Thanksgiving, etc.

Since we're doing a big non-traditional dinner production on Saturday, with our chosen family, we decided to do a smaller version of traditional T-day at home yesterday.

barley52 talked about breakfast and such, so here is the dinner menu:

We split a bottle of our traditional beaujolais nouveau in the early afternoon, and while cooking.

DH brined a 7 lb turkey breast for about 4 hours and then stuffed fresh sage under the skin before roasting for 2 hours.  While that was happening, he also roasted fresh chestnuts, some in the oven (which exploded and had to be vacuumed out with a dustbuster, and some in the fireplace (which turned out far more successfully).

I made oyster and chestnut dressing thusly:  diced a small loaf of sourdough into small cubes and mostly dried out in the oven.  Chopped one stalk celery and one small onion into small dice, and minced 2 garlic cloves and a few leaves of fresh sage.  The veggies were sauteed in 3 Tbl. butter until soft, then a full pint of coarsely chopped oysters and about 1.5 cups of coarsely chopped chestnuts went in the pan.  Stirred in about 6 cups bread cubes, and made sure everything was moistened.  Filled the casserole with the dressing and dotted the top with butter.  This baked alongside the breast for the last hour of roasting.

We had the traditional southern congealed cranberries in jello (with orange and nuts), and also ambrosia salad made by DH.  He used oranges, tangerine, pomegranate seeds, coconut and butter toffee covered walnuts.  No alcohol, but the butter toffee mixed with the juices to taste vaguely of liqueur.

Veggies consisted of mashed potatoes with garlic, onion and sour cream, and deep-fried okra with a horseradish-dijon sauce.  I realize that doesn't seem like much in the way of veggies, but we did have 2 kinds of fruit salad, and we all ate large helpings of each.  So there.

And of course there was gravy, from the drippings and chicken broth, more sage, and pepper.  I had to thicken it twice, but it was nice and light and went great on the turkey, potatoes and dressing.

We served gewurztraminer with dinner.

Dessert was a fudgy (overcooked, alas) brownie with caramel crunch ice cream and caramel sauce.

After dessert, we went to a 9:15 showing of Goblet of Fire.  Wow.  Pretty good job, but I guess even with over 2 hours of run time, some stuff is going to be left out.  I knew it was going to be "dark" but I thought it was interesting that the entire tone of the film was dark - even the brighter, happier scenes seemed to have a pall hanging over them.  I wasn't so impressed with Sirius in the fireplace, seemed like a knock-off of an old Star Trek Original or TNG special effect.  I think they've mostly done an amazing job with casting - the film characters almost always look like I imagined them, except I don't think they got Fleur right.  She wasn't blonde or luminous enough.  She really should have had coloring more like a Malfoy.  My god, can the twins and Ron look any more alike?  And their hair!  They've all got this Shawn and David Cassidy thing going on!  LOL, they are totally gangly, growing teens.  Cho's accent was a bit odd, but hey, I'm guessing fairly authentic for where she's supposed to live.  I'm not sure Emma Watson's acting has improved all that much.  The stuff with Viktor seemed realistic, but her final scene was a bit overdone.

Before the movie, we saw a trailer for King Kong, and man, is Peter Jackson busy or what?  He's single-handedly recreating hollywood over in NZ.  I wonder when we're going to start seeing red-carpet events held there?

And happy, happy news:  My new Keds, which have been missing for 3 weeks were finally found today by dear Mavis.  Don't ask me how they ended up in the basement under a slip-covered chair, because if I knew, I would have found the damn shoes myself!  Now if I could only find that unopened pack of white silk longjohns I bought the same day as the Keds, I'd be a totally happy camper.

I hope everyone had a wonderful, relaxing and delicious thanksgiving day.

Friday's Report

Not going to do the ticker today. I'm at 140 again, which is cool, considering how much I ate and drank this week, but it's not the kind of progress I can brag about. Hopefully the new job is going to rev up my activity level enough to combat losing the daily walks. Oh, who am I kidding, haven't walked regularly in 2 weeks anyway, and with winter arriving, wasn't likely to get back on *that* horse. But, increased activity is increased activity. Every little bit helps.

I am going to have to figure out how I'm going to handle lunches. The trailer has nothing in the way of appliances, and there is a Culver's just 2 blocks away. Not a good omen. Carrying in lunch in the dead of winter is a bit of a challenge, since I'm such a soup fiend in cold weather. And I'll have to carry in my 2 qts of water each day. I can't get away with little or no food during the day - my blood sugar will not allow it, so I'm going to have to get creative.