Journal

2016 - Week 47 Cooking / Thanksgiving Results

Anthony Bourdain's Mac & Cheese

Probably the most expensive mac & cheese I've made, but to be fair, I did make choices to make it more expensive.  I used Red Table Meats the Royal, and then a bunch of cheese from the cheese shop to combine to make this.  It was quite good.

Grilled Cheese

Simple and quick, as is it should be for this week.

Hamburger

Om nom nom.

Leftovers?

So we were on our own for Thursday night, and Friday night, but on Saturday, I took some of the leftover turkey breast, diced it up, some potatoes, peeled and pre-cooked them a bit in the microwave, tossed in the leftover green bean dish, covered it in gravy & some chicken stock, then covered it with leftover mashed potatoes.  Prep was almost nil, though it still did take ~ an hour to come up to an acceptable temperature.

Thanksgiving turned out pretty well.  Some audibles and to be made.  Since the turkey was so big (27 pounds), it took for damn ever to thaw.  I had to use my oldest chefs knife to literally saw through to get the turkey breasts off so I could brine them.  Because of that I was also unable to make turkey stock ahead of time (for gravy and etc).  I would've had time to make rolls, but I was starting to get tired, at nights, so I picked up rolls.

My assistant this year changed, I traded in the older reliable model for the younger less knowledgable one.  I only had to correct him once.  The take away is when you are done with an ingredient, put it away, especially in a tiny kitchen like mine, where counter space is at an absolute premium.  Things were simplified from last year, knowing that I wouldn't have the same level of help.  Isaac worked out good though, he took a whole dish off my care (which was commented on in positive terms by a lot of people).

While Isaac was making the sherried sweet potatoes when the sherry cork, well fell apart.  After extracting it, we had to, well drink the rest of the Sherry, so it was a good thing to have.  (according to my uncle in law's app it was in the top 7% of all Sherry).  

The bacon from Whole foods was to thick.  But other then that things turned out as expected.  Everything was pretty good.  Another Thanksgiving in the books.

FFS, really forget the pictures?  Updating to include the pictures.