Planning for Thanksgiving 2012 felt almost as chaotic as the events that preceded it - between my 10 day long trip abroad for work to dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, I started panicking 2 weeks before because I didn't even start my menu yet. My sister was kind enough (yea, I said it, you were kind, now you can get over yourself) to offer to send out the invite emails herself, and she quoted Hunger Games in the invite, which I decided later to theme our Thanksgiving.
**I am also going to use all this chaos as an excuse for why I haven't posted in 2 months =X Apparently my mother even reads my blog and has been complaining that there are no new posts! I guess momma really is my biggest fan, haha.
There was supposed to be a
game I found to play while watching the movie, but we didn't end up doing that so people just wondered why I had Hunger Game quotes plastered everywhere around the house.
As per tradition, preparation begins the night before. Something new that I was able to do this year was take a day off the week before, after I had compiled my menu and excel spreadsheets of when dishes were scheduled to be made and a comprehensive list of all the ingredients needed and what dishes they were used in (I am well aware that there is something seriously wrong with me).
I was lucky enough to get out of work early and was ready to go by 4:30 on Wednesday. I even got home before
Miss Teacher! I was determined this year to have all the prep work done and everything ready before I actually begin putting a dish together the way they do on the Food Network. I wanted everything to be chopped and measured ahead of time. Due to this, my cousin helper was a bit disappointed when he got home and wanted to help, because all the boring stuff was being done that night. He missed the chaos and actual dishes coming together the next day to see the parade.
Here is this year's menu with links to the recipes:
The night began with the easiest thing that could be prepared and completely finished ahead of time: CRANBERRY SAUCE! I made it this Riesling, which is great, because what I don't use, I get to drink =)
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| Cranberry Sauce |
Every year, I'm not sure why I haven't learned to accommodate for it by now, but I always forget that as some point, life goes on, and people still expect normal meals in the middle of all of my Thanksgiving madness. Somehow, we had a turkey leg and oxtail sitting around (I do believe our fridge is of the magical variety), and I had planned ahead of time to use the rest of the barley and beans mix that I had bought at Trader Joe's to make the soup that was on the package. From all of this, soup night was born. But silly me, after I threw all the barley/beans in the pot, I threw out the bag...so I had to make up the rest of the recipe. Whoops! I did however, get a rare compliment from my dad when I forced him to try the soup which was that it was of "restaurant quality!" He did not specify what sort of restaurant...but no matter, I'll take it where I can get it!
Then I decided I wanted to try my hand at oxtail soup for the first time. Pressure Cookers are my new best friend. In addition to a creme brulee torch set, I want to add a pressure cooker and a crock pot to my future kitchen wish list. Just saying..
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| From Top Left Clockwise: Turkey Leg; Sous Chef hurt herself (first of many times to come); Barley/Bean Soup; Turkey Leg & Veggies; Chopped Veggies; Sous Chef actually working |
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| From Top Left Clockwise: Oxtail; Oxtail soup ingredients in the pressure cooker; Barley/Bean Soup |
I actually almost didn't even make it through the whole night. I was so exhausted from the week that I took a break around 8 and watched AGT for about 2 hours. My sous chef completely conked out at that point, as usual. At least this year I had more helpers at my disposal, so my cousin took her place before my mom tagged in to help me with the turkeys.
Speaking of turkeys, I was only expecting one this year, so I was only planning on using the apple cider and citrus brine. This wasn't communicated very well to my mother, so she found something else that used cider and herb butter. Slightly thrown off by that, but it worked out. I was more thrown off by the fact that we ended up with two turkeys. I didn't want to make two birds for dinner again this year because I felt that it was just too much food - plus I didn't know what I wanted to do with the second bird. Then I thought of something that a coworker told me about once - cooking with beer, especially with poultry, kind of sucks out the fat but keeps the moisture in. Fact? Don't know, but I decided to give it a try and so the second bird was soaked in Budweiser for about 48 hours. I got real close to the first bird when it came time to butter it with sage and rosemary butter. Not gonna lie, things got a little weird...just kidding. But not really. You really have to get the butter under its skin. And melted butter is really messy. The things I do for amazing food...
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| Various Stages of Turkey prep and final products |
I realize now that I've gone out of chronological order, and have already skipped to the main event, but let's get back on track to Thursday morning, which started off, again, as per tradition, with the Sous Chef that has gotten so much sleep from the night before, running around the house around 7 in the morning after I had gone to bed at 2, raring to go. I refused however, to get out of bed until 8.
Here's what followed in picture form:
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| From Top Left Clockwise: Excel Spreadsheets; Studying the recipes assigned to her; Her planning includes putting her recipes in the corresponding dishware; crowded oven; our food was made with dance; balancing; cleaning up one of many messes; Woodchuck Cider makes cooking/dancing more fun; results of food shopping |
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| Orange Cranberry Pecan Roll-ups |
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| Acorn Squash with Wild Rice Stuffing - they also make for very large ears. Shout out to Isgro for the idea |
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| Bacon Cornbread |
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| Mushroom Barley Pie |
**A note about the mushroom barley pie - in Smitten Kitchen's recipe, she added that the recipe could use a bit of a kick, since mushrooms and barley tend to have more mild tastes. So I tweaked it a little bit by adding some Israeli couscous with the barley and beans mix instead of just having pearl barley, used some sesame oil for kicks and I added my go to for taste - red chili pepper flakes! Still needs a little bit of something else, but not sure what it is...
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| Papardelle w/ Pumpkin Poblano Sauce |
**The papardelle was one of the two dishes that I was most excited to try. The other was the upside down chocolate pear cake that I've been meaning to try for the past few years. First of all, it is impossible to find the papardelle - um, Barilla, can you please get on that?! But I did find a lemon pepper papardelle from Trader Joe's, which went pretty well with the Pumpkin Poblano sauce. I should have put a warning on the dish though, because the poblano peppers really gave it a nice kick. Sadly I did not get a photo of the final product, but the taste will forever stay in my memory!
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| Fruit Galettes |
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| Upside Down Chocolate Pear Cake Prep from Top Left Clockwise: Cousin at work chopping chocolate; Pears; Caramelizing Sugar (x2); Pear Layout on sugar glaze; Mixing Cake Batter; Cake Dry Ingredients; Melting Chocolate; Pouring out the sugar caramel into the spring pan |
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| Upside Down Chocolate Pear Cake |
**Let me just say about the cake, which was all I could have hoped for and maybe even more, that 1) next time I make it, I want to add chili powder to the chocolate because I love spicy chocolate and 2) the Spring Form pan helps to make it easier to flip upside down, but needs to have a foil lined tray underneath while baking because the sugar will melt and seep out and start burning at the bottom of your oven.
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| Pie Crust Repair for the Pumpkin Pies |
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| Someone brought flowers! |
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| From Top Left Clockwise: Sous Chef and the amazing Butter Garlic Biscuits that someone brought; all the "kids"; Round 1 food; "Seafood" Turkey; Digging in; Green Bean Casserole; Creamed Onions |
Leftover Friday began with Dunkin Donuts quality breakfast sandwiches and some oxtail soup. I say that they were Dunkin quality because when the last cousin woke up after everyone had eaten, he was handed one of the bagels with bacon, egg and cheese, and asked if it was from D&D, haha. I also had a Thanksgiving Leftover dinner get together later that night (can you tell this is my favorite holiday? I just never want it to end!). That was when I cooked the beer bird, which came out awesome, if I may say so myself.
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| From Top Left Clockwise: Leftover Dinner; Turkey; Bacon; Breakfast Bagel; Oxtail Soup; Model Emily; Hairdresser Jake & Alex; Silly Kristalynn |
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| Turkey Wreath Pre-baking using leftover turkey, cranberry sauce, celery & crescent rolls for a Housewarming party Saturday night |
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| All the little elves, aka cousins at work helping Angela put up the Christmas decorations on Saturday (as per tradition!...one would think we are living Fiddler on the Roof) |
Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and a most Happy Holiday Season!
