Thanks for stopping by! I'm Cori and I'm happy you've found your way here. If you're wondering why my blog is called "Let's Eat Grandpa," it's an old grammar joke: Let's eat, grandpa! Let's eat grandpa! (Punctuation saves lives.) 
Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving last week! Due to the holidays, this post is a bit late. Oh wells!
I made a bunch of new things over the long weekend, so get ready for a bunch of yum yum yum!
For Thanksgiving my mom did most of the cooking, but I made Cooking Light‘s Old Fashioned Cranberry Sauce. The recipe had quite a few ingredients for a fairly simple dish, but when put together, they created a really stellar cranberry sauce.
I made the version in the link, and then added one chopped green apple for the last minute or so of cooking. I loved the tartness of this sauce. The recipe says it serves 12, and it did — we had a lot of leftover sauce! Rating: nine out of ten cranberries!
Yes, we still had the can-shaped sauce, which I love, but it’s nice to bring in something more homemade for this part of Thanksgiving, since my mom goes fairly natural and homemade for everything else. Other things on our Thanksgiving table included turkey, smashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, yams, crescent rolls, grandma’s famous carrot and Jell-o salad. After Thanksgiving at my parents’, the boyfriend and I headed to two more Thanksgivings with his family (thankfully only one of them had a full Thanksgiving spread…I don’t think I could have eaten three meals!). It was a wonderful day!
Instead of waking up with the masses early on Black Friday, I slept in and then made three soups! I wanted to freeze them for lunches for the next couple of weeks — trying to save money and calories and all that. I totaled up my grocery bill and the number of servings I ended up with, and each lunch averages out to about $2.60. Rock on.
Spicy Corn and Crab Chowder (from Cooking Light): Although this one took a little involvement to make (I had to break out the blender), it turned out really good. I couldn’t find poblanos at the grocery store, so I used two chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. It’s quite spicy, so one pepper might be enough for some people. Rating: eight out of ten crabs!
Slow-Cooker Ribollita (from Food Network Magazine): Ribollita is a hearty Tuscan soup, made with veggies, meat, and bread. I couldn’t find cannellini beans or pancetta, so I used great white northern beans and a combination of prosciutto and some hot sopressatta sausage. This sat cooking all day (nearly eight hours), making my house smell of delicousness. The end product was pretty tasty — hearty, a little spicy, and perfect for the cold cloudy days we’ve been having. Rating: eight out of ten beans!
Turkey and Orzo soup: There’s no link for this one. I’ve made it out of a One Dish Dinners cookbook I’ve had for years (I can’t even find it on Amazon). This soup is one of my favorites, mostly because it’s super easy and really tasty. The recipe is a cinch: Saute one chopped onion, one sliced carrot, two sliced celery stalks, and two cups of sliced white mushrooms in a dutch oven in some butter, until they are crisp tender. Add 6 cups of broth (I usually use chicken, but this time I had turkey) and bring to a boil. Add 1/3 a cup of orzo pasta, some cooked turkey (usually I cook up a breast on the Foreman, but this time I had the leftovers from Thanksgiving!), a tablespoon each of fresh thyme and fresh parsley and cook for five minutes, or until the orzo is soft. Salt and pepper to taste. One of my go-to dishes in the winter! Rating: ten out of ten orzos!
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Training Update: Training? HA! I ran two 5ks and went to karate once. Other than that, I’ll I’ve done for a week is eat, eat, eat. I am so unmotivated — the cold weather, frost, wind, and piles of holiday food make me want to just curl up and hibernate until March. It’s not looking like this week is going to be much better…
