Thanksgiving! part two

Since I had done a bunch of preparation the day before, on the actual feast day, the main thing on the agenda was the turkey! And before I get into it let me tell you that I deserve a kick in the shins for FORGETTING to take a picture of it when it was whole and roasted and golden brown and delicious. Blergh.
Anyways, I don't like putting bread stuffing inside my bird, so I stuff the cavity with aromatics and veggies. I used carrots, onions, celery, lemons and some herbs. For the outside, I melted some butter, added a little olive oil, and just sage and thyme. I poured that all over the bird and stuck it in the oven. Oh, I also put most of a box of broth in the roasting pan, along with the rest of the veggies I cut up that didn't fit in the cavity. I basted it towards the end of cooking, but then came my ultimate Thanksgiving worry... was this thing cooked? I was getting wildly different temperature readings on either side of the bird. I decided to cook a little more but then decided that the average of all my measurements was a little more on the cooked side of where I wanted to be, so I took it out of the oven. When carving time came (luckily I was doing this by myself in the kitchen away from everybody!) it wasn't cooked through!! Eek! But I had a brilliant idea to carve the entire thing, shove it on a roasting sheet in a crazy hot oven, and it cooked it the rest of the way quicker than anybody even noticed! Phew.

Meanwhile, I needed to finish the rest of the dinner. Luckily for me the stuffing and mushroom and lentil pot pies cooked at the same oven temp, so that made it a lot easier. The morning of the feast, I had gotten the stuffing prepared. I used a mushroom and toasted walnut recipe I got from a Martha magazine, and it was fantastic! I will never use another recipe again. I have been trying for years to replace my family's recipe because I don't think it is very good, and this is the winner! To finish the pot pies, all I needed to do was to make the dough for the crust and put some cheese over the top. Simple.
The last things I took care of were the veggies. I had to make mashed potatoes, duh, and I decided to make green beans with a lemon cream sauce (mentioned here).

That is it! Dinner was done. Oh wait, also gravy. I made gravy using the drippings and broth from the turkey, along with wine and potato starch. It turned out really well.
Everybody ate 2 or 3 helpings, so I feel like my feast was a success! I am glad that amount of work is only once a year though. And I am glad that I have enough leftovers to last for a while :)

Thanksgiving! part one

MMMMMMMM. Thanksgiving is my favorite. This year, I attended 2 Thanksgivings, but only one of them required me to cook for two days. I decided that I didn't want to freak out and rush on the day of the feast, so I made what I could ahead of time. I got preparations for the stuffing done, all this included was toasting some walnuts and cutting up a loaf of bread so that it could dry overnight.

Next, I made the cranberry sauce. I never really liked cranberry sauce too much, until I tried this recipe a few years back. You simmer the cranberries for a half hour in sugar, water and oj, with some orange and lemon zest. Since I made it a day ahead, it set up really nicely by the time dinner rolled around.

Third, I made the dough for the crust of an apple pie. I ended up finding out that one of my guests was planning on bringing 2 desserts already, so I wound up making this pie later in the week. Still have half of it in my fridge, but it is killer. There are 3 lbs of apples in this sucker! And the top "crust" is actually an oat streusal. Yum!

Last, I made the filling for the vegetarian part of the feast, mushroom and lentil pot pies. There is a vegetarian in my midst and I feel bad when he always just gets stuck eating side dishes everywhere he goes. All that is in it is lentils, mushrooms (fresh and dried), carrot, potato, broth, and spices.

I spent a long time cooking, and this was just the preparation for the official day! Continue on to part two for the rest...

Its that time of year again....

Salad time! Well, I eat salad almost every day, but now its time for the unhealthy, wonderfully delicious kind. The kind that I only let myself make a few times a year, preferably when I have a number of people fighting me for some, because otherwise I will eat the entire thing on my own. My family-famous 7 layer salad. I have turned on a few of my friends to it as well, but its a holiday staple for my family. I've fully explained the makeup here before.
For Thanksgiving #1 this year, the one I didn't have to cook for, my only assignment was to bring the salad. As my aunt put it, "nobody makes it as well as you". And by you, she meant me. Duh. I have tried to make it slightly better for everybody, by using organic lettuce mix, uncured bacon, and mayo that is made with olive oil, but there is not really any getting around the fact that this is a total treat. I was only able to escape with about 2 bowls worth of leftovers. They may be gone already at the time of me writing this. Exactly 24 hours after the actual meal. I won't be making the salad for Thanksgiving #2, the one I do cook for, but I think it will make another appearance at Christmas time, before going away again until the next holiday season.

Turkey

As I mentioned in the last post, I was not in charge of cooking Thanksgiving this year. However, through a happy coincidence, I was given an uncooked turkey for free! Yay! It was mostly thawed by the time I got it, and I wouldn't have had any time to cook it for at least 4 more days. My solution was to butcher it up and freeze it in pieces. I do this often with chicken, just because whole chickens are cheaper. Surprisingly, it was even easier to de-bone the turkey. I think I have already gotten 4 or 5 meals out of it, and still have the drumsticks left. I want to wait until a warmish day so I can pop them on the grill. Grilled turkey drums are the best!

The Salad

Thanksgiving is my favorite meal of the year. It is basically perfect. All of my favorite things, all in one belt-loosening meal. I wanted to cook it this year, last year I even cooked it twice! But, alas, there is a baby in my house this time. And my husband and I can't usually manage to get a regular dinner on the table before 8:00 at night. So we went to my mom's house instead. And I just had to bring two things: mashed potatoes and The Salad. 7 layer salad, to be exact. It is like the equivalent to crack in my family.

I learned how to make it from my mom, but I am not sure where she got it from. I can remember my grandma making it as well, but I think she learned it from my mom too. It wasn't one of those things that was passed down, like say, the family lasagne recipe. It's gotten easier over the years, because you can cheat with things like pre-packaged salad mixes, but overall, its the same old thing.

The 7 layers are: 3 kinds of lettuce, onion, swiss cheese, peas and bacon. The dressing is just mayo (real mayo! I accidentally used miracle whip once and it was a disaster) mixed with a tiny sprinkle of sugar, salt and pepper. You make it in sets of layers in the biggest bowl you can find. And then you let it sit in the fridge for at least a few hours, so everything gets kind of wilty. Writing it down this way makes it seem sort of disgusting, but believe me, my mouth is totally watering just thinking about it!