We had 25 for Black Friday Thanksgiving – it was pretty astonishing. I made the turkey and the stuffing, and garlic mashed potatoes (Megan and Max peeled, I just mashed), and gravy, and corn pudding – which was a really good batch this year. Instead of my chipotle lime brulee’d sweet potatoes, I made a big pan of roasted vegetables with reduced cider, parsnips, rutabaga, carrots, sweet potatoes, that stuck terribly, but people said they liked it. We had a few appetizer-y things, pickled carrots – they were good this year, too – and chex mix of course, but also cheese and crackers, and leek confit, and beet caviar, and seedy bread. Jane brought risotto, Susan brought greens from her garden, and Deena brought some spicy sweet potatoes, to make up for the ones I didn’t make. We had too much pie, if that’s possible – I made 4, 2 pumpkin and 2 apple, and 2 more pumpkin were brought as well. What people really ate was the trifle – when I was rooting through the freezer for old bread for stuffing, I found some gingerbread, and made that into trifle with pumpkin butter, lemon curd, vanilla pudding with an orange peel steeped in it, and lots of whipped cream. There was more of everyone else’s pie leftover than mine, so I suppose that’s something.
And a couple of people said, really of everything, the turkey meat was delicious – thank you Matt.
Hannah and Al loaded the dishwasher, and Ann stuck around and washed pots and pans.
I woke up when John & Megan came in around 3:00AM, which was good since I ran the oven cleaner – I’d forgotten before I went to bed.
On Saturday, I had big visions of doing a lot of baking, but somehow, with moving furniture back into its normal spots, and errands, and making turkey and vegetable broth, and and and … we went to an early show of the Hunger Games – Mockingjay 1, came home and ate turkey sandwiches, and I only made the baby fruitcakes. Two sizes, because of course I bought the wrong size of bon bon cups – to my credit, the only right-size ones were hot pink, and the slightly bigger ones – we’re talking 1-inch vs. 1 1/4-inch here – were much more Christmas-y, holiday colors, red green, gold. No pictures of the fruitcakes – maybe on platters at the party.
The kids all went off to watch the Badger game. John and Megan came back around 10:30, when I was officially wimping out on cookies, and actually doing a little work on my online courses. As usual, there was way too much turkey broth, so I strained it an boiled it down – 2 pots boiling furiously on the stove while I was shut up in the sun room with my courses & the baby fruitcakes with their glaze setting. Everything was all steamy when I came out, and something like 10 quarts of broth was reduced to 2. Oh, and I think I made the dough for the ginger creams, too.
On Sunday I got up and went for a walk. I made cinnamon chip scones to use up the leftover whipped cream. They came out puffy and good. I made fried potatoes, and scrambled eggs with cottage cheese and Parmesan in them, and a whole pound of bacon. Al grabbed a few strips of bacon, and a few of the crispiest potatoes right out of the pan, and left for Chicago before sitting down to eat with us, but John and Megan and Mark and I ate about 11:00, and John got back in time for the Packer game, too.
The plus side of having people around is that I washed all the sheets, and towels and bath mats – since I usually sleep upstairs with Mark, mostly only the cats were sleeping in my bed, so it was getting pretty cat-hairy and making me feel like a bad housewife, plus it still had summer blankets.
I did the Moravian Ginger Thins first, and they’re just not quite right this year. Too thick, and the edges aren’t sharp. Hmm. Then I baked the ginger creams, so they could cool to be frosted. And made linzer thumbprints – which were an absolute disaster last year, and quite nice this year. Don’t know why it took me so long to learn to use my own linzer dough recipe. Although I suffered terrible indecisiveness when packing them on Monday morning – to layer with wax paper or no. The voice in my head that usually knows best was saying the cookies would stick less to each other than the paper, but the inner eye was seeing crumbs from the cookies above marring the shiny pools of jam on the cookies below – and the eye won. We’ll see who was right when I unpack the carton in 10 days or so.
I made the almond cookies with chocolate stars glued on top – this recipe always makes an unbelievable amount – according to the recipe I should have had about 144 cookies and I had more like 244. But I like it when the cookie is not too much bigger than the chocolate.
I made the frosting for the ginger creams with just butter and lemon juice and zest and powdered sugar, but it didn’t seem like enough, so I threw in what was left of the glaze from the baby fruit cakes – powdered sugar, sherry and bourbon, and another glaze leftover from the Pfeffernusse – powdered sugar, butter, and cream – and somehow all three things melded to make a really tasty frosting. I put it on thick.
I stayed up until 12:30 frosting and cleaning up after myself. Today, Monday, is springerle and the plan was to make all the doughs for the slice & bakes – pistachio cranberry, windmill, chocolate world peace, and crystallized ginger – but I only did the ginger. Pics later.
