'Twas The Night (Actually Two Nights) Before Thanksgiving

If it seems as if I’ve been celebrating Thanksgiving for days, it’s because I HAVE!

My company – friends and some kids – are gone (boo-hoo). I still have a few days worth of food left. Of course, nobody is much interested in it and I’m sure they’ll be wanting Chinese, even though I could eat mashed potatoes and gravy until Easter. I guess that might be risking more than just my culinary reputation.

Okay, this was how the week started:

Tuesday night, I served this wonderful Chicken, Shrimp and Sausage Stew to incoming guests. The only change I made was to halve the amount of sausage. Plus the recipe called for andouille, but I used both andouille and chorizo. Next time, I think I’ll stick with chorizo. I served it with brown and red rice. Muy rico.

BTW, THIS is a superb recipe to make with turkey leftovers. Just leave out the chicken and add the cubed cooked turkey meat ten minutes before the end of the cooking time.

I served it with Petits Pois à la Française. Boil a half cup of water. Add a package of petits pois, a pat of butter, a teaspoon of sugar and a handful of shredded lettuce. Cook, uncovered, until peas are cooked, about 8 minutes.

Dessert was this cake, which I first saw on the talented Deeba’s blog. SHE made it with apples, but this is the original pear cake recipe from the hunky Ricardo of the Food Network of Canada, which I just couldn’t get over.

It was the most unique cake I’d seen in ages. SOOO easy. And I took it upon myself to poach the fruit one day and make and bake the cake the next, which worked very well. I stored the poached pears in the sugar syrup that I had cooked them in. AND I made this before I even saw how gorgeous Ricardo is!