Sunday, November 28, 2010
26 Days and counting
Having survived Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Holiday traffic etc, I bravely ventured into WalMart today. I had a short list of mainly toiletries that needed to be replenished yet I managed to ring out at a whopping $204! I had no idea what to get John this year so I'm going to try an electric razor (I'm pretty sure he's going to hate it and I will wind up bringing it back when I get home from NZ, but it has a 45 day money-back guarantee). I also bought a case of disposable diapers for the family my club adopted. Now, when Debbie was a baby Pampers were first introduced. I tried them but decided that the price was exorbitant...79cents/DOZEN Imagine my surprise that the box of diapers I bought today cost $25.00/84. That's an increase of 26.2 cents each or about 500%. I looked at gifts for the family my office is sponsoring but I think I will let someone else do the shopping...I know Kristin loves to shop and Marie is great at finding bargains. I have enough on my plate.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Thanksgiving-NZ-29
We just put another Thanksgiving feast under our belt, more than literally. No matter how hard we try, we just can't seem to scale down the "necessary" items from our menu. This year my mother arrived on Wednesday around 6:30 pm. Tradition has it that the night before Thanksgiving we give thanks for our Asian immigrants by having Chinese food for dinner. I let mom do the ordering and we had boneless roast pork, eggdrop/wonton soup, cold sesame noodles, pork fried rice and a dish I requested called "chicken and shrimp in brown sauce" (not very poetic but very tasty). Yes, we have leftovers, probably enough for lunch today.
Thanksgiving Day I was up at 5:00 just because John's alarm clock didn't know that he didn't have to go to work today and went off at that time. I pulled my 13.5 lb (free) turkey out of the refrigerator to get the chill off before I got to work on it and had my breakfast. Mom brought "flagels" from NY (but no cream cheese or salmon) so I had an everything flagel with butter to start my "forget-about-the-diet-day". Tasted very good, I must say. Tussling with a 13.5 pound turkey is very different from maneuvering a 21+ pound bird into a roasting pan. This was a piece of cake, and he even fit nicely into my 15" Pyrex baker. I seasoned him with some herbs and a bath of orange peel infused butter and popped him into the oven at 8am and started on the sausage dressing. I cook the dressing outside of the bird and inside my crockpot. It comes out moist and a little crusty. I love making stuffing/dressing. It's so much fun to add a little creativity to the table by mixing up what I throw into the pot. This year it was green onions, celery, pork sausage, a diced Cortland apple and chicken broth. It only takes about 3 hours in the crockpot. While the turkey and dressing cooked I mashed up some sweet potatoes with an egg and a little crushed pineapple and pumpkin pie spice. I added some mini marshmallows to the top. And cleaned up the kitchen for the 3rd time. The turkey came out of the oven around 11:00 looking magnificent. We let it cool a bit and then mom made the pan gravy. I sliced up half of the turkey to bring to Debbie's. Getting from here to there was a project. There was not only the turkey, dressing and potatoes but the shrimp cocktail, cranberry relish (and jellied), ice cream, pumpkin pie, dim sum and sauce but the traditional honeycomb turkey centerpiece, placecards, turkey platter, turkey relish dishes, turkey salt and pepper shakers....
Ok, so we arrived at Debbie's at 2:00. Jimmy was outside in his checked shirt manning the electric smoker. His smoked turkey had just come out. We unloaded the car and repaired to the family room to watch tv and nibble on our pre-feast meal. We sat down to dinner at 6:30 and everything was so good! We had a little communication failure and there were only a couple of pieces of the smoked turkey and the little bit of roast turkey that I brought over. But the turkey is just there for show...it's the trimmings that we all look forward to. The stuffing was outstanding. The corn pudding was spectacular. The artichokes were amazing. And Debbie did all the cleaning up. Ahhhhh. We had to leave right after dinner to get home and feed Rocky. We were so full that we will need the full 29 days to get ready for Christmas.
And it's just 29 days til Mom and I leave for New Zealand!
photos of our feast are at www.nerisews.smugmug.com
Thanksgiving Day I was up at 5:00 just because John's alarm clock didn't know that he didn't have to go to work today and went off at that time. I pulled my 13.5 lb (free) turkey out of the refrigerator to get the chill off before I got to work on it and had my breakfast. Mom brought "flagels" from NY (but no cream cheese or salmon) so I had an everything flagel with butter to start my "forget-about-the-diet-day". Tasted very good, I must say. Tussling with a 13.5 pound turkey is very different from maneuvering a 21+ pound bird into a roasting pan. This was a piece of cake, and he even fit nicely into my 15" Pyrex baker. I seasoned him with some herbs and a bath of orange peel infused butter and popped him into the oven at 8am and started on the sausage dressing. I cook the dressing outside of the bird and inside my crockpot. It comes out moist and a little crusty. I love making stuffing/dressing. It's so much fun to add a little creativity to the table by mixing up what I throw into the pot. This year it was green onions, celery, pork sausage, a diced Cortland apple and chicken broth. It only takes about 3 hours in the crockpot. While the turkey and dressing cooked I mashed up some sweet potatoes with an egg and a little crushed pineapple and pumpkin pie spice. I added some mini marshmallows to the top. And cleaned up the kitchen for the 3rd time. The turkey came out of the oven around 11:00 looking magnificent. We let it cool a bit and then mom made the pan gravy. I sliced up half of the turkey to bring to Debbie's. Getting from here to there was a project. There was not only the turkey, dressing and potatoes but the shrimp cocktail, cranberry relish (and jellied), ice cream, pumpkin pie, dim sum and sauce but the traditional honeycomb turkey centerpiece, placecards, turkey platter, turkey relish dishes, turkey salt and pepper shakers....
Ok, so we arrived at Debbie's at 2:00. Jimmy was outside in his checked shirt manning the electric smoker. His smoked turkey had just come out. We unloaded the car and repaired to the family room to watch tv and nibble on our pre-feast meal. We sat down to dinner at 6:30 and everything was so good! We had a little communication failure and there were only a couple of pieces of the smoked turkey and the little bit of roast turkey that I brought over. But the turkey is just there for show...it's the trimmings that we all look forward to. The stuffing was outstanding. The corn pudding was spectacular. The artichokes were amazing. And Debbie did all the cleaning up. Ahhhhh. We had to leave right after dinner to get home and feed Rocky. We were so full that we will need the full 29 days to get ready for Christmas.
And it's just 29 days til Mom and I leave for New Zealand!
photos of our feast are at www.nerisews.smugmug.com
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