Thanksgiving Recap

I got my chance to take the lead in cooking Thanksgiving dinner for my family this year. I spread the cooking out over a few days and it was surprisingly unstressful. Thank you to Lisa, my sous chef and my Mom for supervising. Here's the run down:

The turkey
My mom always gets a free turkey from Shoprite and I wasn't about to rain on her parade. I also wasn't about to bring a Greenmarket turkey on a 3 hour public transportation ride along with the rest of the food I needed to bring. Better luck going heritage and free range next year. Mom supervised the turkey, I just did what she told me to do.

Roasted butternut squash with parmesan and thyme
Replaced the traditional baked sweet potatoes that I never liked. These were devoured. Although I thought there was too much thyme and too mushy from too much cooking time.
Lisa's single-rise yeast biscuits with lemon, rosemary, and sage (before baking)
Replaced the traditional Shoprite from-a-can-slice-and-bake rolls. Couldn't taste the lemon. Didn't rise as well as in her test run. Surprisingly similar to the usual rolls = I still liked them.
My parents' remodeled wet bar
Replaced the old wet bar where alcohol was unwelcome and looked like a stereo closet crammed with science fiction paperbacks
Appetizers, including homemade rustic wheat crackers, roasted garlic and herb white bean dip, and hummus
Balsamic marinated roasted beets
My family is afraid of beets so these were not a hit, but at least Jesse ate up the leftovers.
Mashed potatoes
I tried to infuse roasted garlic flavor, but didn't use enough garlic
Steamed broccoli with balsamic-mustard sauce
To replace the plain traditional steamed broccoli. Could have used a little more tang.

Roasted green beans with lemon juice, dill, toasted almonds, and caramelized onions
I finally figured out why my mom serves green beans on Thanksgiving even though it's out of season - because she has a ton in the freezer from her garden and wants to use them. Defrosted green beans don't roast well. The dish also could have used more than one onion for a better green bean-to-onion ratio.
Pumpkin snickerdoodle cookies (before baking)
Not pictured: Stuffing with baguette, celery, apples, and onions (replacing the traditional Pepperidge Farm/Stouffers/whatever it is stuffing from a bag); two gravy dishes, one made with real turkey drippings and one made from a Shoprite gravy packet; Mom's cranberry-cider sauce (replacing the traditional canned cranberry); and most of the desserts: Mom's apple pie, Mom's pumpkin pie, Lisa's real pumpkin pie with whole wheat crust, storebought sweet potato pie, tiramasu, truffles, blueberry muffins, and banana bread

The best part about Thanksgiving: The leftovers

The worst part: My fat belly from sitting around eating and headaches from playing Minesweeper all week.

Dark Days Challenge Week 3: The Thanksgiving Experiment

After finding turkey breast at the Greenmarket, I thought what better to pair it with than stuffing. Considering that I want to make Thanksgiving dinner next year, I might as well start practicing now! To make the stuffing, I combined toasted whole wheat bread cubes with sauteed onion, garlic, apple, parsnip, and a few handfuls of torn-up kale, and enough chicken stock to moisten everything. I added the kale to compensate for the lack of celery, which is not in season now, but I didn't like the result. Kale's bitter flavor disrupted my enjoyment of what should have been a purely sweet combination of bread and apples. I'm not going to bother posting the recipe yet, since I am considering this part of an ongoing experiment over the next ten months to find my perfect stuffing recipe.


As for the turkey, I feel clueless about roasting turkey or chicken breast. They tend to come out on the dry side, lacking in flavor, and slightly pink on the edges. I covered the turkey breast in salt, pepper, and sage, then drizzled with melted butter and roasted them covered with aluminum foil. These were small breasts (about 1 lb each), so they were done in about 45 minutes (even though they don't look done in the picture above I promise they were!) and the skin didn't get crispy either. Maybe I'm too timid with the butter. Advice is welcome. Clearly, I've got a ways to go before next Thanksgiving.

This post is part of the Dark Days Challenge, in which I prepare at least one meal each week comprised of mostly local ingredients. All ingredients for this meal were found at Greenmakets from farms within 300 miles away, except for the bread (made at a bakery down the street), organic free range chicken stock from a box, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Thanks and giving

Considering that every food blog I've been ready lately has been obsessed with Thanksgiving, it seems ironic that I didn't even cook anything for Thanksgiving. I hope to make Thanksgiving next year, to be in charge, to cook brilliant foods - wonderful, flavorful foods that I know to be local and organic and in line with my moral standards, not random supermarket food. Maybe I'm turning into too much of a food critic and greenie nazi.

My ideal Thanksgiving meal would be cooked not by my mother or anyone elses, but by me. Considering that Thanksgiving is supposed to be about celebrating eating, I believe it should be all about eating really good food that allows us to enjoy the bounty of the season. My Thanksgiving menu would be something like the one below. It would mostly procured from my local farmers market. There would be lovely classical music playing the background and plenty of alcohol imbibing.

Appetizers (which should only last one hour between the time the last guest arrives and when dinner is served so as to minimize awkward and boring schmoozing with relatives and overeating to the point where one is too full to enjoy the dinner):
Cheese and crackers
Chopped raw cauliflower, broccoli, and peppers
Homemade pita chips
Homemade hummus and cumin carrot dip

Dinner:
Roasted beets with toasted walnuts and goat cheese
Butternut squash, carrot, parsnip, and three bean casserole
Cranberry chutney
Smashed potatoes with roasted garlic and scallions
Garlicky sauteed kale
Rosemary and sage biscuits
Cornbread stuffing
Turkey and gravy

Dessert:
Carrot cake
Pumpkin bread
Apple pie
Brandied cranberry and white chocolate cookies

Drinks:
Local beer, wine, and bourbon (such as Hudson's Baby Bourbon) of course!

So, see you at my house in a year?

PS. Here are two things I have to be thankful for this week:

1. Jesse cooked moules frites and potato leek soup and cinnamon oats for breakfast when I was sick this week, and taking a sick day actually helped me rest and get better! It's Jesse's own fault that he is not getting full write-ups on his meals because, as he said, "Do we have to photograph everything we eat?"

2. I enjoyed a rare opportunity to hear the Berliner Philharmoniker, one of the best orchestras in the world, perform live at a venue in Washington Heights for free. They delivered a brilliant, on-point performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, one of my favorite 20th century pieces, while hundreds of New York City public school students danced, ran, creeped. and stomped about the stage like primitive humans. It was truly amazing to hear this piece live as a full ballet, that I had studied so much in college, and nice to actually feel connected to the music that goes on thanks to all my hard work, which happens pretty infrequently, sadly. Thank you BPhil.