The Walsh Cookbook

Thanksgiving was wonderful; full of family and friends and so much great food!  We made two huge turkeys  (dry-brined of course! It really does work so well!)--one in the oven and one lightly smoked out on the grill.  I love to have tons of turkey and all of the fixings so that we can have plenty of food to include last-minute extra guests, and lots and lots of leftovers to send everyone home with some.  What's Thanksgiving without leftovers?  I can eat them for breakfast, lunch or dinner just as they are, or in many various guises.   One of our favorite ways to use leftover turkey was given to me many, many years ago by our friend and a wonderful cook,  Cindy Taylor Voss who used to make it by the gigantic potful for hordes of us.  It is purported to be the recipe for the famous Turkey Chili at the Deer Valley Ski Resort, though who knows if it really is or not.  If you Google it, the recipe comes up in almost identical form...

My mom has many opinions on "Southern Cornbread" vs. "Yankee Cornbread". Since she lived in Georgia for many years as a child, I highly respect her opinion and will summarize it here: "Yankee Cornbread" is wrong. All wrong. It has sugar in it which is completely unacceptable. Especially if you're using it to make stuffing. If someone feels this strongly about cornbread, I think you ought to listen to them!  Tutu (my mom's mom) always made Southern Cornbread for Thanksgiving Stuffing when my mom  was growing up. The problem is that she made it without a recipe which is extremely hard to replicate. The only Cathy approved recipe for cornbread (besides Tutu's) comes from the Pioneer Woman's recipe "Skillet Cornbread". The bread comes out nice and crispy on the bottom and tastes fantastic. If you're using it for stuffing, you can make it up to a month before hand and freeze until you're ready to use which is what I h...

This recipe is really just the basic Ocean Spray back of the bag recipe, but it's the one my mom always used, and it's the one I like the best.  Over the years I've tried lots of fancy variations (in addition to this one that I'm posting today, and this one of course, not instead of!), with various spices, fruit, nuts, liqueurs, differing amounts of sugar, etc. but I always decide that I just like this basic back of the bag recipe the best.  Something about tradition, I guess...  So really, my only variation to the recipe is that I add chopped up candied orange peel (recipe  here ) that I started making when the kids were little.  I had some leftover candied peel and Erin asked me to add some into the cranberry sauce and a tradition was born! One of the best advantages though of having this favorite recipe printed up somewhere is that sometimes I buy cranberries from say, Costco in a giant bag that doesn't have a recipe on the back.  Then I have...

Any holiday that revolves around eating is an excellent one in my book!  Brendan's family will be driving up to spend the holiday with us which we are very excited about! Since we will be having a much larger dinner this year compared to last year, we are starting our preparations early. Brendan reserved the turkey yesterday from New Seasons and I am trying to make as many things beforehand as I can like cranberry sauce (recipe coming soon from my mom, Cathy!) and freezing it. I am also going to make our turkey brine during the "quiet" days before Thanksgiving so I don't have to worry about it last minute. Which leads me to my next point... Traditionally brining your turkey is a really great way to make sure you have delicious moist and flavorful meat. The only downside is what a big production the whole thing can be; getting a big enough bag to fit all the brine, mixing the brine, disposing of the brine when you're done etc. I was happy to see this...