10 AM - Made french toast with day-old challah, Nutella and whipped cream. You know what else is good if you don't think about it too much? Those Jimmy Dean pork sausage patties that you heat and serve. Did that and then, like it was meant to be, the Jimmy Dean float went past on my TV screen and people were dressed like sticks of butter.
11 AM - My new thing of turkey is simpler than it was before. Normally I wrap the whole bird in bacon so that it doesn't need basting, put garlic cloves under the skin, apple and onion and rosemary in the cavity, thyme and sage and root vegetables in the pan. But last week I watched Martha Stewart shove softened butter under the skin and then just salt and pepper it. So I tried that. Two sticks of softened butter evenly distributed under the entire breast area of the turkey. Then I coated the whole thing in kosher salt and pepper. Stuffed the cavity with fresh thyme, sage, rosemary, flat-leaf parsley. Basted it every 20 minutes for like 3ish hours (14.5lb bird). When it came time to eat the turkey, butter had saturated every cubic centimeter and turned it narcotic.
12 PM - Chopped yams, carrots, parsnips. Olive-oiled and salted. Oven for an hour.
12:30 - Made green bean casserole with Cream of Mushroom soup and those crispy canned onions.
1 PM - Rolled out thawed pie crust that my friend Jonathan and I had made on Sunday. Made other people chop Granny Smith apples. Sugar and cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger and flour and butter added. The pie crust kept falling apart and separating as I rolled it out, so I patchworked it into the dish and on top. A Frankenpie. Wound up delicious anyway.
2 PM - Tried a recipe for white cheddar cheese biscuits. Totally easy. Made
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mattycub grate the cheese and we talked about which bands angered and scared the congregations of churches we attended as teenagers. Punk ran a close second to metal, which had the edge of being from the actual devil instead of from dudes who were just philosophical nihilists.
3 PM - Sat down to eat all the food.
xtreem_aaron made a gang of mac+cheese and his man Brian brought fancy beers and wines. Neighbor Jill contributed homemade stuffing.
zombietruckstop brought a lasagna.
fidgetcub somehow pulled brussels sprouts and carrots and I forget what else from out of his hat because I didn't see them when he walked in the door. Cranberry sauce from the can that retained its perfect can shape when removed. Gravy that was half store-bought and half pan drippings.
moroccomole made garlicky mashed potatoes and a chocolate pie to go with the apple and pumpkin ones I'd already done up.
Somehow in the middle of all this, a wooden cutting board sitting on the stove caught fire a little. I have no idea how the burner got turned on but it did and when ZTS said, "What's that I smell?" I didn't know. But then I figured out that shit was burning. Nothing was destroyed and we lived to eat more foods.
Then we all sat around, food-drugged. Watched "UHF."
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