Of victories and defeats: Thanksgiving 2009

Thanksgiving weekend has passed us by, but I feel like I'm still trying to recover... maybe it's because of the snow that's been dumped on us - the entire city seems to be in a little bit of shock because pretty much nobody has their snow tires on, so for the past two days it's taken me more than double the time it usually does to get to work, and all our clients are showing up late to their appointments as well so everyone's schedule is out of wack... that and I ate THREE big dinners this weekend - my own Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday, hot pot on Sunday (no pics so it didn't happen?) and then a Turducken (!) dinner on Monday.

As you may recall, I was originally dreading making Thanksgiving dinner this year just based on my negative experience last year. I was appointed "Head Chef" this year, but my mom already had her hand in the "menu" - she insisted that it was completely appropriate to make two types of mashed potatoes (I was originally planning to have mashed sweet potatoes and roasted potatoes), that store-bought pie was better than homemade pie and that "the turkey I bought was too small [at ~12-13 lb]... so I bought some prime rib... and some crab legs... and a shrimp ring..."

But I'd already won Battle Brussels Sprouts (and, to be honest, was, and still am, being SUCH a sore winner about it) and reached a nice compromise on Battle Pie (someone in our house finished the original Safeway pie before Thanksgiving, so I got the call to buy a replacement pie while I was at Sweetgrass.)


It was a victorious night not only because the meal ended up being delicious, but also because there were lots of these little pride "battles" and I ended up winning most of them (yes, I have a very childish relationship with my mom):

Battle Stuffing - My earliest memories of stuffing was this brownish, grayish sludge that was served alongside deli turkey at my high school cafeteria whenever Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled around. Often everything else would run out before the stuffing, so if you got to the cafeteria too late you would just be faced with plates of these unidentifiable food parts. I *have* had good homemade stuffing since then, but I think cooked bread would just blow the mind of all my relatives so I just stick to stuffing my turkey with chopped carrots, celery, onion and herbs. This year I picked up some "poultry mix" from Sobeys as I didn't want just thyme and thyme alone. SO the battle was this - the night before my mom insisted that I needed to sauté the vegetables beforehand because otherwise, despite being diced into tiny pieces and being cooked in the oven for four hours, the vegetables would not soften. I was home alone when I was stuffing the turkey, the vegetables were raw, and they came out soft (and soaked in turkey juices).

    

Battle Peels in Mashed Potatoes -
Mom (On why there shouldn't be peels in mashed potatoes): You need to stop being so selfish, you need to think of everyone else's tastes.
Vincci: I am thinking of everyone else! Everyone needs/love fibre!
Needless to say, I lost the battle, but I did sneakily make "Skinny Mashed Potatoes" with just evaporated milk instead of the usual butter and milk. I do find that evaporated milk makes mashed potatoes more creamy than regular milk, but I do miss that richness that butter adds. No more skinny mashed potatoes from now on, I don't think.

And like any great head chef, I made my "sous chef" do all the work:

    
    
Battle Gravy - My mom buys so much powdered gravy mix that I'm pretty sure she doesn't know where real gravy comes from. This dinner was no different - she was at the ready with five packages of the stuff. After my uncle elegantly plated the turkey with his bare hands, (Well, almost. That was his first attempt, and then my cousin and I came in with spatulas.) I simply poured the drippings off into a wok, whisked in ⅓ cup of flour and it thickened perfectly, though I'll concede that my mom was right in using her fancy Japanese fat separator to separate out some of the fat. You could totally tell that my mom was skeptical when she went in to taste the gravy... but then her eyes lit up! It was perfectly seasoned. Go me :) (But she still made powdered gravy for her prime rib.)


We also made salad, and my sous-chef did a *stellar* job julienning the carrots (she learned how to do it on the spot!) A few more pics, and then I hope to share some recipes/techniques in some later entries:

    



    

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If Saturday was a night of victories, then Monday was the night of defeats. Gluttonous defeats. My cousin's friend Chad had just moved out to a new apartment and decided to host a Thanksgiving dinner as sort of a housewarming. I'd just seen ads for turduckens in the latest issue of City Palate, an awesome local bi-monthly publication, and I know my cousin and his friends would be the type of guys who would be into this sort of thing, so I sent off the contacts, calls were made, and a 17-lb turducken was acquired from Second to None Meats (who gets their turducken from Valbella), and they sweetened the deal with some free beef bacon, which the guys classily layered on their turducken for their slow, 15-turned-into-17 hour roast.


It was a potluck sorta deal, so I contributed my raw beet salad, which I already shared the "recipe" for here, minus the dried fruit. I spent a lot of time in the kitchen taking photos of it. And of beets. Because they're my favourite.





    


Chad also got this *amazing* candied yams recipe from the "Internet family". There were sweet potatoes, carrots, apple and walnuts, and the whole thing was topped with a generous sprinkling of marshmallows. I'm making this next year, if only because I want the candy :P


And of course, the turducken was delicious. We picked off the beef bacon first, and after being in the oven for so long they ended up tasting like beef jerky, but without the toughness. The only downside was that the turkey itself was huge compared to the other two birds, and since I was one of the first ones to get a piece, I didn't really get any duck or chicken, so I was *obliged* to go for seconds for the full experience. The turkey meat itself was a touch too salty for my taste, but I noticed how even the white meat was still pretty moist (my turkey had rough white meat and most dark meat)... definitely investing in a baster for next year because I really cannot make the commitment to brine the bird overnight.


Coming up to Thanksgiving, I was thankful for just a lot of things that seem to be going well for me right now, but this weekend, I was thankful for great food, friends old and new, and victories and defeats.