Premature Holidation
Nov. 26th, 2008 07:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogSo. How was your Turkey Day yesterday?
Ours was lovely. As with most of the best things in life, it came upon us quite unexpectedly.
We've never done The Big Kahuna Production Number for Thanksgiving at our house. One guest is about our limit, and that guest is usually Eleanor's brother; the only thing he's ever cooked is his liver, and fortunately he doesn't even do THAT anymore. So we've tried different variations on the Feast concept over the years. Usually, Eleanor fancies up a turkey breast, but we've done Cornish hens, at least one year of grilled steaks, and there was probably an oven-stuffer chicken roasted one of those times.
This year, though? A discovery and an addition.
----
Eleanor's now working at Wegmans, where the 39-cent-a-pound whole turkey is the traditional big seller. She mentioned to a customer the problem she'd have with buying such a thing for such a small Thanksgiving table, especially since our freezer is chockablock full and couldn't even hold it until the big day.
"No problem," her customer told HER. "The meat department will saw them in half for you." And so they did. (You have to leave it overnight, since they can't be chopping up huge birds when the salami rush is on, but our Tom Tom Gobble showed up in two neat-for-storing halves about a week ago.)
That was the discovery. THIS is the addition:
She bought this (also pre-layoff), partly to be able to handle a larger hunka poultry, but also to prevent future occurrences of hunka hunka burnin' poultry like we had a couple of weeks back. Earlier this week, she took out one of the turkey halves (I think it was Tom, or maybe it was Tom) to begin it thawing. Then, knowing she goes back to work today, she set it in the roaster oven, on an appropriately low setting, to begin the process of slow cooking the beast.
Several hours later, she asked how we felt about having Thanksgiving dinner, like, now. A SLOW cooker, this is not.
And there was great rejoicing. We added homemade bread she'd made earlier in the day, a salad, and an absolutely crack-addictive concoction from the store called a "pumpkin loaf." (That's "loaf" as in the Friendly's ice cream kind, not the wheat bread kind. It's also as in delicious.) In lieu of the Thanksgiving table, we ate around the living room and watched Evan Almighty, which was thoroughly ill and wonderful and doesn't even pretend badly to be set in Buffalo like its Bruce-ish progeny pretended to.
We'll still host Charlie tomorrow. Much of it will be left over. Including the glow.
----
My best beloved blogger Joss posed a variation on That Damn Thanksgiving Meme the other day. It's easy enough, in this land of plenty, to go One Through A Gazilliondy on the things you're thankful for. Her challenge, instead, is to name the thorn in your side that you're thankful for anyway. As only she could put it, "to look at a fly in my soup and call it protein." Her own choice for Beloved Thorn of Scorn is her recently-acquired cat, who, well, click that last link. Only theowner pwned can tell the tale with true justice.
As for me, I choose the evil overlords of Wellsville Carpet Town Incorporated, for choosing the Friday before Thanksgiving to scrap-heap my wife's 4 four-plus years of dedicated service to their accursed empire. It hurt. Still does. Yet it's given us time together; it's spared us endless grief and drama from the remaining co-workers who only got more mean and more miserable as they numbered themselves among the last ones standing; and it's given us hope for the opportunities that lie ahead, in the new company Eleanor stands to grow with, and also in my own practice, which has picked up a surprising amount of new business in the three days before Thanksgiving.
Or in our case, the day before, the day of, and the day after.
Ours was lovely. As with most of the best things in life, it came upon us quite unexpectedly.
We've never done The Big Kahuna Production Number for Thanksgiving at our house. One guest is about our limit, and that guest is usually Eleanor's brother; the only thing he's ever cooked is his liver, and fortunately he doesn't even do THAT anymore. So we've tried different variations on the Feast concept over the years. Usually, Eleanor fancies up a turkey breast, but we've done Cornish hens, at least one year of grilled steaks, and there was probably an oven-stuffer chicken roasted one of those times.
This year, though? A discovery and an addition.
----
Eleanor's now working at Wegmans, where the 39-cent-a-pound whole turkey is the traditional big seller. She mentioned to a customer the problem she'd have with buying such a thing for such a small Thanksgiving table, especially since our freezer is chockablock full and couldn't even hold it until the big day.
"No problem," her customer told HER. "The meat department will saw them in half for you." And so they did. (You have to leave it overnight, since they can't be chopping up huge birds when the salami rush is on, but our Tom Tom Gobble showed up in two neat-for-storing halves about a week ago.)
That was the discovery. THIS is the addition:
She bought this (also pre-layoff), partly to be able to handle a larger hunka poultry, but also to prevent future occurrences of hunka hunka burnin' poultry like we had a couple of weeks back. Earlier this week, she took out one of the turkey halves (I think it was Tom, or maybe it was Tom) to begin it thawing. Then, knowing she goes back to work today, she set it in the roaster oven, on an appropriately low setting, to begin the process of slow cooking the beast.
Several hours later, she asked how we felt about having Thanksgiving dinner, like, now. A SLOW cooker, this is not.
And there was great rejoicing. We added homemade bread she'd made earlier in the day, a salad, and an absolutely crack-addictive concoction from the store called a "pumpkin loaf." (That's "loaf" as in the Friendly's ice cream kind, not the wheat bread kind. It's also as in delicious.) In lieu of the Thanksgiving table, we ate around the living room and watched Evan Almighty, which was thoroughly ill and wonderful and doesn't even pretend badly to be set in Buffalo like its Bruce-ish progeny pretended to.
We'll still host Charlie tomorrow. Much of it will be left over. Including the glow.
----
My best beloved blogger Joss posed a variation on That Damn Thanksgiving Meme the other day. It's easy enough, in this land of plenty, to go One Through A Gazilliondy on the things you're thankful for. Her challenge, instead, is to name the thorn in your side that you're thankful for anyway. As only she could put it, "to look at a fly in my soup and call it protein." Her own choice for Beloved Thorn of Scorn is her recently-acquired cat, who, well, click that last link. Only the
As for me, I choose the evil overlords of Wellsville Carpet Town Incorporated, for choosing the Friday before Thanksgiving to scrap-heap my wife's 4 four-plus years of dedicated service to their accursed empire. It hurt. Still does. Yet it's given us time together; it's spared us endless grief and drama from the remaining co-workers who only got more mean and more miserable as they numbered themselves among the last ones standing; and it's given us hope for the opportunities that lie ahead, in the new company Eleanor stands to grow with, and also in my own practice, which has picked up a surprising amount of new business in the three days before Thanksgiving.
Or in our case, the day before, the day of, and the day after.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-11-26 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-26 02:27 pm (UTC):pointy dance of drumstick joy:
no subject
Date: 2008-11-26 09:41 pm (UTC)Pointiness, danciness and joyfulness all graciously accepted anyway:)
no subject
Date: 2008-11-26 02:40 pm (UTC)