Tonight we did the second biannual Grandmother white elephant gift exchange. I had my eyes on the clucking chicken egg poacher. Obviously there was intense competition and Evan walked away with the prize. He totally owes me an egg bennedict.

Ever since our days in Bozeman, where we often ate at Cafe Zydeco, Brooklynne and I have both loved various New Orleans-style foods, so finding a indigenous cookbook was high on our priority list when we visited Ben in LA last September.  

We ended up getting Cooking Up a Storm. When Hurricane Katrina wiped out New Orleans, alot of people lost their recipes and cookbooks to water damage. So, the Times-Picayune decided to create and publish a cookbook of recipes that were submitted to its local cooking column over the years. A portion of the profits apparently go toward hurricane relief, and the book came highly recommended by the guy who runs the Southern Food and Beverage Museum (whom Brooklynne and I met when we visited earlier this year--and BTW, he is a big Allen & Son fan), so we bought it.

Monday night, we finally had a chance to try a recipe, and since it was Monday (the traditional day for this dish), we made Red Beans and Rice. Oh man, it was good! I altered the recipe a little for ease by substituting a few ingredients such as bacon instead of smoked ham hock, canned beans for the dry ones, and parsley flakes for the fresh stuff. So I'm posting our version of the recipe after the break.

I usually have a twang of hesitation when I post a recipe out of a book (kind of like when I burn a mix CD), but I think I can justify this because we tweaked the recipe enough, and because once you try this dish, you will want to buy the book for the rest.

***Also, this recipe happens to be dairy and soy free for any nursing mothers who may be interested.***

I went to the "Rock" (as in Roxboro, NC) for Thanksgiving today. That's where my grandmother lives, we had a smallish gathering that included Mama H, Kim, Dixon, Skip, Maggie, Mom, Dad, and the Pattens--Sarah, Aaron, and Emma. As usual the food was outstanding, and I even got to load up a tin pie-plate with leftovers for the weekend.

If Brooklynne was here, I'm sure she would have gone all out to contribute our share of the fixin's, so there was some pressure for me to represent our branch of the Travis clan. However, I've only really been to the store once since Brooklynne left, and all I got was spaghetti sauce and noodles. So, it was time for some old-school, Miles-style razzle-dazzle in the kitchen.

I got up this morning and surveyed the available ingredients. I wanted to make something traditional, but I really didn't have anything that fit the bill, so I had to be creative. Here's my train of thought:

Let's see.... I have one sweet potato (left from before Brooklynne flew out). That's kind of Thanksgivingy. What could I make that takes only one sweet potato? A pie? No--that takes 2 lbs. This one is maybe 1/2 lb. Maybe that would be enough for cookies? Is there such a thing as sweet potato cookies? (I looked in The Joy of Cooking.) No sweet potato cookies listed. But I do have all the ingredients for oatmeal cookies. Could I make sweet potato flavored oatmeal cookies? I'll never know until I try....

An hour and a half later I had a large dish of sweet potato-oatmeal cookies. Don't laugh--they got rave reviews at dinner. In fact, they got such good reviews, that I am posting the recipe here for my own future reference and for Kim and Mama H. One caveat before I continue, though: this was an experimental batch, and they came out kind of flat and gooey, so the baking time is still open to tweaking. I'm putting exactly what I did in the directions below, but I'll put a note at the bottom of the recipe explaining baking time and temp options that might be worth experimenting with.

1. Position a rack in the top third of the oven.
2. Pre-heat the oven to 375.
3. Grease several cookie sheets (at least 3 for the most efficient baking rotation).
4. Skin, chop, and boil 1 average-sized sweet potato until it is very soft.
5. Whisk together:
   • 2 cups all-purpose flour
   • 1 teaspoon baking soda
   • 1 teaspoon baking powder
   • 1/2 teaspoon salt
   • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
   • 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
   • 1/2 teaspoon all-spice
   • 1/2 teaspoon cloves.
6. Beat until well blended:
   • 2 sticks unsalted butter (softened)
   • 1.5 cups packed light or dark brown sugar (this is what the oatmeal cookie recipe called for, but I discovered at this point that I did not have brown sugar, so I substituted 1.5 cups regular white sugar and 3/4 cup molasses)
   • 3/4 cup sugar (just to be clear, this is in addition to the other sugar I used to simulate the brown sugar)
   • 2 large eggs (Kim mentioned that increasing the eggs may help the cookies keep their shape later--so perhaps worth trying 3 eggs?)
   • 2.5 teaspoons vanilla.
7. Beat the sweet potato into the butter mixure until the "sauce" is smooth.
8. Stir the flour mixture into the butter/potato mixure.
9. Stir in 4 cups rolled oats.
10. Use a tablespoon to drop the dough onto the cookie sheets. An even tablespoon will make a large cookie. You should space them at least two inches apart, and I got the best results by limiting myself to only 9 cookies per sheet.
11. Bake one sheet at a time. I found that 10 minutes was the best amount of time, but I was also using the "speed bake" feature on my oven. If you do not have "speed bake," you may have to bake the cookies longer, or increase the temp to 400. The cookies will come out darker bron than typical oatmeal cookies and you should take them out when they are just barely firm in the middle.
12. Let the cookies firm up on the baking sheet for a couple of minutes before transferring them to a rack for cooling. I got in a rhythm of taking one sheet out of the oven, placing the next sheet in to bake, and then loading a third sheet with dough while the first sheet cooled (thus the 3 sheets from step 3 above). Once the third sheet was ready to go in the oven, the first sheet would be cool and the cookies could be removed to the cooling rack. Then I would repeat the pattern. The recipe yielded 6 batches of 9 large cookies (54 total).

I forgot to mention that I made it a total guy cooking night by setting up the laptop in the kitchen and watching Aliens while making the sauce. I'm sure the Alien Queen would find my sauce tasty.

My office is having a thanksgiving potluck today. I wanted to contribute, so I tried to think of something that was

1. traditional
2. cheap
3. easy
4. cold (so I could make it the night before and not worry about reheating)

I settled on fresh cranberry sauce. Brooklynne has the camera in Utah, I think, so you will have to settle for and approximation. This is about what the finished product looked like.

It's that time of year again, and Kate (my cousin who has been staying with us lately) has already come home with multiple quartz of pure heavenly goodness. She must not have noticed that I've gained 30 pounds since college.

As I was looking for a good image for this post, I ran across this recipe for spiked egg nog french toast. I think I will try this recipe Thanksgiving weekend. It just sounds too good to ignor.

You know, when I was little, we used to drink homemade egg nog made with raw eggs. What were we thinking?!!!

Brooklynne has been neglecting her blog, and I can't wait any longer to share a picture from our election night celebration.

Eat at Joe's linked to an interesting article today about how food habits can affect how we relate to our partners. The most glaring incompatibilities between Brooklynne and I are that she likes "yams" and I like sweet potatoes. Sometimes I like plain vanilla ice cream and she always likes stuff in hers. I love the Rat, and she won't eat there without a suppressed cringe. I like collards and she doesn't. But for the most part, we are food compatible. Not only that, but some of our favorite, most relaxing nights are spent cooking together. I usually chop/prep, and she usually minds the food on the stove. Then we eat and talk about how to make it better, or what esle we could do with that recipe, or what we would like to try next.

I would love to hear about your food stories. Do you have any really good or bad food compatibility stories to share?

Also, you know that I love to look at Time Magazine's online photo essays. There are some really beautiful images and you can usually find a gallery about almost any current news item. Here are some interesting links that I may have posted before, but they relate to the food topic.

What the World Eats part 1

What the World Eats part 2

What the World Eats part 3

One more thing... while poking around for an image to put on this entry, I ran across this letter dated December 14, 2007. Does anyone know any thing about this?