be jealous. be very jealous. kirk and i love to cook, and any excuse will do. thanksgiving is an especially good one. we usually go to his parents’ house in reading, pa., but this year we are staying home and they are eating at cracker barrel, which is legal now, at least for me, since they stopped firing all the gays.
the appetizer will be squash and celery root soup which i made today. i had some leftover celery root so i made celery remoulade.
we brined the 16-pound turkey with apple cider, kosher salt and various secret ingredients that can be found in cooking light magazine. the turkey is fresh–we got it last weekend at our local farmer’s market. it’ll get cooked tomorrow for a three pm meal time.
i made cranberry sauce from actual cranberries. i hate the canned stuff, especially the stuff that retains the shape of the can. it’s one cup of sugar, one cup of water a bag of cranberries, and five minutes of cooking. stop being lazy and make your own.
we’re having collard greens with turnips–i made this over the weekend from stuff i bought at the farmer’s market.
i made creamed corn from a box of dried cope’s corn. this is a pennsylvania regional specialty that is absolutely awesome. track down a box and try this for yourself.
kirk started making a gingerbread trifle, which is a two-day process. the recipe serves twenty–i think i’ve convinced him to halve the recipe, but i’m not sure he listened. i never am sure, which is just how i like it.
kirk also made step one of giblet gravy. ick, but i’ll deal. he’s also baking rolls tomorrow, from what i hear.
kirk’s making potato filling. it’s mashed potatoes, bread, and other stuff. stuff is the wrong word, by the way, because it connotes stuffing. which this is, except that kirk is from the island of the pennsylvania dutch, so it’s filling and not stuffing.
we’re also making traditional filling or stuffing or whatever–pepperidge farm but dressed up with sausage and more bread and sage and all the aromatic vegetables and whatnot. and once again it won’t be inside the turkey as it cooks as per kirk’s instructions, which annoys me but i’ve learned to live with it. we saw a “good eats” with alton brown where he goes over how to safely cook stuffing filling inside the turkey, so maybe next year.
i think that’s it. i tried to make mozzarella to have as a snacky appetizer, but for the first time ever it failed. i just got ricotta. i used this great fresh milk that i got from the farmer’s market, old-fashioned cream-on-top milk. but i think that putting in the cream-on-top part made the mozzarella not coagulate. i gotta research that one. so in addition to all of this food i’m going to have to make some lasagna this weekend for the freezer.
our friend greg is coming over. does this sound like a lot of food for three people? it is. we’ll have lots of leftovers. and so will greg, but he doesn’t know it yet. not to mention beaucoodles of turkey soup in the freezer, which i make from the carcass on the day after thanksgiving. waste not want not. i love leftovers.
so that’s thanksgiving at the howard-lawrence/lawrence-howard house. apartment.