Tuesday

Discovery of the day: Just enough

Whew! NaNoWriMo is over and I survived! Back to real life.

Thanksgiving was fun. It's the first one we've cooked together. We were cooking for three adults and my son. I told my SO that no matter how hard we tried, we would end up with too much food. I only know this because I've been doing this for, oh, a couple of decades.

With that in mind, we sat down to make our list of 'must haves'. The goal was to make as few dishes as possible but still get just enough of what we wanted. We eventually settled on turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, waldorf salad (his), succotash (mine), cranberries, pumpkin pie.

The smallest turkey we could find at the store was 14 lbs, but that was no surprise as it was the Sunday before T-day. Then SO decided he wanted to make two kinds of stuffing, regular and cornbread. How could I say no to that? We did have a moment of conflict; he's a 'cook the stuffing in the bird' guy but I have a pretty strong aversion to that. Fortuitously enough, I had seen a recipe for cooking it in a squash half, and he agreed to that. It was difficult to talk him out of making a whole batch of each dressing for 3.5 people, but we eventually compromised.

I really wanted to make another dessert even though I knew better. I really really wanted to make two pumpkin pies but that would be inviting disaster. Instead, I made some caramel apples and dipped them in chocolate (the good stuff). I cut those into wedges and we ate them while playing board games later.

All in all, it worked out pretty well. Next year I have to get in the mood earlier so I can get a hold of a smaller bird. One thing that surprised me is that I wasn't very interested in the turkey. I had one small slice and that was enough.

Turkey aside, we had just enough of the other leftovers to last us through the weekend, although I could have made a whole batch of succotash, my favorite thing, next to cranberries. (I want to post the recipe but I left it at home. I'll try tomorrow.)

I think paring it down to the 'must haves' and limiting the amount we made saved me from myself this year. Now I just have to avoid the dreaded Cookie Baking Urges....

BTW, if you want to try an amazingly speedy way to cook a turkey, try this. And here's a video!