It was seven degrees this morning when Cindy left for work at 6:45. By 8:30 when I went outside, it was all the way up to eight degrees. My face froze before I got to the gate, my toes went numb within five minutes but the rest of me was fine and I tried to enjoy as much of my fifteen-minute walk as possible. I came back happy to know that I had several loads of laundry to do while waiting for the water man to come and make a delivery. I went out again at about one and it was a balmy thirteen degrees, with a slight breeze. Winter is here and I do believe it is here to stay. The good news is that it has been a bright and sunny day and my indoor plants are just loving it. I think I heard the sound of photosynthesis this morning as the first rays hit the plants and gave them a lovely green glow.
The Thanksgiving Feast last night was a riot, lots of laughter, lots of food and wine and tons of fellowship. I must say that I’ve done bigger Thanksgiving dinners with lots more people but this was the hardest one I’ve ever done due to the size of the kitchen and the crappy range/oven. I could have adjusted the temperature of the oven better if I had been using an EasyBake Oven with a sixty-watt bulb. I cooked the two little sweet potato/ginger pies first, but even though they were only eight- inch pies, I couldn’t get them onto one shelf, the oven is so narrow. Trying to keep an even temperature is also a trick since it vacillates plus or minus twenty degrees at will. They came out okay, but took much longer to cook than I had anticipated and I had only about six minutes to get the temperature up to 400 before placing the turkey in the oven at one o’clock. I got a ten-pound butterball, which just fit into the roasting pan that I had purchased to just fit into the oven. I had the bird stuffed with cornbread and herb stuffing and resting on a bed of carrots that I had cut in half. I filled the corners of the pan with onion quarters and sprayed everything with olive oil and sprinkled it all with herbs de Provence. In it went for 20 minutes at 400 and then I wanted to get it down to 325 for the remaining cooking time, which the package said would be three hours and forty minutes. I couldn’t keep that temperate at 325 to save my life. I’ve mentioned before that the temperature setting on the oven goes from 1-10; no correlation between numbers and temperatures seems to exist. At one point the temp got up to 375 and I turned the dial from three and a half to two and a half. Fifteen minutes later when I went to check the temperature the darn oven had turned itself off!!
Luckily I was in the kitchen all day so keeping tabs on the bird was possible, but this wasn’t one of those set it and forget it days. I had to move the dining room table to the middle of the room since we were going to be six and that was the only way to do it. It was a tight fit, but as I mentioned, we are all friends. They all arrived on time, which was lucky since the bird got done almost forty minutes early. We had Champagne and nuts and conversation for about thirty minutes. I stayed for a toast and then got back to the kitchen to get everything ready. I hate having some foods hot and others merely warm simply because the timing couldn’t be figured out. I was bound and determined that everything that was supposed to be hot would be very, very hot.
Since our table is too small to hold platters of food, everyone brought his or her plate to the kitchen where I had laid out all the goodies. The first tray, really a cutting board, had all of the turkey sliced and ready to go. Drumsticks up top, dark meat in between and white on the lower two thirds. There was dressing, garlic smashed potatoes, carrots, onions, baked cauliflower florets, fresh bread, piping hot fresh gravy and whole cranberry sauce (from a can this year). I served three different wines, a Sav. Blanc, a deep dark South African merlot, and a Pinot Grigio. Everyone ate with gusto and all had at least seconds with a few making valiant attempts at thirds. For dessert I decorated the pie with a ring of whipped cream and then sprinkled the whipped cream with pomegranate seeds; it looked real purty. We didn’t tell anyone that it was sweet potato pie and of course everyone thought it was pumpkin, and they were very surprised to hear what it really was so they all had to have seconds to make sure it still tasted good.
We were at the table for two hours and like I said, it was a hilarious evening with almost no talk of school. Everyone had funny stories from their youth and Thanksgivings past and it was vastly entertaining. Everyone left at about eight and by nine I had cleaned up the kitchen. I think I used every glass we own, all of my knives, all of our cutlery and most of our dishes. Goodness my hands were like little white prunes by the time I had everything cleaned up and put away. I sat down at nine with a generous pour of Chivas and Cindy had her Remy and we watched BBC news for a half hour before heading to bed. I’m not sure if I placed my head on the pillow or if it just fell there but I was one exhausted puppy and so happy to be warm and cozy and heading to the land of nod.
Time to arrange dinner, Best to all, Cindy and Wm.
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