Well.

The food was good.  Really good, if I do say so myself.  And judging by the very reasonable amount of leftovers in the fridge, I finally seem to have hit a sweet spot on quantity.  I started cooking early in the day (with some assistance), and cooked on and off until the final push to finish everything at about 5.  Really not bad.

My dad and stepmom were in town, and I almost felt bad that there was so little I needed by way of food prep assistance.  But hey, they were there to take the kids out for a walk while they were going stir-crazy before lunch, so that in itself is a big help.  And, really, they were just there to see the grandkids.  And see them, they did.  Daniel, especially, seems to just love the extra attention and was on full funny/cute overload.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the rest of the day (or week) was such a great success.  It was cold and rainy, so no outdoor activities.  Rebecca has been miserable and sick and over-tired the whole week (today marked 4 straight days of wailing and flailing with a side of fever and runny nose).  Unpleasant, at best.  She is a pretty demanding child when sick (I will admit she may have gotten that from me), but she feels so rotten that she has no idea what she wants.

“I want oatmeal!
NO OATMEAL!
I want TV.
NOOOO Sesame Street!
I want to sit on the chair.
NOOOOOOOOOO!  NO CHAIR NO CHAIR!
Waaaaaaahhhhhhhh……

I feeling sad right now.”

It’s exhausting.

The kids briefly sat with us for dinner, though there was a lot of demanding to get down, and a lot of “I don’t yike it” when suggestions were made to try anything but the cranberries.  Rebecca had yogurt for dinner. Daniel eventually discovered a love for Pumpkin Bread Pudding and, while devouring his serving and that of the person next to him, exhibited a focus I’d never previously seen.  He is my child, after all.

At any rate, Dad and Stepmom are headed home in the morning, and I can only hope Rebecca gets over this virus and doesn’t pass it along to her brother (a girl can dream).  It’s been, quite frankly, a nightmare. Especially since I feel pretty confident that there is nothing to be done but wait for it to run its course.

Alas.  At least the food was good.

I got up a little early this morning, before the kids woke up, so that I could put the turkey in the brine.  It was getting brighter out as I stashed the brining bucket in the unheated sunroom, then checked my email while I heard the kids start to wake up over the monitor.  It was nice to make my way through my usual set of websites without the kids trying to drag me away from the computer.

Now, the kids are up but still in their footie pajamas.  Daniel is dragging around the blanket his grandmother made for him, funky and damp and discolored from always sucking at the corners, but none will replace it.  Good thing their great-grandmother made an identical one for Rebecca, but she prefers the Project Linus blanket from the NICU.  Rebecca is scampering around in her pink-striped pajamas, and has already requested to put her favorite backpack haan-ah.

I think we’ve already read six or seven books. M has made a rare early appearance in the living room and is reading books eight and nine while I blog.  I’ve got the soundtrack from Finding Neverland playing on iTunes, a spectacular Sunday morning kind of album if ever there were one.

It will be a quiet day, and even the cooking isn’t out of hand.  My sister-in-law is bringing dessert and cranberry sauce, M is in charge of the potatoes.  That leaves me with the turkey, which will sit in its salty bath until the kids go down for their afternoon nap, and the green beans, which can also wait until this afternoon.  We’ll pull the kids up to the dining room table, and we’ll all eat an early dinner together.  Maybe watch a movie after they go to bed.  Small and quiet, quite a contrast to what will be the crowded (and beloved) insanity of Christmas.  But so far, here at 8:00 on Thanksgiving morning, a lovely day.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Thanksgiving is a mere two days away, and I am in big-time prep mode.

First, there was the debate over the menu.  That’s settled, and it’s nearly the same as last year.  As we’re down to probably only three adults and two picky toddlers, we’re cutting out a side dish (goodbye stuffing, I like you a lot but I don’t think I’ll miss you terribly) and taking it down to one debatable dessert.  Much as I adore our usual pumpkin bread pudding and some kind of pie, it’s just way too much.  After the big dinner, we stuff some dessert into our bellies and still have entire platters leftover for the weekend.  And you know what?  It just isn’t necessary.  Yes, this is largely motivated by my current Weight-Watching (and things are going pretty well, if I do say so myself), but everyone else is in agreement: it’s just unnecessary.  So we’re actually only making pumpkin cranberry bread.  It hardly even counts as a dessert, it’s really just a quickbread.  But maybe we’ll saute the slices with a little butter and serve ‘em with a scoop of ice cream to make it dessert-y for the holiday, and then whatever leftovers we have will just be a simple quickbread and not a dense, eggy (delicious) lump of bread pudding.  Even the side dishes, which I refuse to make “light” versions of, will be moderated by only making half portions in order to have less leftover the next day.

Alright, so made my list of the menu.  Then, I made the ingredient/shopping list for each menu item.  Long list, some overlap, some things we already have.  But you have to start with a good list.

Actually, since it was such a big list (and it was already typed and easy to cut and paste), I went a little nuts and organized it by sections of the grocery store.  Because I hate getting all the way to the freezer case and realizing I forgot something in produce.  And with the two kids that will be strapped into the cart this afternoon, I want to be as efficient as I can be.

The pièce de résistance of Thanksgiving meal prep lists is my actual cooking plan.  For each menu item, I made a rough list of steps, so that I know which ones will need the oven (for how long, at what temperature), stovetop, or cuisinart; when in the day they need to be cooked (whether they can be made in the morning or need to be done at a certain time relative to the meal); and who will do what (M is in charge of smashed potatoes, SIL is making the pumpkin bread and cranberry sauce).  And the turkey has been thawing in the fridge since Sunday.

All this for a single meal for three, maybe four, adults.  Ah well.  I enjoy doing things big from time to time, and though it won’t be the enormous family gatherings I grew up with, I don’t think I could ever just skip the festivities entirely.

In the meantime, it’s pouring rain and Daniel seems to be boycotting the nap for the second time today.  We could be quite a spectacle at Stop & Shop this afternoon…

This evening marked the design phase of the Thanksgiving ‘08 Project.  My sister-in-law and her boyfriend came over to make me a birthday dinner (delicious braised sea bass), and conversation turned to the upcoming holiday of feasting.  My sister-in-law will be joining us, though her boyfriend will sadly be away for the weekend.  It’s possible we might pick up another person or two, but it’s just as likely that it will be the three of us, plus two toddlers.

In the past, we’ve gone way overboard.  Our first Thanksgiving together, probably six years ago, it was also just the three of us.  We ended up making an entire 12-pound turkey, and I’d have to guess five sides and three desserts.  It was enough for our entire neighborhood.  I’m not sure we had enough storage space for all the leftovers.  Since then, I’d say we’ve added more people without really cutting back all that much on the food.

But now, back down to only three (plus kids), we put out the idea that we needed to cut back a little.  Except that once someone would suggest a dish that could be cut, someone else objected strongly.  M said the green bean casserole was unnecessary, I refuse to give it up (I make a rockin’ one from Cook’s Illustrated).  I said I could live without mashed potatoes, M balked.

We ended up talking in circles about what could go and what had to stay, until M put on his project management hat, and informed us that we needed to survey customer expectations and put together a scope document.  It all ended up getting very, very silly.  But I think we’ve agreed in principle on this year’s menu.  The only slight question mark is dessert, but we are in agreement that there should be only one dessert (typically, we make three, and maybe half of one gets eaten), and that the one dessert should not be pumpkin pie.  I know, we’re so un-American.

This year’s menu:

• Turkey (duh), and I think we will still make a whole, though hopefully smaller, turkey.  Primarily for the purposes of leftovers, and the holy grail of late November: turkey sandwiches.
• Green bean casserole (I win!), though only a half-portion.
• Mashed potatoes (also a smaller quantity), with gravy.  The potatoes are M’s responsibility, since he’s the one who insisted they remain on the menu.  I suspect I’ll be the one doing the gravy.
• Cranberry sauce (homemade, not canned).  M advocated a sort of chopped cranberry relish that his mom used to make, but I had to be honest: I really didn’t like it at all.  So my cranberry sauce wins.
• Stuffing (I think, or did this one get nixed?), half portion.
• Salad, because we need something vaguely healthy.
• Dessert.  Likely something with pumpkin, but not pumpkin pie.  Possibly a half-portion of pumpkin bread pudding, possibly some extra pumpkin cranberry bread (which we decided could qualify as dessert if we sort of grilled/sauteed it with some extra butter and then put ice cream on top, otherwise it’s just brunch food.  Really awesome brunch food, too.  But not dessert.)

I admit.  It doesn’t exactly seem minimalist.  I don’t think, in the end, that we cut down the number of dishes except in the case of dessert.  But we do intend to reduce their quantities.

What about you?  What are your must-haves on Thanksgiving, and what traditional dishes can you happily do without?

I’m in a food coma, stuffed beyond belief. Dinner was excellent, and frankly, I did very little of the actual cooking. I was sort of like the executive chef of my little restaurant: made a bunch of the decisions, but did very little of the actual cooking. Major kudos in particular to my sister-in-law’s boyfriend, who took the lead.

But I will not let my full belly distract me from my goal of posting every day this month! It may not be exciting, but here I am. Babies were a little fussy and “off” today, as they have picked up my cold (sorry!). I went to take a nap and M put them down particularly early for bed, which hopefully will not have negative ramifications as far as how early they get up tomorrow. Ah well.

And in case there was any question at all what I’m especially thankful for this year…

Wohoo, it’s almost Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving has become a favorite holiday of mine over the last few years. I mean, what could be better than a day dedicated to cooking an obscene amount of food? Awesome. I believe I’ve managed to host my own Thanksgiving four out of the last six years. In large part, that was because I was always working on an academic schedule that didn’t allow for extra time off at Thanksgiving, and I decided I had absolutely no interest in joining the hordes of people who travel for a long weekend. You practically spend more time attempting to get to your destination than you actually have while you’re there, and you choke up a ridiculous sum of money for the privilege. So, instead, staying at home and hosting whomever wants to join us has turned Thanksgiving into a pretty relaxed holiday.

This year, it will be me and M (and the kids, not exactly partaking in the food), M’s sister and her boyfriend, and possibly a classmate of hers who I’m told is from Sri Lanka and has never experienced an American Thanksgiving. Lucky her! Yes, that’s only five adults, but it won’t stop me from cooking as though there were a dozen. Cooking will, admittedly, be trickier this year now that I’ve got two infants in the mix. But there will be extra hands around, and some things can be done ahead of time, so I can make things over the course of a couple of days.

So, because I know you were dying to know, here’s this year’s menu:

• Turkey, of course – my recipe is a brined bird courtesy of my geek crush, Alton Brown. I’m half tempted to try his fried turkey someday, and if you haven’t seen that episode of Good Eats, I strongly recommend it.
• Gravy – Because why else was there a gravy boat on my wedding registry?
• Green Bean Casserole – Excellent recipe courtesy of Cook’s Illustrated, which I tried for the first time last year. Just like the one you grew up with. Except really, really good.
• Stuffing – courtesy of my sister-in-law. Don’t know what recipe it’ll be, but I’m sure it’ll be good. Filled with the relief of someone who hasn’t had four days off of work in almost six months. Yet another reason I didn’t go to medical school.
• Mashed Potatoes – M has requested mashed potatoes instead of smashed. He somehow felt they were more appropriate, especially when there’s gravy involved. Can’t say I disagree.
• Salad – Something fresh and green in the hopes that we’ll be able to digest everything else. I’m thinking about mixed greens with apple, craisins, candied pecans, and goat cheese. But we’ll see.
• Pumpkin Bread Pudding – My sister-in-law will be making this again this year, and I’ve made it myself in the past. Oh. My. God. It’s just scandalous how good it is. And how easy. Also, though I love pumpkin “things,” I’ve actually never been a fan of pumpkin pie. (I know, it’s practically un-American to admit it.) But with this in place of pie, you’ll never miss it at my house.
• Apple Cranberry Pie – I’m physically incapable of making only one dessert for a dinner party. And this one was in the most recent issue of Cook’s Illustrated. how could I pass it up? I know, it’s ridiculous. Just don’t remind me that neither dessert includes chocolate, or I may have to make something else.

There you have it. The menu is created, the shopping list is prepared (you know it’s a good one when it includes heavy cream and butter). Let the festivities begin.