Thanksgiving 'fowls'...

9 years ago

as in 'fouls', lol.
Like the common mistake when my sister left the giblet bag inside the turkey....and used old rancid olive oil in EVERYTHING. (she no longer hosts holiday meals)
And one year my dad used salt instead of sugar....
(mom had put salt in a sugar container when the bottom of the salt container got wet...)

I do most of the cooking now but work and a snow storm changed our plans and we stayed home...predicted in advance following the weather.

We had fresh ducks delivered. Extra liver, feets, and necks.
Brined late wed night, hung thurs morning...made stock for gravy and for a wild rice and mushroom dressing...roasted root veggies, bourbon cranberry...all our favorites.

I pulled out misc zip-locks of bread for the dressing from the freezer...all fresh and homemade from the past few weeks, and homemade stock to thaw a bit. All in a big bowl as i prepped the sauteed veg...celery onion leeks mushrooms. Wild rice and mixed grain cooked. What i thought was my toasted brown bread was actually dog treats, lol. dehydrated lamb lung, haha. Caught it just in time after a sniff test.

Reminds me of the holiday a few years ago when my pup was a puppy and i had little cracker training treats on the counter for guest to use when she was jumpy...dad found them and thought they were a a nice savory human snack.

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Comments (14)

Lars
9 years ago
The "foul" we had this year was a serious hack to Sony Pictures where Kevin works on Monday. The hack was evident Monday morning when Kevin got to work and saw only a red skeleton on the computer screens with the text "Hacked by #GOP", which I thought was the Republican party, but evidently not. He called me at my work and asked if I could see any news of it on my computer, since all the computers were down at Sony, but the news had not yet broken, although it did later in the day. He was pretty much unable to work, but he did work with others in trying to figure out how to deal with the situation, and by 3:00 PM everyone went home. He was then on call Thanksgiving Day, in order to deal with demands from Toronto, since Canada had already had their Thanksgiving holiday, and he had to go to work at another location (Howard Hughes Plaza) today, as there is another Sony office there (electronics - not movies).

So his holiday was cut short, and so it was good that we went to the buffet at Alpine Village yesterday.

Weather continues to be hot (mid 80s), and I am waiting for it to cool off a bit before I can go back to some yard work and gardening.

Lars

Here is a link that might be useful: Sony Pictures Hacked
bbstx
9 years ago
DD got overzealous with the marshmallows on the sweet potatoes. There is a red dish under all of those melted marshmallows
{{!gwi}}
We put a cookie sheet on the rack below when we noticed the meltage. Miraculously, not a drop fell. But those potholders had to be washed ASAP
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Report: The Beijing duck was very tasty but I did too much glazing during roasting, so the skin looked and tasted good but was not crispy. My friend salvaged it with a torch. The sous vide duck was tasty but just a little not right. I think 36 hours was too much, the texture was too soft - but now I know that another 36 hours will probably produce duck pate. The dry brined, slow cooked, deep fried pork cubes with gravy were really quite good. But how can you go wrong with that. The smoked turkey that my friends brought was great. Woodstock Wine & Deli smokes about 30 turkeys for Thanksgiving and I'm told you need to be friends with the owner to get one. This couple also brought a magnum of wine and butternut squash soup. We served the soup first with each guest's initials drawn on the surface with piped-on cranberry sauce. The roast turkey that my other friend brought was good. Roasting doesn't produce as flavorful meat as smoking, I think, but he did a good job and the breast was nicely moist. The sous vide roasted garlic mashed potatoes was not great. DD says I didn't cook the potatoes long enough so they mashed poorly. I say there wasn't enough butter and cream. I do prefer French style, very soft mashed potatoes. The horseradish mashed potatoes was good. My friend with the blowtorch brought these. The creamed spinach was fine. I cheat big time here, simply melt a stick of cream cheese into a potful of spinach along with a little bit of garlic and onion. Sometimes I add cream and Amaretto, didn't this time. The sweet potato with marshmallows was, well, not how I personally would eat sweet potatoes but it is a traditional Thanksgiving meal chez SWMBO so that's that I did not try any of the pies or desserts. I'm told SWMBO pumpkin pie was a hit. There was beet argula salad, kale salad, fried rice, and a couple other dishes. I didn't try any of that. We really had too many people. It ended up being 24, because of a couple of last minute invites and one guest of a guest who I'd forgotten about. We had to pull in a third table and moving around was tricky. But people had a good time. Cleanup was a trip to the bad old years (2012-2017?) when I didn't have a working dishwasher. We used fancy china and glassware with gold accents and rims, and it all had to be washed by hand. I've gotten used to being able to wash up a big dinner party in less than an hour, with Hobart the Magic Dishwasher. No such luck, we were up until 1 am washing and then I had to finish the rest this morning, after getting up at 5 am to take Kate to the airport for her short trip to Berkeley. Actually we have just finished getting the house back together - it is dinnertime Friday now. It's been a nice day though, with napping and low key cooking interspersed with cleaning and putting away. I made stock with all the roast duck remains, and used that for a duck-mushroom-tomato-kale soup that we are having for dinner. DS has a (edit: cold, not child) and made chicken noodle soup for our lunch. It's been a liquid diet kind of day. I was going to post a picture of DD helping in the kitchen, but we were both too busy. Before she started cooking, she worked on a painting in the foyer. I took a photo of her painting. Well, actually she'd left by the time I took the picture. So just imagine DD sitting in this blanket nest, painting.
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moosemac
9 years ago
DD made a beautiful Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cheesecake and got a little overzealous with the Sea Salt. Way too salty! LOL
dcarch7 d c f l a s h 7 @ y a h o o . c o m
9 years ago
"------Reminds me of the holiday a few years ago when my pup was a puppy and i had little cracker training treats on the counter for guest to use when she was jumpy...dad found them and thought they were a a nice savory human snack.-----"

So that was your dad I saw chasing cars !!! :-)

dcarch
Jasdip
9 years ago
BB, I'm in awe of how clean your oven and racks are.
zzackey
9 years ago
I always make giblet stuffing. My mind was wandering on all the things I had to do next. I put a whole pound of chicken livers in the dressing. (I usualIy only put a handful in. I had to keep adding butter. That didn't work. I ended up putting the giblet water in it and I put in too much. It was quite soggy, but it still tasted pretty good.
bbstx
9 years ago
jas, wish I could take credit, but that is Little Sister's oven. And it is pristine.
sleevendog (5a NY 6aNYC NL CA)
Original Author
9 years ago
Haha, dcarch : )
(He thought they could use some salt.)
Reminds me i need to order more...CharleeBears, turkey liver and cranberry flavor. Amazon has them.

Bet that marshmallow smelled great, but nasty if it hit the floor of the oven. I put a sheet pan under everything i put in the oven...
kittymoonbeam
9 years ago
I remember one from years back.
Dad and uncle lit the barbecue
Started talking
Forgot to tell mom
All the hardwood charcoal was nearly burned up by the time she checked on them so she used the oven

The worst was the time my folks tried to cook a turkey on a camping trip in a fire pit and it rained. The sweet potatoes made it though and we pre made everything else. I remembered all five of us squeezed in the old van with the rain coming down and plates on our laps. The rest of that trip was beautiful though. After that mom said no more thanksgiving camping.
anoriginal
9 years ago
Several years ago, brother & SIL gathered all the left-overs from plates into a container to take home as a treat for dog. They forgot to take it home from fridge, and SIL's Dad heated it up for lunch next day. NOTHING gross in container, but he started wondering about it when he came across hunk of dinner roll with a bite out of it.
bbstx
9 years ago
sd, what doesn't show in the photo is the beach towel on the floor to catch any marshmallow drips. At the point that photo was taken, we were contemplating removing the entire rack. The fuzzy hand and potholder in lower center of the photo is DD getting ready to grab the cookie sheet to make sure it stayed under the dish.

In the end, it became obvious that to remove the rack it would have to be tilted up too much and the sweet potatoes were in danger of flipping off the back. So, LS just sacrificed the potholders to the marshmallow mess (they washed up fine later that day).

I thought the dish was too small for the sweet potatoes anyway, but there was enough kitchen angst going on without my adding my opinion of the dish.
a2gemini
9 years ago
Ours was a doubling error for the pumpkin booze pie. My niece quadrupled the evaporated milk instead of doubling it. It was a very runny batter but decided to bake it anyway since the batter was in the shells. Amazingly, the custard set and it was good.

Too bad she didn't quadruple the cognac. LOL
moosemac
9 years ago
Years ago Mom wasn't feeling well so my Dad and Uncle (mom's brother) volunteered to clean the turkey. It being their first time the task took quite a while and they imbibed a tad too much as they worked. They stripped the meat from the bones beautifully and had two piles, one of meat and one of bones and scraps. Dad reasoned that since Mom was sick she wouldn't feel up to making stock so they made the executive decision to toss the bone pile. In their stupor, they tossed the meat and kept the bones. Mom was not happy.

Needless to say Dad and Uncle were relegated to dish duty after that!

I think of that story every Thanksgiving. It always brings back fond memories and makes me laugh.
fillmoe
9 years ago
All of this nostalgia about Thanksgiving reminds me of the movie "Pieces of April". A fine film about Thanksgiving and about people.

Thanksgiving 'fowls'...

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Lars

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sleevendog (5a NY 6aNYC NL CA)Original Author

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