Thanksgiving!

It was a quiet Thanksgiving, one that goes pretty much how you wanted it to: nice and quiet. We both had the week off and, although I had a list of things I wanted to do in the back of my head, pretty much none of them have gotten accomplished.

The food docket instead included: Thanksgiving dinner (of course), a batch of nonna's sauce that would drive a batch of breakfast burritos. And then turkey leftover prep.

We pre-ordered our turkey from Heritage Farm. Small, I asked for, roughly 14 lbs. That's still a lot of turkey for two people. We have a beautiful All-Clad roasting pan that just fits in the oven. But when we went to pick up, Greg said he only had 18 lb turkeys and larger. "Pot pies!" Josh exclaimed. He's pleased.

I put the turkey in the outside fridge to defrost but by Wednesday, its middle was still frozen. I put it into the ever-draining sink to thaw some more and had to send Josh to the store for ice and vegetable broth, having not properly prepared for the brine AT ALL.

So I made the brine in the cooler and added the turkey, along with some floaty bags of water and ice packs. On Thursday morning, I flipped the bird in brine.

Thursday morning, I timed out my schedule and it all seemed too easy without the traditional batch of spring rolls. But I don't like spring rolls from the freezer anymore, so I am breaking that tradition.

Somewhere around noon, I got up from my warm chair, parboiled potatoes, parboiled sweet potatoes, made a batch of sriracha mixed nuts, which Josh says are addictive. I also set to drying out the cornbread for the dressing and made my rice and chestnuts. Peeled chestnuts, by the way, are the best.

After all that, I left Josh to finish the dressing (ecipe here) and went to sit down for a few minutes. It was as I sat there that I got more and more concerned about the full oven and even the full toaster oven.

I followed Alton Brown's turkey recipe, buttering up the turkey well, though not as well as last year since I followed instructions less... loosely stuffed the cavity with carrots, celery, and onions, and put that bird in there to cook. About 3 hours later, it was beautiful. I actually have no idea what time it was, because I used the meat thermometer, but we sat down right at 7.

So there was a flurry of finishing all the dishes -- mashed potatoes, some sweet potatoes that tasted like bourbon, the dressing, my "stuffing", sauteed haricot verts, and a nice big ole batch of gravy. Yum.

Friday I made a batch of nonna's sauce doubled, which barely fit in my Le Creuset dutch oven. I did break in my "new" for two years All-Clad 12 gallon stock pot that my cousin bought me with her discount when she worked at Williams-Sonoma. It was awesome until I realized that I had to put the pot in the oven. I know, weird for a recipe I had made so many times.

Sometime later, I made a big batch of black beans. Today I will wrap breakfast burritos. And make turkey stock. Tomorrow, I have to make all those damn pot pies. At least Josh likes them. Yay.

Okay, off to rest a bit before all that activity!