NaBloPo: Thanksgiving Recap

 

Hey Friends, we had an epic Thanksgiving with the fam yesterday.  Here are all the deets!

 

For all things NaBloPo head over to The Inbetween in Mine 

In the spirit of full transparency I've documented my chicken and turkey phobia many times in this space.  For some reason it's extra intense right now and taking a picture of the finish product was the closest that I could bear to get to it.

The Menu

• Turkey cooked by hubs.  A few years ago his coworkers hooked him up with this recipe.  The only alteration is that he puts it in an oven roasting bag which seems to add the secret sauce of keeping it juicy while letting the skin get crispy. 
• I made our go-to gravy recipe.  The issue is that it's a small batch recipe and we had a crowd.  I started by doubling it and then turned right around and made another batch, so note to self, quadruple it next year.  Luckily it takes about 5 minutes to make.  It's a no-drippings recipe but whenever we have drippings I like to add a little bit of them into the broth.
• SIL#3 made stuffing and mashed potatoes.  She used the giblets from our turkey for the stuffing.
• SIL#4 made green bean casserole and brought corn and rolls.
• I opened up a can of cranberry sauce.  The amount of cranberry sauce that it takes to feed 12 people is approximately 1/4 of a can.
  
• I made three desserts.
• The fail: I made my standard chocolate chip cookies with gluten free flour for the benefit of one of my nieces.  Either gluten free baking sucks, possibly the particular flour that I got sucks, or this was the wrong recipe to adapt.  I love my SILs but they were so full of it when they told me that making the dough a day in advance would result in a cookie identical to any other cookie.  The texture was off and they tasted like raw flour. Yeech.  I think that it's probably better to go the route of using a recipe that was designed to be gluten free which is what I will try next time.  Hey GF friends, got any recommendations for me?
• Fortunately I also made a chocolate chip cookie cake.  I'm not particularly passionate about chocolate chips cookies or cakes but my family adores them and they're very easy to make.  I mean, I want one every once in a while but I'm not obsessed.  Make it a white chocolate chip cookie or a white chocolate chip cookie with nuts and other goodies it would be a very different story.  And yes you guessed, everyone in the fam except for me hates white chocolate with a passion.
• And pie!  For the past few years I've experimented with other recipes but this year I went back to my roots (a.k.a. my first post) and made the one and only Hungarian Apple Pie.  My primary motivation was that it's easier - it's a single crust pie and it only uses four large size apples but on reflection I think that it's better than the more elaborate pies that I've experimented with.  Also I've made some noise that in spite of the name of this blog that I'm not that into pies but...I was really into this particular pie and I'm looking forward to the leftovers.
  

When it was time to start the turkey, hubs and I had what we now recognize as our standard Thanksgiving comedy routine that happens every time that we buy the turkey.  Hubs opens up the turkey and attempts to place it in our roasting pan only to discover that our roasting pan is too small for an 18# bird. We then text SIL#3 who is the member of the family who lives the closest to us to ask if she has a roasting pan.  She does not, but she usually has a stash of disposable aluminum pans that are big enough.

We looked back at last year's text chain.  She said she had a pan and then hubs texted back "never mind, I found one".  It's a total mystery what we used since the turkey was about the same size but this year she bailed us out and also GAVE US A SECOND PAN THAT WE WILL USE NEXT YEAR IF WE REMEMBER THAT WE HAVE IT.  NOTE TO SELF FOR NEXT YEAR.

For a final touch I got a sampler pack of miniature Bailey's from Costco and put them out with the wine.  I don't think that anyone drank them at dinner since we kind of had a lot going on already, but everyone was interested so I told them to take them home with them.  I thought that was a nice accent for a party so I'll probably do that again and FYI this is the only reason that I got around to trying espresso Bailey's which is out of this world delicious.

Everyone ate to their hearts content and then some.  Afterwards we played Jackbox TV (Quiplash and Trivia Murder Party are our go-to's there), and then the fam went home.  From there we did a quick clean up and the house is back to normal.  Our waistlines are a different story.

Tell me about your Thanksgiving!  Or your Thursday if you don't celebrate.