Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Again, the pumpkin cheesecake!

This year we are having 18 for dinner.My daughter and I do nearly all of it. She always brings mashed potatoes, cornbread dressing (yuck!), a pumpkin cheesecake, her Sexy Salad ( greens with sexy stuff in it), my dad's green beans (with shallots and bacon - coming from our garden this year), and chile con queso. I do the rest, usually, although this year Jose Luis and Carmen are bringing smoked brisket and tamales. (They recently inherited my cast-iron smoker which Jose-Luis can make sing arias.) I will be making a sweet potato pie, a few apple pies (the youngest child and his beloved are bringing New England apples they picked last week with his roomates), at least 3 pecan pies, and a carrot cake for dessert. If I can squeeze it in, I want to also make a 3 layer chocoalte cake for me. The sides I make are cranberry-ginger sauce (the cranberries are also being brought directly from the bog in MA), 8 dozen homemade rolls, a relish tray with homemade pickled green beans and pickled okra, and tiny gherkins and our friend Richard Moon will augment it with different olives and throw some sweet pickles, baby carrots and left-over celery from the dressing on the plate. I might make some hummus for that.

I have a 25.7 lb turkey in the freezer and a 10lb ham in the fridge. We should be in good shape. I've been saving plastic send-home containers for a few months so everyone can bring stuff for sandwiches the next day.

My mouth is watering for Friday's breakfast which will be turkey (breast meat only, please), mayo, cranberry sauce and dressing on sourdough sandwiches.

Mashed Potatoes, Finally Revealed, or what I call "Pain-in-the-ass Potatoes".

One Thanksgiving I did a real South Texas meal - turkey with mole, roasted veggies - sweet and white potatoes, onions (peeled), bell and poblano peppers, sprinkled with toasted pecans at the end, a corn pudding with jalapenos, and a salad loaded with cotilla cheese and pomegranate seeds. All our guests loved it, but the kids moaned and groaned all the following year; so needless to say, that was never repeated - even though they are native Texans.

Honestly, it's gotta be meatloaf - the kind with lots of bell pepper and onion ground with the meat.

Uh, Serious Eats. Newsy, recipe-y, and a bit controversial. Like NYT of Food.

Mt first cookbook was Gourmet's Old Vienna Cookbook, which Istill use frequently.

The first time I visited my baby at Hvard and stayed in his house, he and his friends took me to "Nocch's", really just a few steps from his house. We ordered an artichoke pizza, a whole one, and 4 of his roomies and I ate the whole damn pan of pizza.

A Pakistani exchange student introduced us to Peshawari -style curries cooked in a karahi. The curries worked their magic in South Texas and made us sweat, which helped cool us off.

Oreo cheesecake is my biggest success with my guests, but my personal best success was mastering puff pastry. Put I can't make strudel pastry from scratch. I tear the crap out of it when I try. Sigh.

Simon, can you post a recipe here? Both for the candied rose petals and the ice cream?

Beef stock. I make pretty good beef stock, but never attempted to can it. I have canned home-smoked salmon in the past, so I guess I really could can stock. It would leave a lot of room in my freezer for other good stuff as well...