Here's my plan for this year....to cook as little as possible. I absolutely love cooking, coming up with recipes, and generally making people happy with food, but Thanksgiving this year is not going to encompass too much cooking on my part. Shawn and I have decided not to travel this year for the Holiday's. Really, the only place we would travel is to my mom's house near Reno, but with us getting into a car accident a couple of years ago on Thanksgiving trying to get up to her house in time for dinner (ahem, a 3 hour drive each way), we have decided not to go anywhere this year. I think we may stop by Debi and Steve's house, simply because we were invited, and Mamaw and Papaw are going to be there, along with the rest of his family, but we should only be there for a few hours at best. Plus, they live 10 minutes from our house.You can ask Mel, the best part about Thanksgiving is leftovers, and of course getting together with family, but I shall focus on the leftovers. :) Our family LOVES leftovers, and I can't stress this enough. We will eat turkey after Thanksgiving until we can't even look at another piece of poultry. Literally, we eat turkey for breakfast, lunch and dinner until it's gone, only to turn around and have another one at Christmas. By the time we are done with our Christmas bird, we don't even want to look at another turkey for another 11 months, just in time for Thanksgiving the following year.
Because we will be at a house other than our own, I have decided to order a Thanksgiving day dinner from a local grocery store. That's right, I'm cheating! I want the leftovers but I don't want to cook. I will cook every other day of the year, but those high profile days turn me off. I can delve deep into my psyche for an explanation, but I won't. I will simply say two things: 1). When I'm forced to do something required like cooking for a holiday, I have a strong resistance to it. This is perhaps why I have continued my habit of procrastination from when I was a student. I simply hate being forced to do things. 2). I have cooked a number of Thanksgiving day dinners before and it's a booty load of work. My dinners totally rock, but the amount of time I would have to put into it for just Shawn and I simply isn't worth it if I can buy a turkey dinner.
Thanksgiving this year will be quiet, and filled with tons of leftovers. And for that, I am truly thankful!
4 comments:
Ummm ... yeah. I cooked last year for the first time for Ben's brothers and their others ... let's just say, I meant to have dinner on the table by 6:00 - 6:30 ... we actually ate closer to 9:00. sigh. Hopefully this won't preclude me from anything in the future. :]
Speaking of Thanksgiving-ish recipes, though (were we talking about that?) I tried/tweaked a new recipe from allrecipes ... and it was YUMMMYYYYYY. Check out my comment, though, as I changed it a lot. I almost think I should post it as my own recipe. Okay. Well ... I just reviewed it last night, and my review was showing ... but now it's not. So .... I'll post it here (since it's still in my profile). The link is: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Thanksgiving-Meatloaf-2/Detail.aspx
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I'll be honest; I didn't make this per the recipe on the first try. There were so many reviews saying it was dry and/or bland ... I tweaked it right out of the gate. I'm glad I did! It was FANTASTIC. Here's what I did:
I used 20 ounces of turkey, and a 6 oz package of turkey stuffing (it was only my husband and I eating). I mixed two cups of the stuffing (2/3 of the package) with a cup of water (about the proper amount per the package, minus a bit to allow for turkey juices), plus 1/2 tsp chicken bouillon. To this I added the turkey, one egg, one stalk of celery chopped small, about the same amount of diced yellow onion, and the following seasonings: garlic, marjoram, thyme, rosemary, ginger, white pepper, celery salt, and sea salt. These were eyeballed. I was liberal with the salt and garlic - a few decent shakes of the rosemary, thyme, and white pepper, and small dashes of the marjoram, ginger, and celery salt. I would have added sage if I had had some. I plunked it in a loaf pan and kind of settled it down in with a spoon making ridges in the top (so it wasn't domed). The remaining cup of stuffing I mixed with 2/3 cup of water and poured over the loaf. I recommend baking to the internal temperature - mine took longer than an hour. I did make turkey gravy to pour over top, but it didn't need it! It was flavorful and moist! Hubs (picky) went back for seconds! As an added plus, it looked GORGEOUS with the baked stuffing on top. YUMMY!
(I gave it 4 stars because it wasn't the actual recipe. What I did make I would definitely give 5 stars.)
PS: I also discovered that there is a character limit to recipe reviews on allrecipes. :] 1200 characters. lol.
Annie - Thanks for sending this to me. I will have to try it. It sounds great. I have made many different meatloaves, but nothing like this.
(I didn't know either that they had a character limit). :)
LOL! That cracks me up that the queen in the kitchen is ordering thanksgiving dinner. :) But I get it. We always head over to my moms, and there is a HUGE turkey, but with 12 adults, and 7 children, even a huge turkey doesn't last forever. Better than when we spend the holidays with my in-laws, they usually have 16 adults, and 18 children. It's a mad house. The turkey is usually gone by the end of dinner. So anyway, I wouldn't mind ordering my own dinner so we have some leftovers too.
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