This year we had our Thanksgiving on Black Friday instead of Thursday. It was a little weird; feeling out of sync with the rest of the world – I went for a walk on Friday while the bird was in the oven – as I often do on the Thursday – and I knew that all the other people I was seeing were out shopping or doing other holiday weekend stuff, but not waiting for turkey like I was. But otherwise it worked great. We had a relaxing Thursday, puttering. I made Primanti Bros. sandwiches for dinner, because it was the most UN-Thanksgiving like thing I could think of – and I checked with John, and the Steelers weren’t playing on Thursday, so no danger of rending the fabric of the universe. I made the apple slab pie, and pumpkin mousse, on Thursday, then I got up on Friday and made the turkey cookies and stuffing and got the beast into the oven, just like other Thanksgivingses.
We had 17 at the table – here’s the annotated menu, before I forget –
For apps, there was of course the traditional chex mix. Lea texted me on Weds. for the menu, so I know they were eating it, too, at the goat farm in Southern Oregon where she & Chad & their daughter Liz all live now, and where my bro & family went for Thanksgiving. And pickled carrots. And leftovers from last week’s dinner for the Hospice workers – onion dip, veggies and wheat thins, augmented with a nice little piece of Willi’s Gouda, and Brie and crackers that Susan brought. But I only used the carrots to go with the dip; the beauty heart radishes were too dried out and went into the compost, and the broccoli had to be added to the cooked broccoli, see below –
The turkey of course, a slightly over 17-pounder from Matt Smith
Chestnut & bread stuffing – a ton, per Al’s request, but I didn’t make extra of the sausage kind, I just heated up the small pie dish full from last year that had been frozen since then (which means I have the makings of a breakfast sausage strata – bread cubes, green peppers, celery and Willow Creek sausage – for Chris & DB’s going away brunch next Saturday)
I put Mark in charge of the mashed potatoes, and we used most of the white taters I got from Tipi, along with some small purple ones – I was hoping for lavender-colored mashed potatoes – they were a little grey, instead, but tasted wonderfully of potato, garlic, butter and cream.
Chipotle-lime sweet potatoes, but I topped them with meringue this year instead of brulé
Corn pudding – kind of the best veggie dish, in my opinion, sweet crunchy corn and not too much custard – I used whole milk and slipped in the extra yolks from the sweet potato meringue
Roasted Beets with Walnuts & Blue Cheese, marinated in the lemon vinaigrette leftover from the Mark Bittman pear-fennel salad of last week
Broccoli with garlic butter and cashews – we picked what we thought was the nicest broccoli at the 1st indoor market, but when I cut it up, there were lots of heads that were black inside – I think it had been frosted too much (a little makes the broccoli sweet) so I threw in the couple of handfuls of dip broccoli left from the 16th – and good thing, too – there are only a tiny bit left. The broccoli gets the prize for being the most-consumed dish at Thanksgiving dinner.
Pumpkin mousse that didn’t set quite right – I think it’s because I didn’t whip the egg whites stiff enough. I got a little yolk in while separating that I scooped out with a shell, and was feeling smug for getting the whites to whip as well as they did, disregarding the scare talk of most recipes, that say any amount of yolk will doom your whites. They seemed meringue-y, but they didn’t give the mousse its proper bubbly consistency.
Turkey cookies – I could really taste the honey & molasses in this year’s batch. I made the last bit that couldn’t be rolled out anymore into little gingersnaps with sugar crusts.
Apple slab pie – a real hit, and looked more like a pie after cutting – the shots of it whole look a lot like focaccia
