Thanksgiving

We stopped visiting family for Thanksgiving about five years ago, here at the delagar household. It makes us much happier about the holiday, frankly.

So today, instead of waking up after having driven miles & miles to be somewhere we don't especially want to be, we woke in the chilly dusk of an Arkansas fall morning, and have been, since, idly preparing a feast for just the three of us -- a turkey (which we got free from our local Harps -- it's Employee Owned, the Harps, and sells free-range chicken, and organic vegetables, and milk from a local dairy that comes in glass bottles and has Nothing Added! and tastes wonderful, we love our Harps, they gave us the free turkey because we bought more than a hundred dollars worth of groceries last Friday) and rolls (I'll attach my recipe) and pumpkin pie (mr. delagar made that, so I don't know the recipe) and some of those sweet potatoes with marshmellows but not raisins because the kid does not believe in cooked raisins and grilled asparagus (you can have the recipe for that too if you like) -- and in between making all of this, I've been working on revising the third novel in my trilogy and mr. delagar has been composing and the kid, well, she's still working her way through Black Adder. "What's a leper?" she asks. "What's a dingle?" "What's typhoid?"

We've bought her a children's dictionary. It's infuriating what those things don't contain.

On the other hand: "What's a tosser?" she asks.

Now that one I'm relieved to find the children's dictionary won't define, I admit.

Here's the recipe for my rolls:

One cup ice-cold milk. Marshall's dairy makes the best milk, but if you don't live here, do what you can.
Two eggs. Free-range organic are the best.
One Tbs yeast
One tsp salt
One tsp sweetening -- any sort, honey, brown sugar, maple, whatever suits you
Two tbs butter, soft or melted

Mix. Add in some bread flour. King Arthur Bread flour is the best sort. But if you can't get that, just use any sort of bread flour. It MUST be bread flour, though. Keep adding bread flour and mixing (if you have an industrial mixer, mix one minute after every half cup of flour you add; if you're kneading by hand, you have my sympathy, and just knead as long as you can stand it) until you have a good stiff smooth dough, almost but not quite not sticky.

Set that sucker to rise about an hour. Punch down after an hour. Rise again, another hour. Punch down again. One more hour. Punch down, shape into rolls, put in a well-buttered pan -- I use a round pan, but that's only because my pan is round. I also make round rolls, but it's only because I always have. Rolls about the size of my fist. You should have started the oven heating to 400 somewhere in here.

Let them rise about 20 minutes. Bake about 20-25 minutes. Eat with real actual butter. Honey is also nice.


The Asparagus.

Get skinny aparagus. Little puppies. Wash'em. Snap off the tops, throw the bottoms away. Put them in a big shallow pan. Put about a tablespoon of good olive oil on them. Toss'em around. Sprinkle with Kosher salt. Put under the broiler for about six minutes. Eat like French fries. The kid loves these.