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December 01, 2002
Thanksgiving...With Crazy People!
Sunday, December 1, 2002
Happy Thanksgiving! Only a few days late. Last Thursday, I went over to my pal Tommy's house. My man Tommy has an account of the festivities, as well as a picture gallery of the fun.
I spent Wednesday night over at Tommy's, ostensibly to get an early start cooking on Thursday. Didn't happen. I woke up about an hour before the T-man and spent it in front of Ratchet and Clank. I called my sister Liz, who was at home, with a list of about half a dozen things that I had forgotten in the previous evening's Berlin Airlift-scale movement of ingredients and cooking hardware I brought to my inveterate bachelor friend's house.
(Tommy has a beautiful house...but I cook more in that kitchen than he does. So I had a good idea of what I needed to bring...namely everything.)
My first order of business was to make pies. Now, in my house, you can have Thanksgiving without turkey and cranberries and stuffing. But, you best make sure you're not in arm's reach of me if you tell me there's not gonna be any pie.
That's my mom's pie crust recipe. I've also put it on my friend Rusty's recipe database. You can find it here. I loves me my pie crust.
I planned on making four pies. Two apple, one pumpkin, and one strawberry. The strawberry pie was at the specific behest of my sis, who by some freak of genetic drift does not like apple pie. Which suits me just fine, since I don't have to wrestle her for it.
So, Liz has by now arrived with all sorts of hardware and ingredients, supplementing my prepositioned Thanksgiving assault gear. I make up the pie crust batter, finishing just as Rusty and Sarah arrive. They've brought their bread maker and ice cream maker, along with some carrots they were going to cook with brown sugar and butter. (I like that kind of vegetables.) Liz and Tommy peeled potatoes and apples.
At about three, my classmate Kevin arrived with his wife Patty and their son Eric. Patty has baked a pecan pie, and prepared a cornbread stuffing and a fruit salad (all of which were superb!). At this point, I was busy arguing with my pie crusts. I have a heck of a time getting them rolled out circular and thin. Patty told me that there exist circular, zippered bags for the express purpose of rolling out pie crusts. I will make pies for whoever can find me some. You will like the pies.
Finally, it's time to start playing with the bird!
(Note Kitch-N-Aid stand mixer. That's my baby. Also note Flavor Injector. That's for marinating the bird from the inside. With orange juice and Tony Chachere's Cajun Seasoning.)
Our plan was to deep fry our turkey. This proved to be a superb plan. Rusty had borrowed a fryer, and I'd bought a turkey at Hirsch's (where I work part time), and we had decided that it was something we all wanted to try.
Let me tell you...if you know how to cook a turkey this juicy and delicious in less than an hour, I want to hear about it.
Sarah's playing with our new friend, making it mo'tasty. She did a fine job.
Okay, so Rusty and I were gonna cook this sucker. He was just about to stuff the bird in the pot, when I had a vision of the oil burbling up and getting through his mitt and the rolling around on the ground with the screaming and the third degree burns and the trip to the hospital.
So I decided to do things differently. I grabbed a long board from the garage, and we put that through the handle. This was a Good Idea. I strongly recommend it.
And THAT, my friends, is the purpose of our exercise.
Right about this time, our last guest Jeff showed up bearing additional carbohydrates. Yay dinner rolls!
I carved the bird, and finished assembling the pie, and then we descended upon our food as ravening wolves. Although the rest of the afternoon had been really well organized, we didn't get much in the way of planning how we were going to serve. So we sorta just scattered dishes around the kitchen, and turned people loose.
After dinner and conversation, we had coffee, and PIES, and Rusty's stupendous cinnamon ice cream. My friend Rachel stopped by for dessert. The Fergusons, unfortunately, had to put the little one to bed, and adjourned before we began The Games.
Tommy and I demolished the competition at TriBond, and I annoyed everybody by winning Give Me the Brain. Then, we just sat around and chatted for six hours.
All in all, a VERY pleasant day. And every moment, I was mindful of how grateful I was for these friends. I'm a very very lucky man.
Posted by Lee at 01:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack