Thanksgiving Prep: Tuesday Style

It's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and I'm bouncing foot to foot excited about the prep, the cooking, the feast, the food, the wine, and the stuffing and gravy. We're headed to my Mother-In-Law's house this year for the family feast, so all I'm making is a gluten free dressing for us G-F'ers, and the cranberry relish from yesterday's post.

Today I'm starting the bread baking for the dressing. I have a GF bread recipe in the bread machine, and later on I'll make the corn bread. I'm starting two days early because it has to sit out to get dry and stale in order to be the best dressing. NOT MOLDY, but stale. There's a HUGE DIFFERENCE. Don't mistake them for the same. Not delicious. I'm also starting early because I've never made GF bread before. If it doesn't turn out "right", I'll need to make another batch. I'm also using my bread machine, and the recipe didn't have directions for using a bread machine, so it's an experiment to the fullest degree right now. Y'all know I can't follow a recipe...

If you're making turkey, you can start your brine now if you'd like. You need to brine for at least 12 hours, but longer is perfectly fine, and will not hurt the outcome. Remember to thoroughly rinse your bird after you remove her from the brine before cooking! I've allowed mine to soak in plain cold tap water for about 15 minutes to ensure all the exterior salt is washed away. You don't want the skin to be too salty. Don't ruin that Turkey Candy!

You should also start your stock today. Mama use to be able to find turkey wings and legs (they sell only breasts, don't they... Well, they have to have a few wings and legs somewhere belonging to those turkey's) to make her stock, but I can't find them. I haven't gone to an official butcher or meat counter, or specialty store, however, so please don't think that my half-assed "search" is anything more than just that...half-assed. Put your turkey or chicken parts into your largest stock pot. Add celery, onions, carrots, bay leaves, rosemary, sage, salt, and pepper.. Cover with water, and simmer all day, then let it cool so you can fish out the meat pieces, the celery, carrots, and onions to include in your stuffing/dressing. Refrigerate the parts you want to add to your stuffing, refrigerate your stock, and throw out the bones and herb stems and bay leaves.

If you're using stock you already have on hand, either homemade or store bought, you'll still want some sautéed onions, carrots, and celery to go in your stuffing/dressing, so start that today. Small dice, sautéed in butter over low heat with sage, rosemary, salt, pepper, and thyme. Let cool, then put into a sealable container in the fridge until it's time to mix the stuffing/dressing. This is the preferred method for those of us who work your standard 40-50 hour work week in an office or other job away from the home and you don't have the ability to spend 3 days in your kitchen prepping for one meal, but still want a dreamy homemade taste. Do little things ahead of time using fresh ingredients, and it will taste like you spent hours upon hours slaving away.

And remember to relax and enjoy your day. Yes, this is ONE dog. 

Stay hungry, and play with your food.

Super Bowl of Gravy

Sports fans all have their different, yet individually unique end-of-season finale. Football has The Super Bowl, baseball has The World Series, soccer has The World Cup, and so on and so on. But for us foodies, we have Thanksgiving. We wait all year to wow our friends and family with an extravigent array of foods stemming from some form of a historical version or interpretation if what we think the settlers had after that first years harvest. Our food magazines start coming in September, tempting us with pictures of pumpkin pie, new casseroles made with wild rice, seeds, and different varieties of squash. We start to salivate, picturing something a little like that on our table. Y'all know that I hardly follow recipes, but I do love to see what others are cooking. I take ideas and turn them into things that I want to eat. I imagine the flavors, then I imagine a few of them changing. I can "see" what it will taste like if I make a little change here and a little change there. 

My mom didn't have any of her Thanksgiving recipes written down. At least not that I've found anywhere. My sister may have them, but I honestly don't know. So each year for my Thanksgiving, I just go in blind and try to recreate what my taste bugs remember from childhood. What I would love to have is her dressing recipe written down. I try every year to match what she use to do, and I have yet to get it right. It was cornbread and buscuits. Sautéed carrots, onions, and celery with homemade turkey stock. There as a lot of sage, rosemary, and thyme but I don't know the exact proportions. 

I also enjoy adding new dishes each year. Things that I see on Food Network, or read about in a magazine. I found a cranberry sauce recipe a few years ago that included pears and ginger. I loved it! I grew up with both cranberry sauce, and another cranberry dish that we called cranberry relish. We used the meat grinder to grind cranberries, oranges, and apples, then mixed them all together, added sugar, and let it sit over night. It was my job, since it didn't require cutting or the stove/oven. Mama would cut and core the apples for me, and cut the oranges so they fit into the grinder. This year, I'm thinking I'll make a mixture of the two. I usually make both, and we have way too much. I don't have a meat grinder, so into my food processor, I'll pulse the cranberries and then dump them into a bowl. I'll zest the oranges, then put the sections into the processor to get a good pulse/chop as well. Mama use to do the whole orange, but it think the pith makes it bitter, so I'll take an extra step and zest, then get the sections out separately. This will allgo into the bowl as well. Then the apples will have their turn in the processor. I'll do the pear the same way as the apple, then I'll put a piece of "ginger in syrup" into the processor as well. After everything is chopped nicely and stirred happily in their bowl, I'll add sugar to get to the perfect stage of tart and sweet. 

I'll also be making a batch of gluten free stuffing/dressing, by making gf cornbread and other breads as it's base. I don't think there is such a thing as too much dressing, and to be honest, the dressing and gravy are all I'm after on Thanksgiving. Yeah, the turkey is supposedly the "star", but on my plate, I put the things that assist in getting gravy into my mouth with the least amount of embarrassment. I honestly have anxiety about going to other families homes for Thanksgiving because I know there won't be enough gravy. I could sneak some into a flask, and smuggle it in. And by flask, I mean a 5-gallon Gatorade dispenser. 

Play with your recipes and your food. You might just like it.