November 23, 2006

• First off, Happy Thanksgiving.  And for my non-US readers, Happy Thursday.  Today was my largest cooking exercise to date, and it was a lot of fun.  Actually, it was more of a team effort between myself, my lifting buddy, and his 15-year old son (Go MEN!).  This would also be big since he and his family PCS to California in a few days, so I'll be losing the closest thing to a family that I have out here.

  First off, I had to go through my ever-expanding cookbooks and figure out what I wanted to cook:
  
  As you can see, there was quite a bit to sort through.  You assume that there are the easy items that HAVE TO be there:  turkey, ham, potatoes, stuffing.  From there, I had to figure that we needed a desert, some vegetables, and random other stuff.  Second, because we would be doing this at their house, and they had already shipped everything off, I spend two days propositioning all of my pots, pans and cooking items.  Lastly, we did our shopping on Wednesday.

  I didn't get pictures of the process, since I was cooking, but I did get the end results.  The cooking time was approximately 4 hours of work (which, I honestly believe could have been shortened, but only with a second stove top).  The menu (aside from the ham and turkey) was:

  Mashed Potatoes
  Fried Cabbage
  Moist Bread stuffing
  Candied Sweet Potatoes
  Brown Sugar Glazed carrots
  Glazed Onions
  Pineapple Chutney
  Cranberry Sauce (from scratch)
  Pumpkin Pie
  Apple Duff (type of cake) and butter sauce
  Triple ginger cupcakes

  Mike took care of peeling and cutting up the potatoes and preheating the oven before I arrived.  As soon as I walked in the door, I wa straight at the kitchen.  I could throw you the details of cooking by it's not a very exciting story.  Due to limitation on pots and skillets, and our need to sometimes need to use all 3 at one time, there was a lot of in-process washing that was being taken care of. 

  Since the son didn't have a lot of cooking experience, most of his tasks were either item-prep related or cleaning related.  He actually did a good job.  However, early on, while opening a can of crushed pineapples.  Right after that happened, I needed to run and grab some items, so I tasked him with prepping the peeling and chopping the sweet potatoes.  When I came back, neither was done:

  Me: Did B. peel the sweet potatoes?
  Mike: No.
  Me: I told him to.
  Lori (The wife/mom): Oh, I didn't want him working with the knives.
  Me:  (Baffled) What?  You didn't...huh?

  Now, granted, the knife set that I use in the kitchen is the Miracle Blade III set, which, for what it costs, does an awesome job of chopping stuff into smaller stuff.  They're sharp as all hell, too.  You know them from that infomercial where the guy cuts on the head of a hammer, and then shows that they are still able to cut a tomato nicely.  Yeah, they work, and they can cut through a cadet locker, also.  I've cut myself at least two or three time thanks to them, and when they cut, oh boy does it bleed.  However, it only seems to happen when I was cutting something really small and/or lost focus.

  Me:  But we have a peeler.
  (Later on) -
  Me: She didn't want you using the knives?
  B.: Yeah, because I cut my finger earlier.
  Me: But you cut it on the can of pineapples.  (Yelling to Lori in the other room) Lori, he cut it on the can of pineapples.  I mean, you should have banned him from the can-opener.  Wait, the can was one of those easy open pull tabs ones.  Maybe you should ban him from those.

  Mike did the fried cabbage (one of his specialties), stuffing, and the cranberry sauce (something neither of us had made before), I tackled the carrots and the onions, and pretty much monitored stuff on the stove since what I was cooking required me to be there much of the time to make various glazes and sauces.  The son took care of the chutney and did some heavy assistance with the cupcakes.  Mike was also on the oven overseeing the turkey. 

  In the end, I thing that if I had a less demanding job, I could have figured a way to load everything into a table.  In my head, things would run somewhat like a kitchen. With one oven, I would have wanted to take a closer look at the oven temperatures necessary so that I could put more than one thing in at a time.  Actually, I was able to do that today, but it was more by luck than skill.

  When things were just about done, I walked out and found Lori asleep in a chair, the daughter (9) was loafing in another chair.  I couldn't get my camera in time to catch a picture of the lazy women.  I did get a few pictures of the spread:
   

   

   

   

  Afterwards, we all sat and ate.  The oldest son, who weighes in at around 155 lbs., ate 4 plates.  I don't really know where he put it all.  Hopefully, he'll pay for it later when he tries to pass a small elephant.  I was stuffed after 2. Meanwhile the kids, and the neighbor's kids sat and watched Ice Age: The Meltdown.  I fell asleep, suffering from The Itis.  I passed out around the point where Queen Latifa's character figures out that she's a mammoth.  Meanwhile, some of the children thought it would be fun to put a sock up my nose.  I did wake up to watch Accepted, though.

  All in all, it was a good time, and my first Thanksgiving where I cooked, and it went very well.  Everything turned out great.

  Lastly, now that Thanksgiving is over, I would like to point to this year's Child's Play Drive.  Basically, it was started so that gamers giving back by donating items to numerous Children's Hospitals around the globe.  The donating is done through Amazon.com wishlists (there's one for each hospital).  Last year broke $605,000 in donations, and this year, 8 additional hospitals have been added.  I have also added a new banner and link to the top right of the page.

  Black 6, out.

  • 2:35 pm
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