ysabetwordsmith | Thanksgiving

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We are cooking:

* smoked turkey leg
* ambrosia salad
* savory herb stuffing
* mashed potatoes and gravy
* apple pie

EDIT 11/25/21 -- We heated up the mini apple pies and added hot caramel sauce. So good!

What about you?

Current Mood: busy
Crossposts: https://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/6425546.html

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From: (Anonymous)

Chickens this year, since one of the members cannot abide the smell of cooking turkey right now.

Creamed corn

Sautéed garlic green beans

Stuffing

Mashed taters

And meat pies

Desert is mini pecan tarts with shortbread crust and crustless pumpkin custards

From:

ysabetwordsmith

That sounds very nice.

I listed chicken as an option, but no roasting hens were to be found. So we wound up with a pair of turkey legs. My partner Doug had the bright idea of roasting one today, and using the other over the weekend for my second idea, crocking it with beans. :D So we have that to look forward to later.

From:

kengr

Planned:
meat & cheese tray
Turkey breast (in crockpot)
stuffing
mashed potatoes
gravy
brussel sprouts
pumpkin pie with cool whip

Actual
dropped the mashed potatoes because I forgot to buy milk
dropped the brussel sprouts because I got lazy.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Close enough!

How did the turkey breast in the crockpot turn out? We're planning to crock a smoked turkey leg this weekend.

From:

kengr

I've done it before. It comes out nice and tender. And moist.

This time I started a bit late, it was done after 5 or so hours on high. Started frozen, and was a bit small anyway.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

That's good to know.

We have some black-eyed peas to put with the turkey, I figure that should work much like ham-n-beans. Throw in a diced onion.

From:

erulisse

I made a sausage roast with potatoes, apples, onions, and a honey mustard glaze. We also had made from scratch green bean casserole and gingerbread.

We spent the day playing Gloomhaven.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>> I made a sausage roast with potatoes, apples, onions, and a honey mustard glaze. We also had made from scratch green bean casserole and gingerbread.<<

Oh, nice! <3 gingerbread.

>> We spent the day playing Gloomhaven. <<

Awesome game.

From:

ng_moonmoth

This was what spouse and I cooked and served to ten other relatives from their side of the family. My side is too geographically diverse to join us.

A couple of kinds of cheeses
Olives
Salami for slicing;
Also, "salami chips": thinly sliced salami, baked to render and crisp the slices, served with a mustard dip
Crackers to put the goodies on

Roast leg of lamb flavored with a pomegranate-rosemary baste
Vegetarian pumpkin lasagna
Dressing
Spinach gratin
Kale/carrot/apple salad
Carrots and snow peas in a light honey sauce

Apple pie
Pumpkin trifle: layers of crushed gingersnaps, vanilla pudding with pumpkin incorporated, and whipped cream with pumpkin spice in it

Wine, sparkling juice, sparkling water with juice added, water

Interesting collision of attitudes: We were operating under the assumption that spouse's brother, who was also preparing a holiday dinner to serve to (mostly) the same people Friday and announced first, was going to prepare the usual stuff. So we spent the better part of a month testing collected recipes and went off in a different direction -- where he, believing that we were going to do the usual stuff because we were hosting Thursday, decided to cede those dishes to us and made brisket the centerpiece. So no turkeys were harmed in the production of these dinners.

We had the dinner midafternoon -- for, being the fannish gluttons for punishment we are, we followed up after the young children had reached their limits and everyone had left (right on our anticipated schedule) by caching all the food that had survived the feast as we could between refrigerator and freezer, cleaning everything up well enough, packing (scheduled for the day before, but unable to meet that schedule due to prior-day prep), and driving 400 relatively stress-free miles through the dark of night to a weekend SF convention. Left only a couple of hours later than target time. I have enough personal experience as to what I need to have along to eat and listen to to make that a much more pleasant experience than battling Friday traffic, and we got there in time for the opening.

Returned from that yesterday, which is why I'm only now getting to post this. We have now sampled all the food that spent a week in the fridge -- didn't lose any significant part of it -- and are now starting to work on the leftovers.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

The lamb sounds awesome, and I'm curious about how the pumpkin lasagna turned out.

From:

ng_moonmoth

>> The lamb sounds awesome, <<

It was. The pomegranate baste added a nice flavor and kept it moist. I cooked it rare, which keeps the lamb taste forward and doesn't have it tasting like generic red meat.

>> and I'm curious about how the pumpkin lasagna turned out. <<

Most excellent, thanks. It uses mostly mainstream lasagna components: lasagna noodles, ricotta and parmesan cheeses, a standard white sauce with the usual aromatics. The difference is thin slices of sugar pie pumpkin in the middle layers, and flash-fried fresh sage for seasoning in the layers and on top.

The trial run revealed that the recipe as written was too dry and did not have enough ricotta for all the layers. I fixed that by doubling both components. The result was something that had enough white sauce to keep it moist, and had the heft I associate with lasagna. It's something we'll probably make again in future autumns.