Thanksgiving Diatribe

Here in the Midwest, summer is officially over, Halloween is done and gone, the trees are bare, and it is dark at 5 p.m.  This is most certainly not my favorite part of the year.  I much prefer temperatures in the 80’s and sun until 9 p.m. over below zero temps and the cold, icy dark before even getting home from work.  Fortunately, there is a handy distraction that is called “the holiday season,” and it is well underway.  Mama Lanette and Alyssa JoJo always hit their true foodie personas and start planning the Thanksgiving meal at the stroke of midnight on November 1. (ring…ring…”Hello?”, “Oh my God, I got the new *insert food magazine title here* Thanksgiving Edition in the mail today!!”)  

This is OUR holiday.  Mama Lanette has been making a Thanksgiving Dinner for Alyssa JoJo since 1990, and before that, Mama Lanette’s mother, Grandma JoyJoy, prepared a splendid meal.  Being from Wisconsin, Thanksgiving has always been a fairly testosterone-free holiday, as Hunting Week is the week of Thanksgiving, and the men in the family were always up north deer hunting.  Although it was only my mother, my sister, and me at home, we always had a full blown Thanksgiving meal all the way down to polishing the silver and setting the china on the formal dining room table.  Thanksgiving is something we have never skimped on, and the tradition has been firmly implanted into Alyssa JoJo’s soul.

Today our Thanksgiving holidays are more fun than ever, as instead of two generations in the kitchen, there are now three, adding an extra element of family bonding and fun.  Each of us has a role in preparing the meal; Grandma JoyJoy cleans and does the nasty stuff to the turkey that causes Mama Lanette to start gagging and run from the room, prepares a pie or two, and gets some rolls rising to throw into the oven.  Alyssa JoJo makes her special green bean casserole (which is NOT your basic cream of mushroom soup and canned beans of the past) and does random tasks such as setting up the appetizer table and making sure it stays stocked with goodies.  Mama Lanette prepares side dishes and appetizers galore.  Mama Lanette’s sister brings desserts and appetizers, or whatever item seems to be missing from the menu.  The SOB even has a role in our day.  Some would say he has the most important role of all:  Liquor Store Trip Maker.

Testosterone is back with the introduction of boyfriends, in-laws, and SOB’s into the family.  A pre-dinner appetizer open house began a few years ago for family members and friends who have other obligations but still want to stop over and have a cocktail and snack.   It is a holiday that is open to anyone who wishes to make the journey, involving as many friends as family. It is a fun and relaxing day that ends with all of our butts and guts groaning due to the very large food babies firmly lodged in our stomachs, the added weight testing the support structure of the living room furniture.  To this date, no piece of furniture has ever broken under the increased stress of a Thanksgiving dinner in this house; however, I cannot say the same for my Auntie’s home at Christmas.  Almost every damn year a chair in her dining room breaks, and every year I exhale a sigh of relief that it wasn’t me. 

So, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is the official kickoff of the Feeding the Freaks…Thanksgiving Edition!  Join us this month as we share some of our most beloved recipes of the past, and newer recipes that we have researched and/or created just for you!  It is going to be a month full of history and history in the making, so stay tuned fellow freaks!  You won’t regret it!   <3 Mama Lanette

Ratatouille

Bon jour from Mama Lanette! As a grand finale to the first week of Feeding the Freaks, I am
challenging Alyssa JoJo’s Vegetable Tian with Ratatouille. When she first told me about her
Vegetable Tian recipe, I was like, “Yeahhhh….that jut sounds like Ratatouille was given a fancy
pants name if you ask me…” Thus was born our first cook off.

Ratatouille is a French dish made from eggplant, zucchini, onions, peppers, tomatoes, and
garlic, and featured in a very popular animated film (wink, wink, to those of you with children).
It is an especially economical dish to prepare during late summer in Minnesota, as zucchini and
eggplant are quite plentiful at your local farmer’s market, along with tomatoes and peppers. If
you are a lover of all that is vegetable, as Mama Lanette is, you will love Ratatouille. If you are
 somewhat skeptical about eggplant or zucchini, it may not be the dish for you. The S.O.B won’t
get within 15 feet of either no matter what I tell him they are, thus his freshly-honed, Rainman-
like skills for differentiating cucumbers from zucchini in salad. There are many variations of this
dish, so I pulled together the elements I liked best from several recipes and created something
new and hopefully tasty. It was a little more work than some of the other recipes I found,
where the entire dish is made in one pot, but I am always up to a challenge and am hoping the
presentation makes the extra effort worth it! Taking the high temperatures of Minnesota in
late August/early September into consideration, however, the one pot method may be more
desirable, as heating the oven (and by default, the house) is not required. Enjoy!

(read below for my update after making the dish)

Ingredients
1/2 pound zucchini, scrubbed, and sliced into 1/8-inch slices
1/2 pound eggplant, scrubbed, and sliced into thin (3/8-inch) slices, about 4-inches by 1-inch
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 pound thinly sliced yellow onions
1 sliced green bell pepper
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 small bay leaf
1 pound ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, juiced, and sliced into strips
½ to 1 cup shredded fresh basil
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400°F. Spray two cookie sheets with olive oil or vegetable oil spray. Put the
zucchini and eggplant slices on the cookie sheets. Brush very lightly with olive oil, and bake until
slightly brown on each side.


In a skillet, cook onions and peppers slowly in 2 tablespoons olive
oil for about 10 minutes. Stir in garlic, bay leaf, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir in tomatoes
and basil. Cover and cook over low heat for about 5 minutes. Remove the cover and cook
at medium to high heat until juice is reduced.
Remove the bay leaf and discard.





 Put 1/3 of tomato mixture in the bottom of a casserole. Arrange 1/2 of the eggplant and zucchini on top,then half of the remaining tomato mixture. Put the rest of the eggplant and zucchini down,and
top with the remaining tomato mixture. Drizzle with olive oil top with salt and pepper. Cover
casserole dish and bake at 400 for approximately 30 minutes. Let rest before serving so the
dish has time to set. Serve with a crusty French bread and good butter!

Variations:
Top with cheese such as goat cheese, parmesan, or whatever you have handy and like the taste
of.
Use yellow squash in addition to zucchini.
No basil? Use parsley!

The Final Verdict: The presentation was so NOT worth the extra effort. While this dish was
delicious, the three separate steps of roasting, sautéing, and baking really made it a pain
in the ass. I don’t have a dishwasher, so the extra dirty pans were not appreciated. I also
do not have central air, so turning on the oven and stove when it is 94 degrees with 80%
Minnesota humidity in my standing-fan-only ventilated kitchen really pissed me off. What was
I thinking?!? Presentation? Who cares when it is so freaking HOT outside! Like I don’t have
better things to do with my life on a Friday night than chop vegetables and roast to death?
Thank goodness for my icy cold pal Mr. Riesling or I may have simply overheated and passed
out (from the heat, not the Riesling…shut up you, and you know who you are). In reality,
Alyssa JoJo’s Vegetable Tian looked much better in presentation, and her recipe sounded much
simpler. Don’t get me wrong, my Ratatouille really was delicious, and I especially enjoyed
eating it in front of the S.O.B. He despises eggplant and zucchini, and watching his gag reflex
kick in always makes me giggle. I think this is a recipe that needs to be revisited in the one pot
version…perhaps next summer.

So, to end the first week of Feeding The Freaks…A Family Fiasco, the coveted Flying Freak Flag
goes to…*drum roll*… Alyssa JoJo!!!!! Job well done my pookie boo! You made more with less,
and that is always a win in Mama Lanette’s opinion. See you at next week’s fiasco, my fellow
freaks! Au Revoir, Mama Lanette

A MN State Fair Adventure...

Welcome to Feeding the Freaks....a Family Fiasco!  What better way to kick off our mother-daughter food blog than a trip to the MN State Fair!  Ah yes, the land of 10,000 foods on a stick and butter head sculptures!  What do they do with those heads when the fair is over anyway?  Alyssa JoJo suggests a giant lobster fest.  Mama Lanette says a hefty profit is to be made by selling them to Paula Dean, y'all.  The MN State Fair is a grand land where bacon and chocolate can meet and become one, macaroni and cheese can be eaten on a stick, and pickles are fried to perfection.  Just when you think a food can’t POSSIBLY be made any unhealthier, lo and behold!  There it is….battered, deep fried, and oh so carefully perched upon a stick, and yet so delicious your taste buds would explode if they hadn’t already been burnt beyond recognition because you just couldn’t wait a few extra minutes for those fresh fried cheese curds to cool off a bit. 

After a quick pre-apology to our bodies for the complete disregard to diet and nutrition they were about to be subjected to, we departed the bus, stocked up on dollar bottles of water being sold outside the gate (they’re like 3 bucks inside!), and took off running like the Augustus kid in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory when he discovered the river was made out of chocolate.  Our fair food adventure started off this year with a trip to Axel’s where we indulged in macaroni and cheese on a stick, deep fried cheeseburger sliders, and a breakfast lollypop (breakfast sausage dipped in a corn meal batter, deep fried, and yes, placed on a stick).  Mama Lanette and her friend A.P. then ventured over to the Agriculture Building to visit their beloved honey ice cream stand. The honey ice cream with sunflower seeds is so delicious and simple, it transports one back to the days of childhood, laying in the grass, and staring at the clouds.   Alyssa JoJo and her friends E.H. and S.B. headed over to the Food Building, but much like Las Vegas, what happens in the Food Building STAYS in the Food Building.  The rest of our MN State Food….uh….I mean MN State Fair trip consisted of a dizzying pace of map checking, aimless wandering before we realized we were holding the map upside down, and eventual food booth finding.  The treats sampled consisted of fried green tomatoes, corn fritters with honey butter, deep fried Oreos, Big Fat Bacon drizzled with maple glaze, canoles, fried pickles, bacon ice cream, Pig Lickers (chocolate-dipped bacon), corn dogs, and cheese on a stick, which resembled a corn dog, but had cheese instead of a hotdog inside. 

Five hour later, as we sat upon a bench with our bellies full, our feet covered with dirt, and our faces smeared in grease, we decided it was time to cry uncle and head out.  The bench creaked in relief when we picked our now even bigger asses up off of it.  We headed over to the nearest sky ride, lied about our weight to the very skeptical carnies, got on our sky cab, and rode over to the other side of the fairgrounds where our exit was located.   Our carb-coma bodies trudged zombie-like to the Park & Ride bus, and we headed back to the Land of Reality…where carbs, calories and fat really DO matter.

Are there healthier choices to be had at the State Fair?  Yes, the Produce Exchange was selling fresh fruit and veggies, and there were several fruit kabob and salad stands, so it CAN be done.  And, of course, there are those people who suffer from physical ailments such as diabetes, in which case, munching on a bag of cotton candy and a deep fried Snickers bar may not be the smart choice; high blood pressure….stay away from those salty fries and pig lickers you people!; and the ever present child with ADHD…once again, AVOID the cotton candy!  All in all, however, for those of us who are fortunate enough to partake of whatever we want and not go into an insulin coma or suffer from a heart attack, part of the beauty of a once yearly trip to an event such as the MN State Fair is the throwing away of all morals and decency regarding food and nutrition and just having FUN.  Is eating a Big Fat Bacon a little disgusting?  Most definitely, but when eaten only once a year, it is a treat to look forward to and savor with every bite. 

And with this we start a new adventure in sharing the foods we love, dare to try, and change to make healthier with you. We hope that if anything through out these posts you at least find something to laugh about, love to eat, and share with others. 

- Alyssa JoJo and Mama Lanette