Thanksgiving '09 Rundown

Spencer looking like a homicidal elf.

Fay's not vomiting (fingers crossed), the laundry is in the washing machine, Pete's gone up to Vermont, there are still some Thanksgiving left overs in the fridge. Things are winding down. Probably. So I have a little time to list the things I/we made for Thanksgiving.

In the photo above you can see the turkey breast and stuffing, the brussels sprouts (chopped and pan fried in butter and garlic), the maple-tangerine cranberry sauce and cauliflower with brown butter, pears, sage and nuts (almonds and pecans). Not yet at the table are the sweet potatoes (just roasted and mashed with butter), the pan-fried crushed potatoes, the gravy, Pete, Lisa and I.

The turkey was brined then had ginger herb butter stuffed under its skin and was roasted. The recipe called for juniper berries which I couldn't find so I just left them out. It was fine. The stuffing contained cranberries, nuts and oyster mushrooms. It (and any other of the above courses which contained nuts) was supposed to have hazelnuts in it but I didn't want to spend all day shelling them so I substituted a mixture of toasted almonds and pecans. Also fine.

I bought a pecan pie and a pumpkin pie.

The only preparation I did ahead was brine the turkey (which I highly recommend) make the herb butter and stuff the butter under the turkey skin. Everything else was done on the day. It was a full day of cooking but at a leisurely pace. The only snafu was that the turkey finished maybe half an hour before we thought it would.

Except for the brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes which we wung (wow, that looks funny written out) and crushed potatoes (Martha Stewart) all the recipes were from the 2008 November issue of Fine Cooking magazine.

Thinking about it all is making me hungry. Since there were only four of us I halved the amounts in the recipes. Now I kinda wish I had more left overs. Oh well. Maybe I'll remember that for next year.