You can bake that s#%&: Thanksgiving odds and ends
And my story for Grist on climate cookbooks
I trust that by this point you have your Thanksgiving recipes sorted. (If not, take a gander at last week’s climatarian Friendsgiving menu.) What we need this week isn’t more ideas for the feast, but a game plan for the inevitable leftovers, like the extra cranberries that won’t make it into the sauce, or the awkwardly small portion of uneaten sweet potato casserole you’ll tuck in the back of the fridge. For the latest installment of the column You can bake that s#%&, here are five ways to make magic from Thanksgiving odds and ends.
Leftover cranberries: Once your relatives have gone home, fold a cup-and-a-half of leftover, raw cranberries into this zesty-orange batch of “I’m finally alone” muffins. Or transform unused berries into the ultimate winter cake décor: sugared cranberries.
Pie crust ends: Turn your scraps of leftover pie dough into cinnamon-y pie fries or — if cheddar beckons to you in the night — cheese twists.
Sweet potato casserole: Mix a few spoonfuls of leftover sweet potato casserole and some extra marshmallows into vanilla ice cream for a Van Leeuwen copycat.
Mashed potatoes: Bake a cup of cold mashed potatoes (sans milk or butter) into this contest-winning chocolate potato cake.
Green beans: Use green beans as cake décor. Or use peas. Just not cooked, please.
Will climate cookbooks change the way we eat?
Need an 11-minute escape from your relatives this week? Read my story for Grist on climate cookbooks — a fledgeling sub-genre that just might change the way we eat. I’ve been reporting and writing it since May, so it was pure, bottled joy to see it published yesterday.
This story was as much a personal research project for my own eventual cookbook as anything else, and I’ll share what I learned soon. I hope you enjoy the dumb food jokes and the single, deep-cut Taylor Swift reference hidden in there for the diehards. Comment if you find it.
Regenerative pie-ish recipes
And in case dessert ideas still elude you, here are five recipes from the newsletter archives that offer different ways into a regenerative Thanksgiving:
