, the turkey needs to cook at least an hour longer for a 20 lb turkey. This means that you have to start cooking earlier in the day. Also, the stuffing can get too moist. Obviously, these little things can be compensated for and make it even better for a skilled cook. Stuffing's can vary. There's a traditional stuffing with sausage and celery in it, but there's others like Lebanese stuffing which I'm not sure what's in it.
     Mashed potatoes is another favorite. They are prepared by adding milk and butter while mashing. Regardless of if you use regular gravy, or a different grave like with ham, mashed potatoes are better with something on them (oppose to high and dry). The variety of potatoes can vary the results of how the mashed potatoes come out. Personally, I prefer the Russet potatoes for my mashed potatoes, but Norland Red's are pretty good too. Some people are more concerned than others about how chunky the potatoes can come out.
     Sweat potatoes are separate from mashed potatoes. While mashed potatoes generally have gravy on them, sweat potatoes are prepared with brown sugar. I didn't always like sweat potatoes, but I guess all the years of Thanksgiving warmed me up to it. You may wonder why I had it on my table if I didn't like it, but that doesn't mean someone who came over didn't like it. I had been making it just for them.
     Something else prepared on Thanksgiving is acorn squash. Even with a really sharp knife, it can be hard to cut in half. The outer skin is really tough. After someone's managed to cut it in half, it's put in a toaster oven and cooked. Afterwards, the skin just falls off and the insides is placed in a bowl.
     Baby onions are one of my personal main meal favorite foods to have on Thanksgiving. The way they are prepared might be one of the things that contribute to their greatness and outstanding taste. They are generally the first thing gone at my house. For the sake of being etiquette, I make sure I cut them in half before eating them even though they are bit size and could easily fit in my mouth whole.
     An often over looked item on the table is the cranberry sauce. It can be whole berry or smooth sauce, but I prefer whole berry. After I discovered whole berry, I make sure that I put both types of cranberry on the table. If they don't both get eaten than that's just more leftovers for me.
     Now for the dessert. I love pumpkin pie, it is my favorite dessert. Specifically, I prefer it made than sat on the counter to age for at least 24-hours, or it won't taste the best (in my opinion). You can buy pumpkin pie filling at certain store which saves some of the time making it.
      Another favorite is apple pie. Apple pies can vary greatly depending on the recipe and whose making it. I have a friend who make a great apple pie with fresh apples. Unfortunately, most local apples are picked, so she has to get store bought apples for Thanksgiving. She still makes a good apple pie, but good ingredients like fresh apples can still improve the recipe.
     I hope you enjoyed that post. What are you favorite Thanksgiving foods?

Introduction to Brody's Good Restaurants

     At an earlier post, I mentioned a new blog I may start. Well, here it is Brody's Good Restaurants . There is only so many foods that can be mentioned, so while I'm finishing up posting about individual foods and dishes that I've eaten and had at my house, I'm also going to be posting on my new blog. My new blog will be about restaurants I visit. It will post as often as I go out to eat. I'm currently in the middle of a semester, so my eating out time will be limited. However, sense the semester is just starting I have had time to go to a restaurant (Applebee's) and will have that post for that. I hope you enjoy reading my new blog.

Christmas Eve

     Tomorrow is Christmas Day or December 25, a week before 2015. Tomorrow I get to indulge in some Christmas food, like fruit cake. I'm sure I'll have some posts on each of the different foods that I'm going to eat or try, that I haven't already posted about.
     Besides posting more on this blog, I'm considering starting a blog where I talk about restaurant that I visit and what I liked and disliked about them. I hate giving bad reviews, but I would rather give restaurant advice to people, so they can try and avoid bad restaurant. However, I'm sure it won't come to bad reviews and, even if it did, people could have a different opinion.
     If I do start a blog, it probably won't be until next year. If and when I do start a restaurant blog then I would link it to this blog for my viewers to find easily.

Good old Peanut Butter & Jelly

     One of the simplest sandwiches, Peanut Butter & Jelly can be great for a quick snack (as long as you have all the ingredients). All you need is peanut butter, jelly and bread. Believe me when I say, sometimes you can be surprised when you go to make one and find all the ingredients used or just as surprised when you end up having more than one.
     The first ingredient in the name is peanut butter. Peanut butter can be crunchy or smooth. There are actually several varieties of peanut butter. Personally, I prefer the original peanut butter, but I don't overly care if it is crunchy or smooth, crunchy is just harder to spread around. I think smooth is more economical, though, because the crunch stacks high and results in using more so it doesn't last as long. At least peanut butter is fairly neat.
     The second half of the name is jelly. There are several different kinds of jelly and I've made a few of them. I've made blackberry jelly, I just need to make sure that I leave enough blackberries to make the jelly. After you boil down the blackberries there is a lot less of it, so you need a lot to start with. Making jelly is a fairly simple operation. You know what they say, 'The toast always lands jelly side down.' Jelly can get rather messy.
     I would recommend using the cheapest bread you can because between the peanut butter and jelly, it is hard to taste the bread. In this instance, I tend to use white bread or Italian bread.

Fellow bloggers

     I know it's been a while sense my last post. I have been belly deep in homework, but I've been drafting a few post topics, so when Christmas break come I'll have lots have posts to fill in and won't have to think up more foods to talk about. If I'm lucky, I might get one other post out before December, but I make no guarantees. After December starts, forget it, it'll be crunch time for finals and I definitely won't have time to post. I decided that I didn't like the amount of space that my previous font provided between words, so my new font is Arial.
     I was talking with my friends that also blog earlier about each of our blogs and I thought that it would be nice to mention each other's blogs on our own. So I planned out a how and a when and now here are their blogs!

• Chloe Armstrong (the-dancing-queen.blogspot.com)
• Dale Volker (volkersmovies.blogspot.com)
• Lisa Park (lisa-talks-about-anything.blogspot.com)
• Amanda Perry (amandas-dream-blog.blogspot.com)

    Make sure that you go and check out their blogs!

Tuna Melt

     I only just found out about tuna melts rather recently. I was over at a friends house and someone their was making a tuna melt for lunch. I had eaten a tuna sandwich before, but not like that. I was curious, so I asked him about it.
                                                             

     A tuna melt is like a grilled cheese, except for the fact that it has tuna on it. However, it varies by bread, cheese and how long you grill it, just like it would for a grilled cheese.
     The main thing to look for in tuna is the type of tuna and what it's in. That will influence the flavor the most in a tuna melt.

Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato (BLT)

     My favorite sandwich is Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato or (BLT); it has been for a while. It wasn't always, but when you try a lot of things your tastes and favorites tend to change. My favorite version of this particular sandwich has: red tomato and lettuce. Also, slightly crispy bacon that's not flimsy or burnt. Bacon that's firm, but not over done. Those three ingredients between rye bread with mayonnaise spread on it.
      First off, obviously the bacon can be cooked to different degrees. I'm pretty sure that bacon is already cooked when it's packaged, don't hold me to it though. Therefore, I suppose you could eat uncooked bacon from the package and put it on a BLT, but I would never. I doubt it tastes good, but I prefer a bit of crunch to my bacon, so I would never eat it uncooked anyway. At any rate, you can put slightly cooked, half done or burnt bacon on your BLT. The burnt will have the strongest taste and will therefore have the greatest impact on the overall taste of the sandwich you put it on, in this case the BLT. I like mine cooked to a medium amount of done.
     Moving on to the next ingredient, lettuce. Believe it or not, lettuce can have a bit of an impact on sandwiches. The first thing worth noting is that you should thoroughly rinse you lettuce. Whether it came from a place that uses pesticides, or just plain has dirt on it, it is good to rinse lettuce thoroughly. I'm sure that you would hate to taste dirt or be poisoned. Aside from that, lettuce can be bland which is why in a salad it is usually accompanied by a dressing. Sense lettuce doesn't have the most flavor ever, I put one slice of it, roughly bread size, on the BLT. If I put too much on it gets everywhere.
     Also, the tomato can have a variety of flavors (or it can be just plain bland) depending on the kind of tomato plant. Tomatoes come in more then one color and each color varies in taste. It's kind of hard to put cherry tomatoes on a BLT, though I suppose you could. Honestly, I've never tried it before; you'd have to slice them and then lay them flat on the sandwich. However, cherry tomatoes is more of a salad conversation. Personally, I just buy the cheapest tomatoes because, in my BLT, I look more for the taste of the bacon.
     And lettuce not forget the bread on either side! Like a said in my Grilled Cheese post, I hadn't always considered other bread besides white bread. Now that I've tried many different kinds of breads on a BLT, I would have to say that rye bread is my favorite bread to use for it. If you mayonnaise the bread to much, the first taste that it is going to cover up is the taste of the bread.
     BLT, being my favorite sandwich, made me consider whether or not I really wanted to experiment with its formula. After all, it was already good, why risk it? I'll tell you why, it could've gotten better, and it did. I changed the bread from white to rye. If I had decided that I didn't like a specific kind of bread I would have just used it for something else anyways, so no waste there.