We started the day with people arriving around noon to sliced pineapple, shrimp with cocktail sauce, beef stick, and an assortment of cheeses and crackers. I had a hard time limiting myself to only putting out this one platter of food (plus some cream cheese mints on the side!) - and had to keep reminding myself that they were arriving at noon with a planned eating time of 1:00pm. Yeah, like that's gonna happen!
Doogie loved having company, and was working on giving out Thanksgiving Day kisses...
One good way to keep people busy when the turkey's taking it's precious time is to give them jobs! So while Linda was put to work slicing the potatoes...
...Blake tempted Doogie out of the kitchen by trying to play video games (there's nothing more tempting to a dog that wanting some uninterrupted video game time!)
Once the potatoes were boiled (wow, that happened fast!), Brett got to work on his own special recipe (along with some of my "well, you'll just have to make do with ingredient x because we're low/out of y"), so in went the butter, the evaporated milk, and cream cheese, along with salt and pepper.
I had leftover herbed butter (most of it went under the skin of the turkey), and so mashed it together with flour to work on the beginnings of gravy.
And turkey gravy needs good turkey broth - which Laura was stealing from the turkey...
Laura shows she really knows how to work that baster! (I had her adding it to the giblets, which along with onions, celery, and some other stuff had simmered in chicken stock while the turkey roasted)
Looks like the taters were about done - time to taste test 'em!
Yup, seems like they're pretty good...
...but maybe Linda needs to confirm this.
You know this isn't gonna go well!
Wait, are those mashed potatoes, or is Brett digging boogers out of his mom's nose!?
Ooooh no - it's the face-hugger maneuver!
Well, at least she's laughing about it!
But I think Brett deserves some motherly punishment for that! ;-)
Ok, so I guess I won't be wearing this very unflattering shirt again! LOL Anyhow - I got started slicing the turkey. I don't mind chicken, but turkey's a real pain....
You can see the scorchy-looking spots from all the butter underneath the skin. And thanks to Sharon for reminding me to use a turkey bag - that sure kept things tender and juicy while speeding up the turkey cooking so I didn't have to have it in the oven at 7am!
Eh, screw it - "Hey Marty! Want something to do!? How about you wrap up the turkey carving?!" (And he did it much better than I would've, trust me!)
Turkey's carved. Taters are mashed. Gravy's made and in the boat. Casserole's are finally out of the oven... Time to get our buffet on!
These people started to eat without saying grace! WHAT THE!? LOL Who'm I kidding - yeah, we don't do that around here. DIVE IN!!
Brett keeps eating food off've his fingertips apparently...
And here's the feast (excluding pumpkin pie and chocolate pecan pie). Clockwise from top we have mashed potatoes with gravy, white and dark meat turkey (barely visible, with more gravy), stuffing (with even more gravy), sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, scalloped brussle sprouts, and over on the far left are the really good pumpkin croissants (made from REAL pumpkin, not the canned stuff) that Laura made and brought. Oh, and topped with honey butter. YUM!
I'm almost full from looking at that...
Oh! So those brussel's sprouts were, unfortunately, not home grown... I didn't have enough by this time, and mine were wimpy and a bit buggy. I cleaned/halved a bunch of brussel's sprouts from the store, boiled til just tender, drained, rinsed with cold water and set them to the side. Then I melted butter and flour together, added milk slowy to make a sauce, and then stirred in grated asiago cheese, black pepper and a touch of nutmeg. Dumped the sprouts in a casserole dish, quickly stirred in the sauce, and then topped with a combination of melted butter, dry bread crumbs (left from the stuffing-making), and a little more shredded asiago. This baked, covered with foil, along with the other casserole stuff, so about 30-40 minutes at 350. YUM!
Busted - Blake konked out after lunch!
Tryptophan-hazed puppy!? (No, he didn't actually get any turkey, but he WAS wiped out after the big event!)
Hope you guys had a great Thanksgiving!!
3 comments:
Why don't you like that shirt? What an odd thing to say.
Adorable pup. Delicious dinner.
Happy Thanksgiving about a week late.
:)
Peter - It looked a bit snug...like it's meant for someone much younger.
Finny - Thanks - you too!
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