FRIENDSGIVING

This Thanksgiving marks my 4th away from home. My first two at college were spent at my friend Kendall's home, and last years was in New York City with another friend, Taylor. While all those have been fun, I'm tired of being felt sorry for and adopted by other peoples families. I'm also tired from all of the traveling I've already done in the past few months. That's why this year, I decided to hold my own "Friendsgiving."

Blogger buddies Natalie and Anastasia joined my friend Victoria and I in Upstate New York this holiday for some time of relaxation and great food. Wednesday before Thanksgiving we received about 8 inches of snow, making us stay inside and enjoy each others company. We began this fourth Thursday of November with homemade pumpkin cinnamon rolls  and apple cider mimosas while watching the Macy's day parade. Since I was actually at the parade last year I didn't feel overly inclined to watch it, so I mainly dealt with food preparation.

After we picked up Natalie from the train station we got cooking on dinner, in which our main dish was a baked acorn squash  that we stuffed with stuffing and topped with parmesan cheese. (It was ordinary seasoned stuffing mix that I added golden delicious apple, pecans, and dried cranberries to at the end. I put turkey sausage in the mix for the meat-eaters at the table as to not omit turkey from the meal.) We struggled through cutting some very large sweet potatoes, but it was so worth it after they were oven roasted with olive oil and cinnamon. Mashed potatoes were made in a slow cooker, just chopped up and left there for a while with garlic and a bit of water. Victoria prepared a version of cranberry sauce that was super easy and delicious, as well as some toasted bread with garlic and rosemary!

For dessert, we went with a traditional pumpkin pie, and some not-so-traditional chocolate glazed donuts. (For those of you who don't know, I purchased a donut pan a month ago and I do not regret it. Buy one and make donuts. Seriously.) All in all, it was a somewhat contemporary twist on a traditional Thanksgiving meal. More importantly, it was delicious, and shared amongst friends.

I hope everyone was able to enjoy the day(s) off from normal obligations to spend time with friends and family! 

PEACH GALETTE

I'm sure it's not a normal thing to grow up with a peach tree in your front yard, but then again my life isn't that normal. Every August of my childhood involved running outside and collecting all of the ripe peaches, and biting into a fresh peach is heavenly. Since this past year I completely missed peach season, I had to grab a few from the local farmers market this past weekend. SomehowI ran across this recipe for plum galettes from a 1994 issue of Food and Wine and they sounded so good I had to make them, so I modified them to fit a single peach. 

INGREDIENTS
3/4 cup flour
3/4 stick cold unsalted butter
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cold water

1/8 cups sugar
1.5 tablespoons ground almonds
1.5 tablespoons flour
1 peach (per galette) 
Apricot preserves

DIRECTIONS
(The amount for the dough makes one small galette as seen above)
1. Make the "pate brisee" (crust). Put the flour, butter, water and salt in a food processor for approximately 10 seconds, or until just coming together. Remove the dough from processor and gather into a ball. On a floured surface, roll the dough until it's 1/8 to 1/16 inch thick. 
Place onto a baking sheet and chill until firm - about 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 400°. 

2. Make the filling. Ground almonds in a food processor. Add sugar and flower and pulse until mixed. Spread evenly over dough, within an inch or so of the edge. Arrange the peaches on top. Sprinkle sugar over the fruit. Fold the edges of the dough over the peaches to create a 2 inch border. (Optional: bruch dough with egg yolk for shine.) Sprinkle border with sugar.

3. Bake the galette for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is browned. Brush preserves on the hot fruit, and the crust if you'd like to. Cool before eating! 

I definitely didn't roll the dough thin enough but everything else about it was delicious. Also I ate the entire thing by myself in one sitting. Yeah.