SonicChicken blog

Two days until Thanksgiving, time to start preparing our feast! Today (Tuesday) is when we:

• De-bone the turkey (which has been defrosting in the frig since Saturday)
• Make turkey stock with the bones
• Make the cranberry sauce
• Mix up the spinach dip
• Try the pumpkin roll recipe (in case it doesn’t work out, we have time to do something else tomorrow)
• Cornbread (for our stuffing tomorrow)

We also be making mashed potatoes with our dinner tonight, since we need some leftovers to make poppy seed rolls.

I only took a few pictures of our Thanksgiving feast. Fortunately, my cousins brought their cameras and didn’t hesitate to use them (and share)! I’ve included a few crowd shots from Greg and Cal. They also allowed me to add their pictures to our photoset. Jeremy and Ducky have their own Thanksgiving photoset on Flickr, including pics of the annual “appetite enhancement” ride (and pictures from our dinner, obviously).

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year–lots of family and friends, good food and drink, and great company! But as usual with such an ambitious project, there was room for improvement. Here’s what worked well, and how we can do a better job next year.

For reference, please see the 2008 Thanksgiving menu.

Appetizers

• Aditi’s samosas were a smash, the very first thing we ran out of IIRC.

• Peeling the deviled eggs was a pain. Next year don’t use ultra fresh eggs. Maybe add a little vinegar to the water also. (Test this ahead of time to make sure it doesn’t change the taste.) On the positive side, we cooked 2 dozen eggs for 27 people, which was the perfect amount–we had 4 halves left over.

• Poppy seed rolls could have been a little smaller and/or taken more filling. Double the dough and triple (instead of quadruple) the filling? A double batch was good for this size party. Remember to check poppy seed stock before Thanksgiving day! (Buying poppy seeds in ½ cup spice jars is way too expensive.)

• We did a baked brie, but the cheese was too big. Stick to an 8 oz brie, preferably not triangular. Also we should not have prepped this early, since the jam soaked through the filo dough.

• The artichoke dip was excellent, but it would have been even better if we’d done this in a shallow pan instead of a loaf pan. (More surface area to brown!)

• Our cheese tray had four cheeses (4-8 oz each). We sliced up one pear, which was the right amount for that.

• Four cans of black olives weren’t enough. We could have used more olives, preferably a variety.

Menu

• We did an 11 lb ham and 18 lb turkey. This was a good amount for 27 people–enough leftovers for sending home, sandwiches, etc.

• A double recipe of stuffing worked well. The half-loaf of red pepper bread gave it a nice zing. (We also used 1.5 sourdough rounds.)

• Turkey in a browning bag came out nice and moist, but we didn’t get enough gravy. We’re going to try a large covered roasting pan next time.

• We made about 7 lbs of potatoes. Although we didn’t run out, I think some of the folks toward the end of the serving line took less than they wanted because it was obvious we were running low. We should probably plan on 1/3 lb per person next year.

• A single recipe of cranberry sauce might have been enough, but I don’t know if we’d have leftovers. Eek! We’ll stick with a double recipe for this size crowd.

• 1.5 recipes of “awesome strawberry stuff” was too much. We didn’t even touch the extra half recipe, so just make a single.

• We made both our traditional candied yams as well as sweet potato casserole, two large sweet potatoes for each. The casserole was a hit, and almost nobody ate the candied yams. (In fact, I think most people who did take some only did so to be polite.) Next year we’ll skip the candied yams.

• Very few people took the carrots. We probably shouldn’t even bother with a veggie dish. (Unless it’s carrot halwa, see below.)

Dessert

• Two pumpkin/butternut squash pies was too much. Just do one or the other. (Make the butternut and call it “pumpkin” so people don’t freak out.)

• Two apple pies was too much. Everybody went for the French apple pie, so don’t bother with the country apple.

• Not many people tried Karthik’s halwa (kind of a carrot pudding, fantastic!) I wonder if we should have put this out during the main course?

Drinks

• We asked everybody to bring drinks, but I guess we weren’t sufficiently clear about that. Some of our guests thought that they were responsible for all the drinks on their own. Result: we have lots of leftover drinks. Perhaps next year we should have people bring 500-1000 mL per member of their party, e.g. a bottle of cider per child or a bottle of wine per adult.

Seating

• We let people seat themselves, so we ended up with many folks sitting down with people they eat with every day, plus a few “outsiders” who were sort of out in the cold. We should have done a seating chart to keep branches of the family from dominating their tables. Also, both of our foreign guests (my two student assistants from India) ended up at the same table. We should have placed them at separate tables so more people would have a chance to speak with them.

• Two tables (8- and 6-person) fit in the nook by turning them so the ends butted into the south wall. We got our 10-person table in the central hallway between the nook and great room by putting a carpet runner on the hardwood floor (to keep the chair legs from scratching the floor).

• The bar could accommodate 8 people if we had 4 more bar stools.

• We could put another 10-person table in the great room, but it would have to be set up right before dinner and taken down immediately afterward.

• Max 42 people without shoehorning anybody, not including infants or other non-social diners.

One thing where we really screwed up, though–we didn’t take nearly enough pictures!

I was just making the stuffing for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving feast. I noticed that the recipe, (which I wrote down over 20 years ago), is becoming illegible and doesn’t include the changes we’ve made over the years. So I decided to record our current recipe here. Hats off to my mother and grandmother for the original recipe!

• 1 c (1/2 lb) butter
• 1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
• celery, including leaves, chopped (about twice the volume of the chopped onion)
• 1 c raw cranberries
• 1 tart apple, cored and chopped
• ½ to 1 Tbsp salt
• 1 Tbsp thyme, sage, and/or marjoram (or use poultry seasoning)
• 1 tsp pepper
• 12 (yes, twelve) c bread cubes
• ½ recipe cornbread
• turkey stock

Presumably you’re going to stuff a turkey with this recipe. I like to make the stuffing the day before we roast the turkey. (Otherwise, you’re shoving warm stuffing into the uncooked bird, contrary to safe food handling practices.)

Two days before roasting the bird, chop up the bread and leave it out overnight. (Alternately, you can toast the bread in the oven, but that’s a lot of bread!) The bread needs to be a bit dried out for this recipe.

We also make the cornbread now–one less thing for us to do on Thanksgiving Eve.

One day before roasting the bird, (usually Thanksgiving Eve):

1. Chop the apple, onion and celery. (I prefer the leafy celery stalks, especially the inner ones, but you need some solid celery ribs for texture.) Keep the leaves and stalks separate.
2. In a very large (at least 8 qt) pan, melt butter.
3. Saute the celery stalks for about a minute.
4. Add the chopped onion and cook until the onions and celery are just softening, maybe 3-5 minutes?
5. Add the celery leaves, cranberries, chopped apple, and cook for just a minute.
6. Add ~half of the salt and all the other seasonings, mix.
7. Add as much of the bread as will easily fit in the pan. (Now you know why you need a big one!) Toss to coat.
8. Find a large bowl, perhaps 12 qt. Dice the cornbread up into 3/4″ cubes and spread them out on the bottom of the bowl.
9. Pour the celery/onion/bread mixture over the cornbread.
10. Place any remaining bread cubes in the saute pan and stir them around to pick up any of the butter, herbs, etc. Pour into the bowl.
11. Toss together everything in the bowl. Adjust seasoning and salt to taste.
12. Cover the bowl and place in the refrigerator.

The stuffing is usually a bit dry when it’s time to roast the bird. Add some turkey stock to moisten the stuffing. It should just hold together when you mix it.

Stuff the bird, roast it, and enjoy!

Over on Collective Sigh today, Andante is trying to come up with a recipe for something to bring to the family feast on Thanksgiving. Hopefully this fits the bill. Barb doctored up the standard deviled egg recipe and came up with something recognizably traditional, but with a subtle zing to it.

Barb’s Deviled Eggs eggs (we usually make about 2 dozen) mayonnaise honey mustard sweet pickle relish pepper salt paprika

The astute observer will notice the lack of measurements on the list above, because I don’t measure anything for this recipe. I just add stuff a little at a time, and adjust everything to taste.

I would never have guessed this, but a lot of my friends and family don’t know how to hard-boil an egg! Nobody ever admits to this, but an egg aficionado (such as myself) can always tell when this is done poorly. So here’s the first step, cooking the eggs: Put the eggs in a pan of cool water. (If you’re worried about them cracking, stick the big end of each egg with a pin, but be sure not to poke all the way to the yolk!) Over medium-high heat, bring the water just to boiling. Turn off the heat, cover the pan, and let sit for 10 minutes. Cool the eggs — Pour off the hot water and cover with cold water. Repeat whenever the water gets warm, until the eggs are cool.

Remove the egg shells and cut the eggs in half. Put all the yolks in a bowl and all the whites on a serving plate.

Add some mayo to the yolks, maybe about a ¼ cup per dozen eggs. (Go easy! You can always add more, but it’s kind of hard to take it out once you add it!) Add about a tablespoon of pickle relish and a ½ Tbsp honey mustard to the eggs, grind up some pepper and mix everything with a fork. Taste early and often. You should notice the pepper- and mustard taste, without being overwhelmed by them. Add more if needed. Once you get the pickle relish, mustard, and pepper adjusted, add more mayo until the consistency is right. If the mixture is too sweet, sprinkle in a little salt.

Scoop the yolk mixture into the whites. Once all the whites are filled, sprinkle with paprika.

If you make these ahead of time, keep them in the frig. They travel fine, as long as you’re only driving up to an hour or so. Otherwise leave the yolk mixture in a bowl, and put it in an ice chest along with the egg whites. Then fill the eggs when you arrive. (Don’t forget to bring the paprika with you!)