Thanksgiving Meal Recap...Part 1

It's a wonder that any of my children ever learned how to cook, much less enjoy cooking -- the fact that they are good cooks and like to do it, is no tribute what-so-ever to me. Whenever I am in my kitchen concocting one of my culinary extravaganzas -- most especially the big holiday meals, my obsessive compulsive tendency rears its ugly head! I used to blame it on my old kitchen's dysfunctional layout -- everyone was in my way and "JUST GET OUT!!!" Some of my children's "fondest" memories are of trying to help me in the kitchen - NOT!! I've gotten better -- we have had at least 2 (maybe 3) Christmases in a row now, where I did not have a major hissy fit and drove everyone away. Last year was the first Christmas in my new kitchen, so there was at least one Christmas with a cool, calm & collected Donna in the old kitchen -- so it wasn't the kitchen after-all!  I think it is the planning and prep work that I finally figured out -- I make lists.

The first list that I make is of my menu and if I got the recipe from a cookbook or magazine or some other source, I write on my list next to the menu item where I can find the recipe.  Then I go through each menu item and list all of the ingredients and how much of each ingredient will be needed to feed the number of people that I am serving. This is a bit tricky and you have to know the recipe pretty well in order to know how to multiply it so that you have the amount of food you want -- not too much or too little.  From that list, I make my grocery list -- I usually don't have to buy everything, since I keep a variety of ingredients on hand.  It's mostly the produce and meat that I will have to shop for.

Because this blog is about cooking from scratch, I have become even more conscious about what convenience foods I really do use.  I don't buy cake mixes or brownie mixes or any kind of mix like that -- ever.  However, to save time, I bought canned organic pumpkin -- even though I have some pumpkins on hand that I could have cooked up and used for my pumpkin pies.  If making pumpkin pie was the only thing I was making, I probably would have done just that.  I also bought stuffing mix.  I am perfectly capable of cutting up bread (homemade bread that I baked myself, of course) into cubes and adding herbs.  But I was able to buy an Arrowhead Mills, organic, savory herb stuffing mix that I know contained no preservatives, MSG, or any other bad stuff that I can't pronounce.  I added celery, onion, organic butter, olive oil, eggs and organic free-range chicken broth (another convenience that I bought already made up).  This made an absolutely fabulous stuffing, by the way.

Here is the 19lb grilled stuffed turkey.

The final list that I generally make is the order that I plan to do things -- as far as prep work and final steps of cooking -- I also note those tasks that I can assign to someone else, should someone ask to help.  This really helps a lot, because when I am in the throes of my cooking frenzy, if I don't have it written down, I will have forgotten to chop something or cook & cool something in advance or will get sidetracked with requests to help and lose my train of thought.  I didn't make that list for this Thanksgiving meal and it was a huge mistake!  I will never do that again.  In my defense, I thought I had it all under control and didn't need a list this time. However, instead of eating at 1:00PM as planned, we didn't eat until 3:00 PM!!!  Fortunately, I didn't lose my cool and scream at anyone.  Instead the first guest who arrived was put to work cutting up cheese and summer sausage and arranging on a plate with crackers.  And then the next guest put together a platter with hummus and bagel chips, etc.  Good thing I had those things on hand!!  The third guest was put in charge of greeting guests at the front door and keeping them entertained in the living room.  This actually worked out pretty well -- not all of the guests knew each other and it was a chance to meet each other and socialize.  Most of them stopped into the kitchen at some point to say hi or to offer to help.  In the past, folks offering to help would send me over the edge. This is where in the past, much of my obsessive compulsive stuff would come out.  However, even though I did not have my list to help me see at a glance what I could assign, I did it have enough together to think of things for folks to do.

On Wednesday, starting with the turkey, I got the turkey brined, got my family (mostly David, although Jonathan & Jaimie helped some) to trim the 6 pounds of green beans, peel 10 pounds of potatoes, slice 1 pound of shiitake mushrooms, chop 1 cup of shallots, 8-10 stalks of celery, 3 onions, and cooked 2 cups of bulgur (for the rolls).  I steamed 2 spaghetti squash and made pie crust for 3 single crust pies.  I baked 2 pumpkin pies and 1 pecan pie (should have made 2 of those too).  I also cooked up the cranberry, pear & orange relish.

So, all I had to do on Thursday was prep and stuff the turkey, make rolls, cook the potatoes and mash them, make gravy, make the green beans w/mushrooms & bacon (this was a new recipe), assemble my fruit salad, make the spaghetti squash tossed with egg plant persillade (garlic & parsley) and finally whip the cream to put on the pies -- not necessarily in that order.

To prep the turkey, I thoroughly rinsed the brine off the turkeys and dried them off.  Then I took some minced, fresh thyme, 1 stick of softened butter and some olive oil and mixed them together.  I used half of this mixture for each turkey. I work my hands under the turkey skin and this is where I spread the thyme/butter mixture.  I do this on both the front and back of the turkey and as far as I can get the skin worked loose -- around the wings and thighs too.  Then I start scooping stuffing in the neck cavity until it is full -- I stretch the skin over the stuffing and use metal lacers to sew up the stuffing inside.  Then I work the other end and stuff as much stuffing as I can into the abdominal cavity.  Again I lace up the end to hold the stuffing inside the bird.  The turkey juices working it's way into the stuffing as the turkey cooks, produces the most amazing stuffing.  This is a Yankee thing that I have held onto.  There are many Southern foods that I love -- like grits, collard greens, boiled peanuts, hush puppies, Fluffy biscuits, skillet cornbread, sweet tea, etc -- that I have claimed and learned to cook  But I can also tell you that ;no Southern dressing that I have ever tasted begins to measure up to Yankee stuffing!!!

Here is the 23lb grilled stuffed turkey.  We used 2 Weber kettle grills to cook these birds.

Part 2 will cover the other dishes and recipes -- Bon Apetit!