The Rhythm Of Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving. I love the smells...I love the food that only gets made once or twice a year, at our house at least. And I even love how tired I wake up the next day, after cooking for most of the day.

Yesterday it was just Bob and me for dinner, with dessert afterwards at a neighbor's house. Dad had planned to come up, but got busy on a project at his house and will be coming up today instead. So you'd think that dinner for just the two of us wouldn't be much of a production, wouldn't you? But nooooooo...it's Thanksgiving, so major cooking must be done!

It actually started a couple of days ago, making cornbread for the dressing and making the cranberry relish. This year, because there were some apples about to go around the bend, I incorporated those into the cranberries. I don't usually name my concoctions, but this one got called Gala-berry Relish and the recipe will be at the end of this post. If you make it, prepare to have it all eaten...it's just magically good!

Anyway, back to yesterday...needed to make breakfast plus needed to brown off some sausage for the dressing, so breakfast for us was sausage, biscuits and eggs. Not really healthy, but it filled us up until time for mid-afternoon appetizers. Sauteed the veggies for the dressing and assembled that...one dish done before 8am! Made a breakfast casserole that we'll eat today, because there was only one egg left in the fridge, so I put it to good use. Got the sourdough rolls started.

Let me digress here...you might not know this, but I love to bake bread. Something about the hands-on creation of taking just a few basic ingredients and turning them into warm nirvana is just very satisfying. When people ask if I use a bread machine, my answer is always yes...I hold out my hands and say "I use a left bread machine and a right bread machine." To me, the fun of bread-making is feeling the dough change as it gets closer to being ready to bake. The kneading of the dough and shaping of the finished product is the reward for the patience of letting it rise so much.

Anyway, I keep sourdough starter in the refrigerator, and have found a sour-ish recipe that Bob likes better than the true sour sourdough, so decided to make rolls using that recipe. Sourdough is best if it gets three or four rises, so when I'm baking it, I start early. The bread process started at about 7:30 and the rolls came out of the oven at 3:30. And we had a couple as appetizers and the rest went into the freezer...no rolls with Thanksgiving dinner, because neither of us needs that much starch all at once!

Dessert came next, and it was a fun challenge that sort of worked and sort of didn't. Bob saw a cake on the Food Network that he wanted to try, so I volunteered to make it. It was a pumpkin roll filled with whipped cream & candy. The candy in the recipe was broken-up toffee, but that's not a favorite of Bob's so I decided to take Mom's peanut patty recipe and make it with pecans, break that up and use it in the cake. This was the part that didn't work so well...the candy thermometer said I'd cooked it far enough, but it set up more like taffy and less like brittle so apparently I didn't. Froze it so I could break it into small bits, put those in the whipped cream filling and made the first rolled cake I've made since home economics class in the 6th or 7th grade! The very best part about this dessert was the reaction of one of the guests at the dessert party - he looked at it and nostalgia washed over him as he asked, "That's not a pumpkin roll, is it?" It was a staple on the holiday table through his childhood, and he approved of my version so much he took home four slices.

Our green veggie was broccoli rabe in a brown butter pecan sauce, straight out of the current issue of Bon Appetit, and drop-dead-delicious. Bob was in charge of roasting the bird...chicken, not turkey...and it was perfect. He loves scalloped oysters so made some of those for his plate, and the trashing of the kitchen was complete!

We ran the dishwasher three times yesterday. We did the kitchen dance around each other for the last hour or so before dinner, and we enjoyed Thanksgiving, just the two of us.

Leftovers? Oh, they'll get put to good use today, when our families arrive this afternoon to share appetizers and desserts. We'll eat too much again, enjoy each other's company and collapse at the end of the day again.

It's the rhythm of Thanksgiving, and it's another thing I'm thankful for.


Gala-berry Relish

4 Gala apples
1 C apple cider
1/2 C sugar
1 t ground cinnamon
1/2 t ground cloves
1/4 t ground allspice
Pinch of salt

Cut the apples into cubes, skin, core, seeds & all, and cook them in the cider until the apples are soft. Use a food mill or ricer or sieve & spoon to separate the skin & seeds from the meat of the apple. You should get about a cup of apple pulp, to which you'll add the sugar and spices. Cook over low heat until the sugar dissolves, taste & adjust seasonings. Let cool while you cook the cranberries.

3 C cranberries (one 12-ounce bag)
1 C water
1/2 C port wine
1/2 C sugar

Combine all of the ingredients and cook until the cranberries burst, stirring and smashing if you wish. Let the mixture boil until it starts to thicken a bit, then cool and add to the apple mixture.

If you like things really tart, add all the cranberry mixture to the apple mixture. If you want a more mellow relish, do a 50/50 mixture of apples & cranberries, and pour the rest of the cranberry mixture into a separate bowl for those who like more pucker!