Thanksgiving guests

Just wanted to post something quick about having my whole family in town for Thanksgiving last week.  We were having way too much fun doing nothing in particular to stop and take pictures, so it's all text I fear.  But I will share a new recipe of mine, that hopefully you will try out in the future.

Mom, Dad and sister arrived late on the 24th, which is coincidentally sis's birthday, and stayed through the 30th.  They flew into Sac late on that Monday, so we spent the night there.  T got to meet with some folks Tues. morning that he's going to be taking additional inspection certification classes from this winter, and he was duly impressed by both their credentials and the amount of work he's going to have to do.  But we're both looking forward to him trying something new.

Nothing really amazing happened while they were visiting -- we took a trip up to Redding, went to the dog park for a walk with the pups, hung out, chattered endlessly, watched Wall-E and The Dark Knight together, and made and ate Thanksgiving dinner, as well as leftover Thanksgiving sandwiches the next day.  It was the first time I've hosted Thanksgiving, and it was nothing spectacular.  My mom honestly did most of the cooking.  The turkey was on the smallish side -- 11.5 lbs -- and there were garlic mashed potatoes, a Durkee French Fried green bean casserole, stuffing, gravy, my family's traditional pork pie (which is made with hamburger, not pork), and a can of cranberry sauce that got forgotten in the cupboard since it turns out no one really likes it anymore.  For dessert, we had a store-bought pecan pie.  It was not really a notable Thanksgiving meal in just about any way -- except for one.

I got my sister to eat a yam.  And kinda like it.

My sister is not a Thanksgiving person in any way, shape or form.  And the thing that she and I always dreaded (since Mom's rule was you had to have at least one bite of everything) were the candied yams.  They were whole yams done in obscene amounts of brown sugar, and they were the only thing I liked less than my grandmother's soggy stuffing.  We'd get the smallest ones we could find to choke down, and my sister would completely drown hers in ketchup and just about eat it with her nose plugged.  But this year I tried a recipe that I stole from another archaeologist, who I believe invented it the night she threw it on the coals of our BBQ grill.  I kept everything pretty much the same, except it went into the oven instead of over a fire.

Savory Yams

Take fresh peeled yams (sweet potatoes work too) and slice into rounds or dice into large cubes.  Put yams on a sheet of tinfoil.  Add a handful of diced yellow or white onion, several cloves of chopped or crushed garlic, salt and pepper to taste, and dot generously with butter.  Lay a second sheet of tinfoil over the first and fold the edges, sealing the packet.  Bake in the oven until the yams are soft.  Serve hot.

Now, to be honest, what my sister actually said was, "You're right, they're not as bad as I expected."  Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but at least she didn't need to eat them with her nose plugged.  I did a second batch similarly, but with brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg as the seasonings along with the butter.  They turned out a lot less sweet than the candied yams of my youth, and even though I prefer my yams salty, I thought they were pretty good, too. *smile*