A Different Thanksgiving

This is NOT what my dinner looked like!

Like most people, my Thanksgiving was different this year – much smaller. It was also, um, plagued by mishaps. It actually started on Wednesday evening when I was gifted some sourdough starter. So I would add a loaf of sourdough bread to my menu. I knew I was likely cooking for myself, although it was possible my son would stop by.

I got up early Thursday morning, mixing the bread dough before my regular morning yoga so that I could do the 30-minute autolyse rising before I left the house for my morning walk. My plan was to bake the bread before I put the turkey in the oven, so after I got back from my walk I got the bread in a bowl to rise in the oven with the oven light turned on for a bit of heat. I decided I wanted it just a bit warmer so I turned on my electric heating pad and put it in the oven, too.

Then I started doing more time calculations and realized that I had to adjust my plan. I’d cook the turkey first, planning for it to be done around 1PM so that I could have a turkey sandwich on fresh sourdough bread around 5PM. (The bread and turkey wanted to cook at different temperatures.) So I turned off both the oven light and the heating pad.

Now I started making my family’s traditional stuffing – frying up some breakfast sausage, adding plenty of chopped onion and celery, and butter. When cooked I add chicken stock and Pepperidge Farm cubed stuffing, cover it, and let it sit while I prepare the bird.

My mother-in-law had a trick that she taught us and we have used for decades: butter the inside of a brown paper bag well, then put the stuffed turkey in that. Seal it with a few wooden clothespins and put the whole thing into a roasting pan. The bird cooks quicker, gets a lovely brown skin, and requires no tending or basting.

Before I got my hand – up past the wrist – full of butter while I preparing the bag, I got out the pan and turned the oven on to preheat. I buttered the bag, stuffed the breast (that’s all I was cooking, not a whole bird), sighed at the rip in the bag and decided I wasn’t going to start again with a new bag, and plopped it in the pan.

Only then did I realize I’d not taken out either my bowl of rising sourdough bread or my heating pad before turning the oven on!

Needless to say the dough was rising too quickly and the heating pad got slightly singed. Uh oh!

What time was it now? Probably 10:30AM but I decided it was time to open a bottle of wine that had been in my cupboard for a year waiting for an occasion; this was it.

I made my favorite cranberry-apple relish and sat and had a glass of wine. I didn’t have much choice but to shape the dough and bake it at the 325 that the turkey wanted instead of the 400 that the bread really wanted.

When the turkey was done, my son suddenly appeared at the door – YAY! He had been out hunting and had gotten a deer, which was in his truck, and because it was warm out he couldn’t stay long. He hadn’t had breakfast so we ate turkey, stuffing, cranberry relish, and bread – I hadn’t yet had time to make salad or a veggie dish. So it was most definitely not a healthy meal, but it was what it was.

Fortunately I was able to laugh about everything. Life can be very funny if you have a lighthearted perspective.

He left and I cleaned up the kitchen, making myself a salad after a while.

Later in the evening we both went to my daughter’s for games with the grands and dessert.

On the fiber front, I STILL haven’t gotten any further in weaving that hand painted warp; still just 60″ woven. I finally finished the project that I’m going to submit to an exhibit.

The submission is due by the end of December, and I don’t expect to know for many weeks after that if I am accepted. The show won’t open till October. If accepted, I have many steps to do to make the hanging problem free – no fussing on the part of those preparing the show.

I also been making Christmas gifts. Of course I can’t show you any of those. 🙂

Now I need to make time to write out my Christmas cards – the ones I made back in February. I’m actually looking forward to this.

I’ll also be writing 100 postcards to send to Georgia voters. I’ve got my list of names and addresses, and have ordered both the postcards and the stamps.

So there’s still plenty to do in the next few weeks. How about you?