Thanksgiving week! The three days before Thursday was two half days and a full day off school for the nine year old. For the half days she went to basketball camp at the rec center – masked and with one COVID vaccine shot, I felt like it was an okay activity on my risk scale. Then on the Wednesday full day off, she had a friend over for a playdate and they baked cupcakes from the Milkbar Kid’s Only cookbook. (I find calling it a playdate when the kids are nine… odd? At this point, aren’t they just “hanging out”? Certainly adults don’t call them playdates when they hang out.)
We had been planning on visiting a friend in Boston for Thanksgiving, but at the last minute she told us that she wasn’t going to be home, so we had a quiet family Thanksgiving at home. As is our tradition, we watched the Macy’s Day Parade and then the Dog Show. The Husband made sausage balls. We watched a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.
Some things this Thanksgiving:
– Buttermilk brined a turkey breast and it turned out really good. I had to brine it two days ahead of time, and didn’t really have a bag to brine it in, so I used the InstantPot insert. Didn’t quite get the whole breast submerged, so I had to rotate it a couple times.
-I also didn’t have a rack or a roasting pan, so I just used a regular 13″x9″ Pyrex pan and made a little “rack” by laying some carrots, parsnips, and onions on the bottom of the pan. It worked really well, and the roasted vegetables were an unexpected bonus to the dinner table.
– The family being understanding and not at all cranky when I underestimated the amount of time it would take to cook the turkey. The recipe I had been looking at had been for half a turkey breast. ooops. We had planned to eat at 3pm, but it was closer to 4pm when we sat down.
-Playing Ticket To Ride. Well the Husband and the nine year old and I played Ticket to Ride. The two little watched, then ran around, then started flinging the spare trains across the room. I’ll be very excited when they can start to play too.
-two pies. I’m sure glad I wrote a post last year about the perfect pumpkin pie recipe so I could recreate it. Though the pie still cracked. For the apple pie, I used the apple pie filling I had frozen in October. For some reason, the bottom of the pie didn’t bake through and I had to stick it back in the oven after we had cut into it. I need to troubleshoot that. It wasn’t even that the crust was just soggy from the filling; it was still raw while the top of the pie was beautifully baked. Still everything was tasty.
The Friday after, a friend who lives around the corner had us over for hot pot. This was such a brilliant idea for a small outdoor dinner party! We set up our camp stoves outside in the backyard, had one pot with mild broth and one pot with spicy broth. The spicy broth was filled with red peppercorns and various hot pepper flavors, making my mouth tingle happily with each slurp.
I love hot pot. One of my favorite restaurants pre-pandemic was a place called Urban Hot Pot. Everyone had their own burner, and there was a conveyor belt that ran next to the tables with the raw food and you could pick what you wanted off the belt to put in your pot. You could also order off the menu but that wasn’t as seredipidously exciting. On the one hand, one wonders at the novelty of paying to actually cook your own food, but on the other hand, the variety and ability to just eat what you want offsets that for me.
Not wanting to show up empty handed, I brought a container of cut fruit (persimmons, grapes and the good Korean pears – seemed like the traditional fruit offering) and some homemade Hong Kong Egg tarts. I love having egg tarts when we go to dim sum and I’ve often wondered if I could make them at home. When you get egg tarts at restaurants they always seem so delicate and fancy, and I was afraid of not getting the right silky smooth texture for the filling. Turns out they are pretty simple, to make. Granted, I did make a layered pie crust rather than a truly flaky laminate crust, but the filling tasted just as good. I didn’t have tart tins, so I used the muffin tin, and I thought that worked really well.
And now we go into the Holiday Season. Advent starts in November this year, On Monday I stopped at the library and checked out a whole slew of seasonal books for our Advent Book Tradition. Between the library books and the books we already have, I feel like we have more than enough books, but some nights we can read two.
We have candles… last year we’d forgotten to buy candles until the night before so right then and there I put a reminder in our calendar for the first of November this year: “Buy Advent Candles.” And so this year they were ordered in plenty of time and we are ready.
After dinner on Thursday night I let the Husband clean up the Thanksgiving feast and took a walk outside. It was getting dark, that pinky dusk sky, and the weather was still quite warm. I put the toddler in the stroller and went for a 45 minute walk. I hadn’t been out of the house all day, and was starting to get antsy. (The Husband had taken the kids to the park before dinner.) Things were pretty quiet at 5pm, but I loved walking around and seeing houses lit from within, and some already lit from the outside with Christmas lights. I looked at some houses with long lines of cars parked in front, and realized that for a lot of these families this must be the first gathering in over a year and a half. Over a year and a half of lonely holidays, cautious celebrations, small gatherings, and assessed risk just to be with family. I pictured the full tables and hugs and love that these houses were filled with. It was a great way to start the holiday season.
I’ll leave you with this bit of randomness while out on a walk – a persimmon on a postal box:
What We Ate:
Saturday: Pizza (take-out) and Holes. We had read the book this year, and the nine year old wanted to see the movie. I thought the movie was well done, but I was disappointed that Shia LaBoeuf was cast as Stanley. He did a great job, but in the book, Stanley is overweight, and that’s a pretty important character point. I guess that’s a fault with the adaptation, not with the movie itself. Still, the book is really so perfect in how it unfolds, that the m
Sunday: Leftovers.
Monday: Stir Fried Tofu and Mushrooms with Fermented Black Beans. This was kind of a not-quite-Mapo Tofu recipe – not really what I expected, but still really tasty. We ate it with noodles.
Tuesday: Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup (from a box).
Wednesday: Chicken Soup with rice and farro, loosely based off a recipe from Dinner Illustrated. Only I added parsnips and butternut squash because we had a bunch of that to eat up.
Thursday: Thanksgiving!!! Buttermilk brined turkey breast *loosely following this recipe), fennel salad with oven wilted grapes (I was the only one who like this), roasted carrots and parsnips (roasted with turkey), cranberry sauce, sauteed green beans (the Husband’s garlic soy sauce method), rolls, gravy (from turkey drippings),
Friday: Pizza (take out) and A Christmas Movie Christmas. This movie was actually kind of funny – two sisters, one of whom loves Christmas movies, magically get transported into one and get to live out all the Christmas movie cliches. The ending was a little flat for me, but as Christmas rom-coms go, I thought this one was pretty fun and original in it’s familiarity.
I love making notes in my daytimer/calendar for holiday reminders. I try to do this a year in advance, when what “works” is fresh in mind. I make note of any adjustments I make to recipes, what we ate when and all sorts of trivial little details about what does/doesn’t work, and if there is anything I want to prioritize for the next year!
Such a great idea! I always think, “I’m going to remember.” But I never do.
I have a reminder from last year to “buy a sled”, since we didn’t have one last year and the kids couldn’t go sledding during the big snow. But with the weather being so mild this year, I’ve put it off. Which I’m sure is going to come back to bite me some time in January when the snow finally comes!