Kevin's Watch

Me too! Wouldn't be Thanksgiving without it!

The turkey has been pulled from the freezer and placed in to the refrigerator to begin the run towards the holidays. I am pulling recipes and compiling lists of ingredients for a shopping trip tomorrow. Father-of-Love has retired, and is coming this year, so it is full steam ahead!

Thanksgiving 2009 Menu

Appetizers

Black Diamond brand aged 4+ years Reserve White Cheddar
(I can only find this at Sam's Club. It's not even listed as a product on the Black Diamond web site)
green and red seedless grapes
sliced apples
Hebrew National salami (for Beorn)
various crackers

Soup

Curried Butternut Squash and Apple Soup
(recipe in the crockpot post I just put up yesterday)

Salad

Spring greens with craisins, chopped pecans (I got some fresh locally grown ones via our Freecycle group), diced jarred mango and simple syrup dressing

Entree

15 lb. turkey brined a la Emeril and roasted a la Alton Brown

Side Dishes

carrot souffle
corn pudding (get the creamed corn, Fist!!!)
Slow Cooker Stuffing
Garlic mashed potatoes
Home made gravy from drippings
Cranberry-orange relish
Cranberry Fluff
Southern-style green beans (the real version with smoked ham hocks, instead of my olive oil cheater version)

Dessert

Home made Key Lime Pie

I'm excited, as this will be my first time using the ceramic plaques I ordered from a friend on another forum to "label" the side dishes so father-of-love doesn't keep asking, "what is this?" They are the same as what my friend Amy used for her holiday table last year, shown here:


I need to run to the dollar store and find some of those little plate stands...

So, what all is on the menu for y'all this year, and how far along in the preparations are you?

Having been out of work since April, I've been holding off on starting preparations...but some very encouraging feedback from a potential employer and the general atmosphere of realization-of-hope coming from the Hall of Gifts is leading me to make the leap of faith. That, and I know I am running out of time...

Since there are only three of us, there is no way I would attempt as varied a menu as Menolly. I'll get a smallish turkey today and let it defrost in the fridge so that by Tuesday I can get it salted or brined. My usual roasting method is low-and-slow on the grill.

I'll poll the wife and son about which sides they want this year. Dressing is a given, but which others from the traditional list or other favorites I will leave up to them. Getting them to prioritize is fun. Again, I am not going to make everything under the sun for just three people.

Ah SD, we're just four.
But I love Thanksgiving planned overs.
One repeat dinner usually on Friday (even though it looks like I won't have my excuse of Black Friday shopping this year for doing so), followed by two meals that incorporate the cooked turkey into other recipes, such as Fusilli Turkey or Chicken Cheese Lasagna (subbing turkey and turkey stock for the chicken and chicken stock. and oh. definitely don't precook the lasagna noodles), as well as turkey sandwiches for lunch all three days. The rest then gets chopped and packaged in to 2 cup servings and frozen. I pull a package out once a week and make something with it, even if it is as simple as turkey matzah ball soup with egg noodles.

The four of us easily finish off everything else before father-of-love heads home on Sunday.

Even with the limited menu (i.e. I refuse to make dressing and mashed and yams; the family has to make some choices and I will push them to have at least as many vegetable choices as starchy carbs), I will have food hanging about for over a week. We don't have excess freezer space and there are only so many times and ways I can re-present the same dishes (even with incorporation into new recipes/formats) before they either spoil or just provoke ennui.

We've plenty to give thanks for, both in-house (hopefully more Real Soon Now!) and in the wider world (the amazing Furls Fire, among others) without going to far to extremes with the Thursday menu.

I am quite boring when it comes to Thanksgiving cooking. I'm making the same stuff as always:

*Turkey cooked in an oven bag
*Stuffing cooked inside the bird (I've done it this way for 50 years and it has never made me sick yet...)
*Roasted sweet potatoes
*Mashed potatoes too, maybe, if Magickmaker insists
*Nuked broccoli
*Pillsbury crescent rolls
*Either pumpkin pie or individual pumpkin custards, either way with Cool Whip Free
*Sparkling cider (this year I bought apple-mango cider -- we'll see how it goes...)

I've got a couple of winter squashes sitting in the basket on the counter -- a carnival squash and a "golden nugget" squash. I might add one of those to the menu Thursday.

BTW, this is the first year I've seen golden nugget squashes at the grocery store. They are quite tasty.

It's just Magickmaker and me this year. I bought a 16-lb. bird for 39 cents a pound. Yes, 16 lbs.! Because after the big meal is over, I will pick the carcass and split up the meat into ziploc bags -- one for dark meat, one for breast slices, one for the rest of the white meat -- and chuck it into the freezer. Voila! Cooked turkey meat for soup, stir-fry, whatever. It will keep for at least 6 months. I do it every year.

For the rest, except the stuffing, I only make one or two meal's worth, so the leftovers are gone before we've had a chance to get sick of them.

Menolly wrote:Clancy O'Haras Corn Pudding
(Kevin at Clancy O’Haras Posted by Nan)

2 16 oz cans creamed corn
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup flour
3 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk

Mix all ingredients and beat until smooth. Pour into a 9”x12” baking pan. Bake at 350˚F for 35 to 40 minutes or until golden brown and center is firm to touch.

Holy cow!!!!!!! This is good!!!!!!!! Just took it out of the oven, and MAN!!!!!!!!

Fist and Faith wrote:

Menolly wrote:Clancy O'Haras Corn Pudding
(Kevin at Clancy O’Haras Posted by Nan)

2 16 oz cans creamed corn
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup flour
3 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk

Mix all ingredients and beat until smooth. Pour into a 9”x12” baking pan. Bake at 350˚F for 35 to 40 minutes or until golden brown and center is firm to touch.

Holy cow!!!!!!! This is good!!!!!!!! Just took it out of the oven, and MAN!!!!!!!!

So glad you finally tried it, and that you like it!!!

The Day After...

Breakfast:
Mashed potato latkes with sour cream
...if I had thought about getting apple sauce before hand, that would have been put out as well...
Lots of coffee...

Potato pancakes -- not a bad idea, Menolly...

I had my traditional post-Thanksgiving breakfast of leftover stuffing and pumpkin pie. Dunno what Magickmaker's having -- she's still in bed.

I made *way* too many sweet potatoes. All I did was cut them up and nuke them, so I can recycle them easily. Will probably do this with some of them, maybe for breakfast tomorrow (from the Student's Vegetarian Cookbook by Carole Raymond):

1 sweet potato or yam
1 t. raisins
1/8 t. ground cinnamon
4 T. unsweetened canned crushed pineapple, drained
1 T. chopped walnuts

Cook the sweet potato in the usual way (oven baked, nuked, whatever). Peel and mash. Mix with the rest of the ingredients. If the sweet potato is dry, add a little juice from the canned pineapple. Garnish with more chopped walnuts. Serves 2.

I had cold pizza for breakfast.

Damelon wrote:I had cold pizza for breakfast.

We still have some from dinner the night before Thanksgiving.
Beorn had a lot of the mashed potato latkes a couple of hours ago, yet I smell pizza heating up as I type. I guess the growing teen (outwards as well as upwards, *sigh*) is still hungry.

My lunch will be in about 90 minutes.

The Day After:

Lunch

Some more of that marvelous Curried Butternutsquash and Apple Soup along with sliced turkey breast on honey wheat with mayonnaise, spicy brown mustard, the fresh whole cranberry orange sauce (which came out awesome! the orange zest addition really adds a terrific zing to it), and lots of fresh cracked pepper.

Some unsweetened Iced Tea alongside.

As I told Pam in a txt, several others thought the corn pudding was delicious! Everybody should try it.

I think next year, if I remember, I'm going to put the corn pudding in to an 8x8" baking dish and adjust the cooking time a little. I would like a taller pudding, I think.

Menolly wrote:I would like a taller pudding, I think.

That's gotta be the funniest sentence ever posted at the Watch!!!!! I freakin' love it!!!

...almost afraid to ask...

What did I say that amuses you so?

I figured it was some double entendre, but my wife does not get it either.

No, no double meanings. It's just the funniest thing! I mean, really! I would like a taller pudding! Perfectly good sentence. Makes sense in food preference. I've even appreciated taller bread puddings. But to actually hear/read that sentence? Can you imagine asking about their puddings in a restaurant? "How tall is your pudding? I prefer taller puddings."

"How tall is your pudding? I prefer taller puddings."
"Madam." <snif> "Our pudding is so tall, you could get away with calling it a soufflé."