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Thanksgiving-ish Rice.

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This is my mom.

I am, more or less, turning into her with every passing day. Just the other day I woke up at 5:45am and immediately started cooking, baking, doing laundry, picking up the house, working on real estate, checking email, and noticing I was way too energetic and happy for that early in the morning.

Yep. Turning into my mother.

One thing my mom taught me is the spirit of creativity and free thinking in the kitchen. She calls it “pitch and throw” ~ make a pot of soup with the contents of your fridge, freezer or pantry.

Now obviously, there’s a bit of a skill to this, but a lot of it is just good plain common sense, and the willingness to make a “dud” every once in a while.

For instance, most of us love Thanksgiving stuffing, right? Well, why can’t those key flavors be used in a rice dish?

My absolute favorite thing about stuffing is the crisp celery, the crunchy bread on the top, and the sage-y poultry seasoning.

So, here’s a rice dish my mom and I put together, that gives you that Thanksgiving feeling, but with rice!

We really should be eating Thanksgiving-ish food all year long, don’t you think? Why not? We have so much to be thankful for! (Pardon my dangling participle ha ha ha)

This is my mom’s version, in her words:

Thanksgiving-ish Rice

Pam Tannehill
This is very simply a rice dish with all the things I might add to stuffing.
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Ingredients
  

  • cooked rice I used brown quick rice
  • celery diced
  • onion (or onion powder)
  • diced apple, drenched in lemon juice save the other half for the vinaigrette
  • dried cranberries chopped
  • pecans chopped
  • carrot diced
  • 1/2 cup sweetened apple sauce
  • 1/2 lemon juice the other half from the apples
  • Rice vinegar
  • Honey
  • Poultry seasoning
  • Salt and Pepper

Instructions
 

  • To cooked rice, add the celery, onion (or onion powder), diced apple drenched in lemon juice, craisins, pecans, and diced carrot.
    For the vinaigrette, whisk together the apple sauce, lemon juice (used the leftover half from drenching the apple), rice vinegar, honey – all to taste. Then add a generous amount of poultry seasoning.
    If you have thyme or sage, fresh or dried, you could use that.
    Salt and pepper, all to taste.
    Very seasonal and yummy.

The one I made is only slightly different ~ basmati rice, dried cranberries, chopped toasted walnuts, cilantro, chopped apple, kalamata olives, and feta cheese. My vinaigrette had stone ground mustard, apple cider vinegar instead of lemon juice, and sadly, no poultry seasoning. I ran out!

Time to mask up and go to the store to get a few things so I can make this again! Next time I’ll use poultry seasoning and celery for sure!

Thanks, Mom!

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