Upon alighting from my coma...
This is the 1st chance I have had all weekend to sit down and bloggify. Sorry about that.
Thanksgiving was a madhouse. [Pretend I have put the pictures here, but the camera AND the wire thingy are still in the garage...]
I began the cookery process bright and early on Wednesday evening. I took the turkeys out of the brine, patted them dry and put them in their roasting pans inside coolers full of ice. (Sitting atop the ice...this helps the skin become supremely crisp)
I hacked up roast chicken carcasses I had been saving in the freezer and made stock.
I made cranberry sauce from scratch, with fresh cranberries, orange juice and apple juice with just a teeny spritz of lemon for brightness.
I made the cornbread for eating and for the stuffing. OK, technically dressing.
I made sure all my mise en place was actually en place. At midnightish I went to bed.
Bright and early (I think by 8am) I was already axle-deep in the soup and pecan-maple pie, followed by the turkey buttering. People had been advised to arrive at 4ish so as to dine at 5:30ish. Iberics (75% of the attendees here) being what they are, began to arrive around 6ish. My BiL's wife had set out an impressive array of nibbles...a zillion weird cheeses (including some illegal unpasteurized, brie-like ones) from Spain, codfish fritters, Serrano ham (technically no longer illegal), teeny chorizo sausages and roasted pepper strips. This is, I s'pose, to honor the brave settlers to first arrive in these shores...in 1565 at St. Augustine. My BiL's wife (and sister and mother) was having a rough time since last year her dad died the week before Thanksgiving and her grandfather the day after. So I made sure to keep them busy.
We had a Poppy-like oven thing going on. The top oven, which held #1 turkey was going just fine. But oven #2 was a furnace. When set at "Warm" (i.e., under 200F) the thermometer I had placed inside read 350F. So the 2nd turkey would come up to temperature--and exceed it--at a Hell for leather pace. I had to shut off the oven and restart it (on "warm") every 15 minutes, which got old, fast. Still the turkeys ROCKED. One caveat for you who get the free-range, rganic, heritage breed, yadda, yadda, yadda turkeys: The dark meat is actually dark, which is a bit offputting for some people. Just saying. Then the turkeys emerge amid a great big waft of buttery-roasty-herby scent and I set them aside to rest whilst the gravy comes together.
Gravy is no problem, but it's all last minute work. Deglaze the two roasting pans with turkey stock*. Simmer down to a thin glaze, whiz smooth in blender with all the caramelized onion and garlic bits. Tres yum.
Dinner went fine, once the kids could be coaxed off all the playground equipment. People had thirds of turkey and stuffing and the maple-pecan supply dwindled into only one half-pie in no time. Besides all the foodstuff I made, there were trays of mashed potatoes, some cheese/broccoli thing that was OK, a sweet potato casserole that would have been a hit on pie crust, and a salad that had the misfortune of having baby spinach, chickpeas AND tangerine segments.
My niece V. and her cousin F. led the assembly in Grace, and it was kinda cute. It was also kinda 7pm. I hadn't had breakfast OR lunch, so I was positively hollow and I probably was having some bloodsugar delirium thing going on, too.
I got to bed sometime around midnight. How tired were we? So tired Numbah Two Son woke up at 8am. Mind you, he normally wakes up at 5am so that's "whoa" impressive. By the time we were alive, TFBIM was at the mall and wouldn't return until 4pm. So we just hung out and watched Madagascar and the 1st three Harry Potter DVDs. I made a KILLER shepherd's pie wannabe with leftover turkey and stuffing for lunch.
Saturday was a much better day for hitting the mall. NOS had an outing to the something-something Village (which is like Colonial Williamsburg, only it shows how the Spanish settlers in FL lived) and TFBIM went off with my MiL. I took NTS and we shopped a bit (managed to get gifts for both my BiLs and my dad and Poppy's which was in the 75% Off bin with a "take an extra 10% off all ___ brand merchandise" thing going on). Then we hit the Hallmark store where we buy the little ornaments that grace the boys' tree. Then, because we'd be bored at home, we went to see Chicken Little in 2-D. Then we came home.
I was fast asleep by 7:30pm.
-J.
* How nuts am I? I save the carcasses and make stock to freeze for next year.
Thanksgiving was a madhouse. [Pretend I have put the pictures here, but the camera AND the wire thingy are still in the garage...]
I began the cookery process bright and early on Wednesday evening. I took the turkeys out of the brine, patted them dry and put them in their roasting pans inside coolers full of ice. (Sitting atop the ice...this helps the skin become supremely crisp)
I hacked up roast chicken carcasses I had been saving in the freezer and made stock.
I made cranberry sauce from scratch, with fresh cranberries, orange juice and apple juice with just a teeny spritz of lemon for brightness.
I made the cornbread for eating and for the stuffing. OK, technically dressing.
I made sure all my mise en place was actually en place. At midnightish I went to bed.
Bright and early (I think by 8am) I was already axle-deep in the soup and pecan-maple pie, followed by the turkey buttering. People had been advised to arrive at 4ish so as to dine at 5:30ish. Iberics (75% of the attendees here) being what they are, began to arrive around 6ish. My BiL's wife had set out an impressive array of nibbles...a zillion weird cheeses (including some illegal unpasteurized, brie-like ones) from Spain, codfish fritters, Serrano ham (technically no longer illegal), teeny chorizo sausages and roasted pepper strips. This is, I s'pose, to honor the brave settlers to first arrive in these shores...in 1565 at St. Augustine. My BiL's wife (and sister and mother) was having a rough time since last year her dad died the week before Thanksgiving and her grandfather the day after. So I made sure to keep them busy.
We had a Poppy-like oven thing going on. The top oven, which held #1 turkey was going just fine. But oven #2 was a furnace. When set at "Warm" (i.e., under 200F) the thermometer I had placed inside read 350F. So the 2nd turkey would come up to temperature--and exceed it--at a Hell for leather pace. I had to shut off the oven and restart it (on "warm") every 15 minutes, which got old, fast. Still the turkeys ROCKED. One caveat for you who get the free-range, rganic, heritage breed, yadda, yadda, yadda turkeys: The dark meat is actually dark, which is a bit offputting for some people. Just saying. Then the turkeys emerge amid a great big waft of buttery-roasty-herby scent and I set them aside to rest whilst the gravy comes together.
Gravy is no problem, but it's all last minute work. Deglaze the two roasting pans with turkey stock*. Simmer down to a thin glaze, whiz smooth in blender with all the caramelized onion and garlic bits. Tres yum.
Dinner went fine, once the kids could be coaxed off all the playground equipment. People had thirds of turkey and stuffing and the maple-pecan supply dwindled into only one half-pie in no time. Besides all the foodstuff I made, there were trays of mashed potatoes, some cheese/broccoli thing that was OK, a sweet potato casserole that would have been a hit on pie crust, and a salad that had the misfortune of having baby spinach, chickpeas AND tangerine segments.
My niece V. and her cousin F. led the assembly in Grace, and it was kinda cute. It was also kinda 7pm. I hadn't had breakfast OR lunch, so I was positively hollow and I probably was having some bloodsugar delirium thing going on, too.
I got to bed sometime around midnight. How tired were we? So tired Numbah Two Son woke up at 8am. Mind you, he normally wakes up at 5am so that's "whoa" impressive. By the time we were alive, TFBIM was at the mall and wouldn't return until 4pm. So we just hung out and watched Madagascar and the 1st three Harry Potter DVDs. I made a KILLER shepherd's pie wannabe with leftover turkey and stuffing for lunch.
Saturday was a much better day for hitting the mall. NOS had an outing to the something-something Village (which is like Colonial Williamsburg, only it shows how the Spanish settlers in FL lived) and TFBIM went off with my MiL. I took NTS and we shopped a bit (managed to get gifts for both my BiLs and my dad and Poppy's which was in the 75% Off bin with a "take an extra 10% off all ___ brand merchandise" thing going on). Then we hit the Hallmark store where we buy the little ornaments that grace the boys' tree. Then, because we'd be bored at home, we went to see Chicken Little in 2-D. Then we came home.
I was fast asleep by 7:30pm.
-J.
* How nuts am I? I save the carcasses and make stock to freeze for next year.
Comments
Bravo!
You are fedexing me a sammich, right?
2. I did everything wrong with my turkey. I used a covered enamel roasting pan, and then discovered that I wasn't supposed to. But Robo-Oven was going mental. When I "checked" the bird two hours into its cooking time, it was golden brown and at 180 degrees.
3. Don't brag about how cheap my Christmas present was, because I found one of yours in the basement of the house in New Hampshire. So I totally win this contest.
--P.
See, the thing is, now you both have tons of mooolahh to spend on ME.
-J.
trxreyl: try Christmas--regale yule logs!
Joke, I found you the perfect Xmas present. As I mentioned on the blog. I was so proud of myself. Almost as if I'd actually bought it and sent it to you. I will have to post a virtual gift list for all my blog friends.
hey now, SL, thorn birds is pure fluff. I never said it was great literature. just ditch it if you don't like it.
gzlpe: gazing lazily at pieces of ember...
gtqob: got to query obi!