thanksgiving 2008

How did your Thanksgiving turn out? Did you have any mishaps? Did you finish cooking at the time you’d planned? Was there any drama?

Dave and I are spending Thanksgiving by ourselves for the first time this year, and we went for the traditional dinner. We decided we should eat at 4:00, so I scheduled the cooking so we’d eat at 3:30, giving myself some contingency time, and we ended up eating 4:45. So typical for me. But, other than that and an unfortunately large span of time between the green beans being done and the carrots being done, everything came together smoothly and was quite tasty.

The most dreaded part of the meal for me, even more so than rinsing a 12-pound turkey in a too-small sink, was carving the turkey. I am not at all good at it. The short instructional video I watched made it seem so easy, and said that the carved turkey could be displayed just as nicely as the whole bird. Well, that certainly didn’t happen. My “carved” thigh meat was ready to be put straight into turkey salad sandwiches.

But it tasted good – the turkey had picked up a wonderful bit of allspice flavor from its brine. The stuffing was great even though I left it in the oven far too long, and the rolls were buttery and sweet, although weirdly flaky. The green beans and carrots were delicious, the potatoes were pleasantly tangy from the buttermilk, and gravy, oh, the gravy. I want to pour it over everything. Now, we’re finishing up a nice Pinot Noir, and I, for one, am thinking about pie. I’ve been thinking about pie all day.