Thanksgiving - The "Superbowl" for us, food nutjobs.

Thanksgiving. Everyone has their own idea of what that word means, don't you agree? For a food nutjob, Thanksgiving is the Superbowl of all dinners for the year. You either win or lose. How did my food Superbowl turn out? Let's just say that it didn't live up to the hype. Oh, and to make things extra fun my in laws were over so I had an audience to my dinner theatre.

Readers, I have had an epiphany! Don't mess with a Thanksgiving menu that is successful. That is going to be my New Year's Resolution.

Before I continue I would like to say that I did not have any meltdowns, tantrums or crying fits on Thanksgiving day due to the meal being all kinds of jacked up. I worked on that this year. Hopefully, I won't have a meltdown typing this blog...

Schedler Thanksgiving Menu (all but the pie and potatoes are new recipes):

Spachcocked Turkey
Cream Gravy
Roasted Asparagus
Green Beans with Lemon Vinaigrette and Walnuts
Mashed Potatoes
Sausage and Apple Stuffing
Mixed Berry Pie
Rolls

I will now break down the dinner...I even tried to take pictures but I have to be honest, I kept forgetting so the pictures are sketchy at best which actually..mirrored the meal.

Spachcocked Turkey (I remembered to take the picture after Chris had started carving)


This is a method originally from Martha Stewart as adapted by me, in which, you remove the backbone of the turkey..flip it over and break the breast bone. The turkey is flat and it roasts in a shorter amount of time. This was a good and bad way to cook the turkey. The best thing about it is that you still have room in the oven to cook other things and it yielded the most pan juices that I have ever gotten from a turkey. Ok...the bad. Since this list is rather long, I will get right to the point - when you roast any poultry for a short time at a high temperature it doesn't come out juicy and tender (at least mine don't) it comes out chewy...CHEWY! How many of you look forward to a chewy turkey on Thanksgiving? (insert cricket noise).

That's what I thought, me neither!!!!!!

Next year, I will still spachcock the turkey BUT I will season it like I normally have and put butter under the skin. I will also roast it at a much lower temperature (325) instead of 400 for longer as this produces a juicier bird. Even if it doesn't..I am convinced that it does and so that is what I am doing next time. Seriously, the main part of this meal is the bloody turkey and when that gets messed up, it's all downhill.

Cream gravy

This SEEMED like a good idea. Adding heavy cream to gravy, what's not to like? I just don't know what the heck happened here. I think that the cream diluted the gravy just enough to make it taste like thickened infused cream. The turkey flavor was soooooooo faint that it's like, why even bother? At least the year I accidentally dumped the turkey stock down the drain I had an excuse for the gravy being ruined. People, just make the turkey gravy with stock and roux. Don't go messin with something that works because the result will be your husband saying something to the effect of "can we make another batch of gravy for the leftovers?" Um, yah.

Roasted Sad Asparagus

When roasting asparagus, this is one of the only times that you want the thicker kind of veg. Even if you have to peel down the stems a tad, it will be much better than what I served. In my own defense, I usually flash-saute asparagus so I get the skinny kind. You see where this is going, right? I roasted the skinny kind of asparagus and the result was, as Chris said, and I quote "It had the texture of canned spinach". We were all dished up and eating and he casually says "honey, have you tried the asparagus?". That is NEVER good. I say, no. He says "you should". So I take one and start to chew and promptly get up to spit it out in the garbage. Yes, it was that bad. I then banned anyone from taking some. My father in law had already been eating some and insisted on finishing it. I said I was sorry because, really, there wasn't much else to say.

Green Beans with Lemon Vinaigrette


Here is the crown jewel of our dinner. These were so good that it made the rest of the meal just downright laugh-out-loud funny. This recipe could not be easier! You boil green beans and then toss them in this lemon vinaigrette and sprinkle walnuts on top. Super good.


Mashed Potatoes

Chris makes these every year and they are always good. Potatoes, butter and cream. Yum. Too bad the gravy sucked.

Sausage and Apple Stuffing


Meh. I made it up. Day old french bread is toasted and mixed with sauteed onions, sausage, celery and apple. Add stock and 1 egg and bake. It was ok. At least it didn't completely suck like the rest of the dinner.

Mixed Berry Pie

This is a tried and true recipe of mine. Homemade crust is filled with a combination of mixed frozen berries (blueberry, marionberry and raspberry - I think), lemon juice, sugar, tapioca and butter and baked. The "new" part of this was the top crust. I didn't do a normal one (as the theme of this Thanksgiving is turning out to be) but instead, I saw these super cute fall cookie cutter thingies at Williams Sonoma that you use to decorate the edges and top of pies with. I did a leaf pattern on the top which, didn't cook at the same rate as the rest of the crust. After broiling it (yes, you read that right) oh...and then forgetting it was under the broiler the top was a bunch of burnt leaves. And by burnt, I mean black. The kind of filth you scrape off your toast. Remember how I said I didn't have any meltdowns on Thanksgiving? Well, I made the pie the night before and the process of cutting the burnt parts off the leaves brought me to tears. But NOT on Thanksgiving! Ha! The pie looked like crap, but tasted good (I cut all the burned parts off). I should have taken a picture of it before I baked it because the leaves looked really cool. After I was done surgically removing all the gross of the top, it just looked like a big mess.

Rolls

How do you screw these up? You over bake them, that's how. We actually had hockey pucks for rolls. The insides were soft, but the outsides were knock, knock, knock hard! They were perfect for sopping up the tasteless gravy.

The moral of the story: If it ain't broke, don't try to "fix" it.