A Very Matt & Mia Christmas to you!

Hallo.

Hope your holiday - whichever you do or don't celebrate - was a good one.

We had fun having a day or two off work and getting getting better acquainted with addicted to our brand new Wii gaming system. A game of tennis or a bowling match in the afternoons is now a foregone conclusion.

The Wii was my gift to my darling Matt.
That I also kinda wanted.
A lot.

Shhhhhh.

But my favorite gift that I received has to be a toss-up between:

A Shun 8-inch chef's knife

OR

CANELE MOLDS!
(omgwtfbbq!!1!)

The molds are lovely and fun to play with. Also heavy, which I somehow didn't anticipate. Haven't tried cooking with them yet - a bit intimidated.

And the KNIFE. The knife is a thing of beauty. Classic marbled steel that Shun is famous for, good heft, and sharper than a freakin' razor. Don't worry - the bandage on my thumb in the picture above is from a mandolin slicer accident, not the knife.

... So that should put your mind at ease.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Now that we're a week away from Christmas, with the first snowfall firmly on the ground and the next on its way, I'd like to take the opportunity to talk turkey.

Or, as the case may be, pumpkin.

oooooooooooh....

I found this beauty at a local farmer's market a while back. It was $.39 a pound, and absolutely gorgeous. I brought it home, set it on my kitchen table, and for nearly a month gazed at it, petteded it, and took pictures of it, until finally:

I had to kill it.

Brutally.

It took 6 hours of constant chopping and multiple trips the oven, but eventually I diced and roasted the whole damned thing. And later made the most fantastic roasted pumpkin seeds ever.

Words cannot describe how sore I was the next day. I had bruises on my palms, and my arms and thighs thought I had been cross-country skiing. It took me a full week to recover.

But it was totally worth it.

I'm amazed at how flavorful this pumpkin is. We've made several dishes with it (risottos, pastas, and cookies spring to mind) and still have a ton in the freezer. It is sweet and nicely textured, and adds amazing depth to anything I use it in. I wish I knew for sure what the variety was... I want to say it's a Cinderella, but the sign at the market just said "Old Fashioned Pumpkin."

Keep them that way, please!

I've saved some seeds for planting next year.

(Tiny Turkey Day for Two: Pasta in a nutmeg bechamel sauce with roasted pumpkin and parmesan cheese. Delicious! Thought I had a pic of the finished dish, but apparently I do not. Next time I make it, I'll take a picture and post it as a pic-only entry. Then you will feel like a true Insider.)