VICTORY!!!
I am the master of my domain. Well, at least my kitchen. I am not alone in my "master-dom", however, and am pleased to report that Alan and I have conquered the evil oven and have proven victorious over it's over-cooking-gonna-burn-anything-you-put-in-me ways. HA HA!We decided to do Thanksgiving at our place this year. Let me just note right now that "our place" is small. We have seating for two. Three if you count the Papasan chair (which, I have under strict advisement, never to have sex in as it ruins your chair!). Well, if you bring 5 men into an apartment which seats two, amazing things happen. Chairs which you never would have considered as seating in the living room, suddenly become just that. For instance, my kitchen chairs which I'm pretty sure are rated for about 150lbs. can actually hold more like 250lbs if necessary. And computer chairs which, while comfortable, become "recliner" for two lucky men!
But, back to the food, which is the main 'dish' of this post. Hee hee... I love puns!
We woke up bright and early on Friday morning (8:11am by my clock; 8:06 to the rest of the world) to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. AHA! The timer works. Yesssss!!! (we just bought the coffee maker the day before). I quickly learned how to make Pillsbury croissants, or rather how not to. Alan had to roll them... I'm not very good with directions apparently. So we had strawberry preserves (not jam) on our croissants, with some fresh coffee, and then we were off to the races.
I started with Mum's stuffing. Not much of a recipe. It pretty much tells you what ingredients you need but nothing about how much of each ingredient. Alrighty... just start throwing stuff in. So, a package of bacon and half a loaf of dry french bread later, we were half way there. We had to get some more eggs, some sage, and some milk so Alan could make the pies. Like I said, I'm not very good with directions. I forgot these ingredients when we went to the grocery store the day before. Bah, I suck. So, once the stuffing was done Alan did the pies and started to peel the potatoes. I think it was in that order. Anyway, then we got to stuff the turkey. But before that, I had to, gulp, clean the turkey! BLEAH! I had to pluck a feather which was left behind. I had to pull out a bag of gizzards. What an awful word. And then there was the neck. That pushed me over the edge. Alan had to pull that out for me. I couldn't do it. And I've discovered that 11.5lbs is a lot heavier than it sounds. I can pick up 11.5lbs of novels, or DVDs, or clothes or shoes. But hand me a wet, slimy, cold 11.5lb turkey, and I'm done for. Alan was very good about it, but I'm pretty sure there was some annoying whining from me. Oh and guess what? The insides of turkeys are hollow! I know, I know, most of you know that. For whatever reason, I was expecting more meat or something. I was surprised to see rib cage. It kind of freaked me out so Alan had to salt and pepper the inside of the bird.
So, we got it all stuffed up and pinned (Alan pinned it, I couldn't do it... poor birdie) and then it came time to butter and flour the bird. LOL!!! What a gong show. I'm still giggling about this. I grab a stick of butter out of the fridge and start applying it to the bird like it's a stick of deoderant. One problem. Cold bird + cold butter= nada! But my hands were already covered in raw turkey goo so I just rubbed the butter back and forth in my hands for a few minutes to make the butter soft. That worked much better. Then the flowering. The directions say "Sprinkle flour lightly over buttered bird". Well, by that time, my hands were pretty uncoordinated. "Sprinkle" apparently meant "drop blobs of flour in random spots and hope for the best". In the end it all worked out just fine but I was kind of worried for a while.
After the bird went in, I went for a power nap and Alan went to the park to play Frisbee, by himself. Wonders never cease! Just as I woke up, our first guest arrived. We played Cribbage (I won... yeah me!) and then some other folks arrived and started up a Crokinole tournament. I started to boil the potatoes, warm up the ham, and just keep myself busy doing little womanly things! LOL... well... I put on my cute little apron that Alan bought me and stayed out of the boys way, in any case.
Dinner was a hit. The turkey was beautiful. All golden brown and juicy and tender. And best of all, we hardly have any left! The ham was awesome, despite being pre-sliced to sandwich meat slivers, and the veggies and salad brought by our guests were fab-oo! The party shut down around 11 or 11:15. I survived through the first part of "The DaVinci Code" but was lights out by 12:30.
I'm sure some cool stuff happened the rest of the weekend but it's a bit of a blur. Time off from work allows me to pretty much just take time off from life. So that's what I did.
And just in case you're counting, only 13 more sleeps until my Happy Birthday!
posted by Meg @ 12:47 PM
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