For a meal that took me the best part of three days to prepare, it sure was consumed in a hurry. I certainly don't regret the enthusiasm with which the turkey, cranberry salad, sweet potatoes, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, rolls, and rocket salad were greeted. There are few things worse than watching your guests slowly and politely choke down food that you have prepared. Nor do I regret the time invested in the preparation. It isn't often that I slow down enough to enjoy savoring the smells and the work involved in preparing several dishes from scratch. It is not an easy thing to do in the world we find ourselves living in 2012.
If there ever is a time to slow down in the kitchen, however, Thanksgiving is the holiday for it. With all of the shopping nearly completed by Thursday morning, I decided to begin cooking in earnest. The sweet potatoes came out of the pantry first. I gave them a good scrub and popped them in a hot oven for roasting.
Next came the turkey wings for the gravy. They were also roasted in a hot oven with handfuls of onion wedges scattered over top.
It didn't take long for the kitchen to start smelling like a good place to spend the remaining hours of the day. With the sweet potatoes and turkey wings roasting, I cubed the sourdough rye bread for the stuffing. The cubes went in the oven to be toasted when the turkey wings came out, adding the aroma of freshly baking bread to the environment.
I lost track of how many blocks of butter that went into the three days of cooking. The first one was melted to saute the onions and celery for the Bacon, Onion and Rye Bread Stuffing.
The sweet potatoes came out at some point late morning:
As the onions and celery melted down into delicious softness in the butter, I began simmering the turkey gravy ingredients in a large stockpot. I didn't really think that the kitchen could smell any better, but then it was time to fry the bacon for the stuffing. The aromas all combined together to form a little bit of heaven on earth.
By the time I had mixed all of the stuffing ingredients together, I was famished. I decided right then and there that we were having stuffing for dinner that night even though I had originally intended to save the stuffing for our big dinner on Saturday.
Afternoon school pick ups interrupted all of the cooking. J came home wanting to read more books about Thanksgiving, and considering that twenty-four hours prior he had revealed, to my shock and dismay, that he had no idea at all what Thanksgiving was, I concluded I had better set aside thirty minutes to read to him. In any case, I had already decided early that afternoon that my older children needed to contribute some man hours to the food preparation. There were five kilos of potatoes on my countertop waiting to be peeled, and so they were sent there to get to work.
C made it through six or so potatoes before he pleaded for mercy. During that time had managed to injure himself and create a big mess. I ended up releasing him from kitchen duty for the moment. Thankfully his older sister took over, and even though she complained at one point about "feeling too Amish" working at the kitchen sink in her knee-length school dress, she finished off the first five pound bag before heading upstairs to do her homework.
J got his book time snuggled on the couch with me. We both learned about Sarah Hale, and how she "saved Thanksgiving." It was her campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, tirelessly conducted over many decades and with pleas to numerous presidents, that prompted Abraham Lincoln to declare the fourth Thursday of November a national day of Thanksgiving in 1863.
Meanwhile, things were still happening in the kitchen. After simmering, straining, and thickening, the gravy looked like this:
The sweet potatoes were mashed and mixed together with ingredients guaranteed to make them even more delicious. They looked like this:
I had to use a pie dish because every single other baking dish was otherwise occupied.
Eventually, in between pick ups and drop offs for swimming for three separate children, the potatoes got mashed with copious amounts of cream cheese and sour cream, the stuffing and sweet potato casseroles were baked, and we all sat down about 7:30 for our first Thanksgiving feast.
I realized too late that we had nothing green to go on the plate, but never mind. I figured a one day break from greens wouldn't matter too much. The stuffing was declared a success, and I began to relax a little more about cooking for seventeen people on Saturday. As an extra bonus, Gillian came by on Thursday evening insisting on lending a hand, and she ended up peeling the remaining bag of potatoes. By the time these had cooked sufficiently I concluded I was too tired to mash them. So I drained them and let them sit overnight hoping they would be none the worse for it.
On Friday morning, as the children got ready for school, I looked at the clock and realized that my family had probably eaten their Thanksgiving dinner and were sitting around in turkey-induced comas. We decided to skype them, and sure enough, they answered. The cousins all got to see one another and say hello. It was a slightly chaotic and rather short interchange, but it warmed our hearts, particularly the delight of my two-year-old niece pointing excitedly to us on the screen.
I returned from school drop off newly energized and determined to make a homemade apple dessert of one kind or another (see Thoughts of Home for my reasons for doing this). A short walk to the grocery store later, I began making pastry and peeling apples for Danish Apple Bars. They came together very nicely, somewhat to my surprise, and I think this is a recipe that I will be repeating often.
Friday I also made another double batch of stuffing (more sourdough rye, more butter, more onions, more bacon ...), mashed a second batch of potatoes, and made the cranberry salad. It was all finished by school pick up time, more or less, which was a good thing as Cameron needed to be rushed to his cricket match, and Sophie had to be driven to the all-important speech night at her junior school. I can't remember if I have mentioned this in my blog before, but Aussies love their speeches, and many schools have something called "speech night" or presentation night toward the end of the year. Ross had the privilege of going the first year, I went last year, and this year, we drew straws. Ross lost, so he took her, and I ended up watching Cameron at cricket, something I still don't really understand or appreciate. I comforted myself by reflecting that I was at least outdoors on a beautiful evening.
Stay tuned for what happened on Saturday, our official Wilkin turkey day for 2012 ...
Christie. I wish I had eating Thanksgiving in Oz with you. Heavens. what a meal!
PS, you can use any quotes off my site that you wish. :)
Posted by: Shanda | 11/29/2012 at 05:34 AM