Thanksgiving Day
25-Nov-05
My brother and his SO were two hours late– they accidentally drove to Monterey. *sigh* They arrived just as the turkey finished cooking, and they were both obviously coming off of an argument in the car. That was unfortunate. Their friends also cancelled on them at the last minute, and Bob was upset about that as well.
Dinner was excellent. I had to buy the bread, because I screwed up the sourdough– big deal. I bought the dessert. Everything else was homecooked from scratch.
Green bean casserole, not canned. Next time: Cut the green beans in half lengthwise as well as chopped– apparently they need to be “French cut” (julienne). And Bob insists that the canned onions on top would have been better than the ones I used. *eyeroll*
Gravy: Don’t add red wine. My recipe called for a cup of red wine added to the juice, then reduced, but that made a gravy better suited to beef or pork. My win for the gravy: 0 lumps. I thought it was excellent, but agree that it wasn’t exactly what they expected from gravy at Thanksgiving.
Mashed potatoes: next time, don’t forget to take them out of the fridge and put them in the oven with everything else that’s reheating.
Turkey: The giblets, it turns out, are in the ass. If you leave the bag of giblets in the turkey while it cooks, you will end up with cooked giblets in a paper bag. This might mean the bag has caused bacteria to flower. However, since none of the surrounding meat or stuffing were eaten, I’m not going to spazz about it.
Giblets: Alladin will eat turkey meat, but not turkey giblets. Weird cat.
Stuffing: The challah stuffing was excellent– just the right amount of sweet!
Cranberries: No cranberries. Bob and Casey were going to bring them, but because they were so late arriving, they didn’t get made. I didn’t realize I would miss cranberries until we didn’t have them.
Candied root vegetables: I took a bunch of autum vegetables, radishes, carrots, acorn squash, etc., and poured brown sugar/butter sauce over them then baked them for about an hour. They were sweet and awesome.
Appetizers: John put out an appetizer spread that would make a Superbowl party proud. The fact we had no guests to nosh on the feast was…. sad, really. I did my best, but I was cooking, after all. He also arranged the entertainment, and we watched a couple of documentaries and, after Bob and Casey arrived, a couple of movies as well. He was very helpful all day, and really kept things moving.
We had four people, when we expected 6-8. I have SO MUCH FOOD leftover. If you’re local and were contemplating coming to the potluck but hadn’t decided, PLEASE COME! EAT! YUM! Seriously, I don’t know how we’re going to get rid of all this food otherwise.