My husband and I live a slightly odd life, I work weird hours sometimes and my husband works weird hours (i.e. almost all holidays)- so it’s not uncommon for us to celebrate holidays on days that are not the day they happen. He works almost all holidays- so this whole celebrate on Saturday thing is fairly normal for us. I did go out Thursday with Bob to enjoy a nice dinner out at a local spot that does a nice thanksgiving dinner- so I wasn’t sitting alone all lonely- it was fun and tasty- win win win!
Thanksgiving day in and of it self was “hurry up and box up the fucking pants”- which I was on track to do up till the point I realized I had run out of elastic in a massive way. So I did what I could- worked on the Hulk costume and figured “I’ll go on Friday” completely forgetting that it is black Friday and fuck my life. So I hit the gym, did some squats and then hit the grocery store up for food. 70$ for food for thanksgiving for 2 was pretty good all in all if I do say so myself! (although they didn’t have any turkey breasts, which was DEEPLY upsetting to me and caused me some panic). I came home, showered- got ready and headed up to the local spot that I know is open and settled in with Bob for a turkey dinner. #noregrats Nothing more exciting happened other than beading, blogging and pants.
But I went to work Friday, stopped at Shop Rite on the way in and got a totally frozen turkey breast- which was somewhat concerning but this is the way it rolls. It was like 16* outside- so I wound up bringing the damn thing into the office and put in the fridge to help it start to thaw safely. I got some stuff done and rolled out around 1:30 in the afternoon. I grabbed my elastic and headed home. About that point I realized I had more to do than I thought and settled in to work on that AND run cold water over my bird. (that’s another safe way to do it’s fine- I checked).
And around 5:30 I got all the little niggly bits done on the pants and boxed them up and started to look into prepping for the next day for my Thanksgiving spectacular meal!
The plan:
Salad + butternut squash soup, red roasted mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green beans, brined turkey breast and apple crumble pie (home made from my friend) with vanilla ice cream and home made boozy whip cream
On to Friday night: milling around my house starting to get unproductive as fuck and I realize “you should really brine your bird” So I started cooking the brine.
which of course I don’t have the proper tools- so I had to do it in stages in several pots- don’t judge me.
I also managed to make a HORRIFIC garlic mess I made dumping half a container out when the lid stuck then suddenly and explosively got “UNSTUCK” and drumped that shit everywhere. now my house smells like garlic and could ward off a whole army of vampires.
Then I needed the brine to cool- so I popped it in the fridge and started making cranberry sauce. I love home made cranberry sauce. It makes me SUPER happy for some reason. not sure why- but it does. Don’t @ me. I popped some chili powder and ground red pepper in there and a half a stick of cinnamon- because- I like to live dangerously. Cranberry sauce is stupid easy to make- so I figure I’ll make all of it and hope for the best. DON”T THEY LOOK PRETTY! Cook those down for about 20 minutes and pop them in the heat safe glass bowl and put them back in the fridge.
The brine wasn’t quiet cool enough to safely add to the turkey (still soaking in a cold bath I’d changed the water about million times on- hurrah water bill)- so I started peeling potates. I wanted to roast the potatoes and the butternut squash before I mashed them or “souped” them. So I peeled the potatoes tonight- and will roast them tomorrow when I turn the oven on- or maybe when I get back from the gym. Either or. Put while the brine cools- I peeled potatoes and tossed them in a container with water to keep them from drying.
Gym set done! WOOT WOOT- solid bench/chest workout!
I came home and cleaned up and had some dinner. And transferred the bird to the giant stock pot I picked up post workout!
It was kind of a mess, but my bird was way more covered. So WIN! and that was all I could get done that night- I did some costuming and went to bed!
Saturday morning- bright and early I headed out to the post office to mail the pants and got a delicious bagel before getting ready to work!
I needed to do some cleaning first so I did a basic 15 minute “run through” of the kitchen and living room then got started on food. I prepped the asparagus into foil lined pans with olive oil, salt pepper, garlic salt and some large chunks of garlic.
Then I split the the butternut squash- wacked the oven up to 425 and put them and some potatoes in there for a good roasting, While that was happening I saute’d the onions and carrots and prepped the crock pot. Hubs said he wanted to eat around or after 5 so I hand plenty of time to let the butternut squash sit in the crock pot.
After burning my fingers pulling the squash out- I threw it all in the crock pot on low for 7.5 hrs.
Please see the fun finger burning situation going on right here:
That done- I turned off the oven- relined the pans with foil for the potatoes and got them ready to go for later. Once all that was done, I took a solid coffee break to retidy and try to clean some more. I stupidly forgot to check the wrapping of the turkey before I threw it away and I have ZERO idea how heavy this bird is. But I have a thermometer- figure the turkey will go in around 2-2:30 give it about 3 hrs to cook. I’m guessing it’s a 10 pound bird- and they say 20 minutes per pound- so 3.5 hrs is what it needs.
While that was all resting- I started in on the bread. So this was exciting for me because I don’t really make bread that much- and Paul Hollywood’s baguette recipe was all laid out in weights- and of course my scale is broken. So I sort of just “winged it” in terms of measuring.
and while that was proving- I whipped up some chocolate chip cookies! They tasted super awesome before they heave hit the oven so I was excited to try them! They came out delicious and I gave a bunch to the deli next door- and what was left was for myself and hubs (who picky as he is- he also ate them!! WIN)
Bread rested- then rolled into baguettes and then resting some more!
In the mean time, the turkey went into the oven. Unfortunately I couldn’t fit the bread and the cast iron pan into the top shelf, so about an hour in I put the bread into the turkey oven and tossed the water into the hot cast iron and hoped for the best in terms of the steam to crust the bread! 25 minutes later pulled them out- THEY WERE CRISPY! I even took a video 😉
You’re welcome.
Bread out- check on the turkey and start popping potatoes into the top oven and the sweet potatoes in the bottom. Once the potatoes were wrapped up I pulled them out and threw the asparagus in! I think by now the turkey was out, we plopped it on the plate and put the drippings in the cast iron. Gravy from drippings is literally the best thing in the world. NOM NOM NOM I almost forgot to do it too- so glad I didn’t.
I think about this time I realized I needed to blend the butternut squash- which took about 10 min maybe? I don’t have an immersion blender, so I had to use a regular one- it took a minute- and I burned my fingers but- damn was it tasty.
Once everything was on the table I realized my sweet potatoes didn’t have marshmallows- which is pretty much half the reason for the casseroles. so I threw the broiler on and tossed the whole kitten kaboodle in there.
Meanwhile- the cranberry sauce went into the microwave and unfortunately I put it in there for something like ten minutes- instead of one. yeah- the sauce exploded- everywhere. It was a disaster.
And in that hubbub- I yank open the oven door to catch my sweet potato casserole… on fire. Literally- on fire. Whoops. Sacrifice two to the cooking gods.
we sat down and fully enjoyed the fruits of my labor.
Almost two hours later I finally had some room to attack the apple pie. I made some some Arabic coffee and boozey whip cream while the pie heated up in the oven. It was extremely tasty, I ate way to much and enjoyed myself tremendously!
Ultimately we had enough food left over for 5 full meal prep containers with asparagus turkey and potatoes. And I have enough butternut squash soup to feed an army. It’s so tasty and I have NO.REGRATS
I was REALLY pleased and proud of myself. And I was very grateful to be able to celebrate thanksgiving with my husband. We are going out for Christmas because HELL NO to do this twice so close to each other. Maybe I’ll be recovered enough by next year to do this again!
Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed- I semi wrote this post just to remember what it looked like and some of the recipes I used- because I really liked them all. Hope you all have a great Monday!
Till next time fearless readers!
BrickHouseDesigns 