Hotel Cooking

Hey guys. I know it's been dead around here, but a LONG time ago I promised you posts after I was to get out of a hotel, but that never really happened. Mostly because I currently live like a nomad bouncing from hotel to hotel for 9 months of the year and live like a hippie for the other 3 months. So here is some hotel cooking for ya'll!

I have 2 pans (1 frying pan, 1 soup pot) and 1 hot plate. Tonight for dinner (and this will be dinner for quite a few nights as well) I sauteed some sweet potato and a golden beet with ginger, soy sauce, coriander, olive oil, onion, and garlic. When that was done, I cooked up some chicken, mushrooms, basil, salt/pepper, ginger, asperagus and cherry tomaters and called it a day!

Cooking takes an incredibly long time when you only have one burner, it's a bummer. I was going to throw some couscous in here too but realized that I wasn't going to be able to fit all the leftovers in my teeny tiny little hotel fridge, so I left that for another day.

It's taken a long time, but I feel like after a lot of practice, I'm just as good at cooking hotel meals as i was cooking home meals! It's mostly a matter of timing and washing my frying pan multiple times per meal.

Hope you all are doing well. let's start posting again!
-vmoneyyyyyyyyy

ps. golden beets are the BOMB

Hi & Thanksgiving Part two

Hi, I'm Jennifer, and Meredith made me do this. I like to cook and bake, and I like to follow recipes. I tend to make something once and never again, because what is the point when there is so much food to go around?

On Thanksgiving, my boyfriend Adam and I were gifted a free twenty two pound turkey, along with an eight pound turkey breast. We have always done our own Thanksgiving, in addition to the one with his family, but since the turkey was so big this year, it became a bit of a production. I usually keep it pretty simple when roasting anything - just salt, pepper and butter, sometimes lemon - but again, since the turkey was so big, I turned to Martha Stewart and her recipe for Perfect Roast Turkey this past Saturday. It is definitely a rich recipe, calling for a cup and a half of butter, and time consuming, having to baste every half hour for four hours.

You will never have a more moist or beautiful looking turkey in your life. Ever.

I served this with pan gravy, buttermilk garlic mashed yukon gold potatoes, wheat/white bread stuffing with sage, caramelized corn with mint, pomegranate cranberry relish, a sweet potato casserole with marshmallows, and roasted Brussels sprouts with mushrooms and cream (I wasn't kidding about loving recipes).

The key to serving a feast of any kind is obviously to do as much prep work before dooms day. I made vegetable stock for the stuffing a week and a half ago and froze it. I toasted the breadcrumbs a week ago and bagged it. I seeded and juiced the pomegranate and made the relish three days prior, so on and so forth. Do you know a good tip for mashed potatoes? Make them the night before and let them warm up the day of in a slow cooker. Thanks, internet!

Tomorrow I'm going to use some of the leftover turkey for enchiladas, but I will be cheating and using canned enchilada sauce. We can't all be Martha Stewart.