My thanksgiving dinner was definitley odd this year. There were only four of us....mom, my sister Tim and me.

My mom made dinner, told us not to bring anything, she had it all under control. Turkey, dressing, potatoes, gravy, jellied cranberry sauce and biscuits. What? I asked if she was serving any vegetables at all. She forgot about vegetables. So I nuked a steamer bag of french cut green beans that were in her freezer. They were...well...edible. The stuffing was gloppy and had a funny taste, the biscuits were from a can, and I won't even get into that nasty jellied cranberry stuff! LOL She also made a pumpkin pie, it was not good and the crust was soggy. (Did I mentioned my mom is not a very good cook?)

Ah well...even tho it was small, quiet and not exceptional, it was nice to get together with mom and let her do her thing.

Linda

I did not have to cook the meal for the first time in years. I just went back to work and could not get the day before Thanksgiving off to prep.

Spent several days before hand trying out different recipes for rolls that CF'ers shared. I wanted my only contribution to be perfect ........or at least passable as I have not baked a yeast bread in years.

The day would've been perfect if I had not decided to go out snow shoeing with 4 of my great nephews, aged 3 to 6. I had just purchased my snow shoes at Costco, thinking it would be a fun exercize in winter. Plus it has been pretty icy which makes it hard to run. I think we were out for 25 or 30 minutes. So why did I immediately start to hurt when we came in? I have run 12 miles and not been in this kind of pain! LOL What was I thinking?

Teresa

beachlily - sounds like all turned out OK, but your meal must have been delayed somewhat. It was nice of you to share your "mistake" rolls.

My DH's daughter brought lovely pumpkin pies made from scratch to our potluck family meal. She was so very upset that she forgot the Cool Whip. No one else was, least of all me - I prefer real whipped cream with lots of calories on my pumpkin pie.

One of the guests ate all of the 2 pint jars of my pickled okra, thinking I had brought them just for him - the other 27 people didn't even get a taste. He ate them standing in the kitchen before the meal was ready and drank the brine too. Why he thought that I have no idea, he doesn't even know me that well. Weird.

The trip home was slightly adventuresome. Someone pulled out in front of us and the box with the leftover Swedish apple pie went flying to the floor. Luckily it was in a baggie so we mushed it into a bowl and it instantly became Apple Mush!

I'm making Peking Duck this Sunday for a small dinner party. I haven't made that in 20 years so we'll see how much I can mess it up. I do have some lovely home canned Damson plum sauce that will help cover up anything untoward with it. My recipe calls for the duck to be brined then air dried with a fan on it for 6 hours to get that crispy skin. I'm thinking I'll have to secure it in a locked room because I have 3 cats who might think it is dinner for them!

Nancy

I don't know if you would call it a misstep or not, but my double oven control panel went out earlier this week. I called everyone I knew that wasn't cooking and borrowed their roasters. I ended up with 5 big roasters, my little 6 qt. Nesco roaster,my big Kitchenaid toaster oven, and a few crockpots. It all worked out and there were 29 very satisfied family and friends. I wouldn't want to cook every holiday meal like that, but it worked for this year.

Linda

I made apple pie and added too many apples and forgot to dot the apples with butter before putting the top crust on. The pie came out very watery, but after I drained out the excess, it was okay. The crust was still very good and the apples had plenty of flavor. The recipe I use calls for 6-8 medium apples, and I think it should say small medium apples. Maybe some of my apples are large. I would prefer a recipe that goes by weight. The next time I make it (which will be this week-end), I will weigh the apples (cored and peeled) to see how much I really need. I have an idea now of how they should fit in the bowl. I've made this same recipe three times in the past two months, and the first two came out perfect. We have so many apples now that I guess I was just trying to use them up.

Everything else was fine, and we barbequed outside - just a turkey breast and some sausage (for later). We used Mesquite charcoal, and so the turkey had a very nice smoked flavor, but I didn't get much in the way of drippings for gravy, and so I had to use chicken fat that was on top of the last chicken stock that I made.

Lars

Mine went off without a hitch. There were only 9 of us, and I had a 20 pound turkey so I have lots of leftovers. I made regular stuffing and cornbread stuffing, the mashed potatoes were creamy and smooth, the gravy lumpfree. The pumpkin rolls (new recipe) were light and airy and good enough that Ashley asked me to bake more. Cranberry jezebel was perfect, as always, and I made a marshmallow cream sauce for the sweet potatoes so I could have mine plain and the girls could have theirs intensely sweet. Waldorf salad was crunchy and cool, the sweet potato pie was nicely spiced, the chocolate pie was dark and delicious and the Princess ate two pieces. Grandma's blueberry crisp and homemade vanilla ice cream finished the desserts and Amanda appropriated the leftovers to take home.

Mother ate the last piece of chocolate pie with a glass of Paul Newman wine of some kind and pronounced herself completely happy and thankful about 9 pm last night, LOL.

Annie

May I ask a dumb question?
How do you know when the rolls are over-proofed?
I want to make rolls; not just bread which I usually make in my bread machine. I did make some bread using my KA mixer, but it didn't rise enough.

Over proofing. Let's see. Jas, the way it happened was that I used my KA for the dough and set the bowl with the dough on the stove under the hood lamp. It's FL, folks! Still warm down here and the oven was going so the temps on the stove top was 85-87F or something like that. I should have known! I was busy making my pecan pie while this was going on. When I turned to the stove to change the oven temperature I saw the dough rising above the bowl. The tell-tale sign of over proofing for me, is the stretch marks and bubbles. Way too high, way to overdeveloped. I knocked it down, got the pie in the oven and then attacked the dough. I knew it was over proofed, but I wanted to try to save it. Even after I deflated it, the dough rose immediately, so that the rolls I made were very fluffy and big. I awfully glad the neighbor liked them. She asked if I had tasted them. I said no, because if I had I would have tossed them. As it was, she admitted they didn't taste quite as good, but she really liked them--yeast and butter, what's not to like????

You can use either the bread machine or the KA ... doesn't matter. You are in Canada, right? Was the room too cold when you made bread with the KA? The bread machine has a heater in it to make it do what it does. Making bread, for me, is easy, unless I interfere with my process.

I was thinking of posting a thread like this as a Thanksgiving Dinner Recap - like we use to do at work after each project i.e. "What Went Well/What Could We Have Done Better".

Menu:
Turdukhen and stuffing
Wild rice and mushroom dressing
Garlic mashed potatoes
Chicken feet gravy
Honey roasted carrots & parsnips
Fried corn
Roasted Brussel sprouts w/bacon and shallots
Pomegranate-cranberry sauce
Buttery yeast rolls
Sweet and unsweetened tea
Pumpkin pie
German chocolate cake

What Went Well:
-Table and buffet decorations
-Side dishes
-Gravy was really good
-Finally found another family member who liked the cranberry sauce-my precious GS. Most of them only like the canned stuff.
-Timing, all dishes were ready at designated time
-Buster (kittie) behaved

What Could I Have Done Better:
-Stick to chafing dishes with Sterno-Table cloth caught on fire; the warming candles under the 3 casserole dishes got too hot and flared up burning the table cloth and the food in the dishes. Fortunately the table had a glass top.
-Make traditional turkey. Turducken wasn't real tasty and about 50% of it was stuffing that was really just dirty rice like you get in a box.
-Use Sol's Honey Rolls recipe-Made a double batch of Buttery Rolls and they had little taste.
-Don't encourage family member to bring her Campbell's GBC when she asks what to bring. Worse than yuck because she isn't a good cook anyway (but she is very skilled in other areas).

Beachlily...if your kitchen smells a bit like a cheap saloon...your dough is over proofed (over proofed dough creates alcohol) If you pick up your tray of rolls to put into the oven and they collapse , you know you have WAY over proofed the dough (way over proofed creates more co2 than the dough can support and it falls)...but if you put the rolls in the oven when the dough is just short of double in size....and it puffs beautifully and browns in the oven, you have done it right.
Practise makes perfect.
Linda C

I agree, if you pick up that pan of rolls and stick it in the oven and they collapse, it's overproofed a LOT.

Annie

Oh I practice, alright! These rolls were not anything to write home about! Ya'll are talking about major overproofing. This wasn't to that point, but well beyond what I thought was necessary. The dough was 4x it's original bulk and the bowl could hardly contain it. I've baked rolls for 30 years, so practice .... I've had plenty! I was just glad to use this stinky dough!

What? No drama? No difficult family dynamics? No ovens going out at a crucial time?

We didn't have any of those either. I will not be making a congealed salad again....it was barely touched.....and it's good - fresh apples, halved red seedless grapes, finely diced celery in a lemon jello and cranberry juice cocktail mix. But only about a third of it was eaten. Maybe a broccoli casserole next time?

All the strapping young men pulled out mom's sofa and vacuumed under it as she requested. Took less than 5 minutes to make her really happy. Then two grandsons and mom wheeled my dad back up to the Memory Care Center. But we were just happy to have him with us for part of the day. My niece was absent dealing with an emergency health problem - not serious, just didn't want to pass anything around to the rest of us.

All in all, a good day.
Teresa

Well, I had an Oops! The day after Thanksgiving, some friends of ours always have a vagabond Thanksgiving for friends and family that couldn't make it to Thanksgiving. My job is to make the stuffing/dressing. I keep the odds and ends from various bread loaves in the freezer for stuffing. This year I finally remembered to pull them out of the freezer before it came time to make the stuffing. I put all the little bread bags into a big grocery bag. I put the bag on a little tv tray table.

The DH and I went to go see Harry Potter movie. When we came back, there were empty bread bags strewn all over the living room! The puppies had gotten into my bread bag! I was upset and frantic. I hadn't left a lot of time between making the stuffing and arrival time. Fortunately, I had enough left in the freezer to make the stuffing!

Yes - but were the puppies tummys blown up from eating all that bread?

The only things that went wrong with our Thanksgiving were that I didn't communicate with SIL about what to bring, because she always says to bring whatever I want to eat. So, I usually make something DH and I like, and we're the only ones to eat it. I also always usually make rolls, and usually something goes wrong, no matter what. What I've done in the past is partially bake them, then they can finish baking at her house. That's when she always, always burns them. So, this time I made them a few days ahead, fully baked them, and froze them. They didn't get burned this time, but they were dry and stale, The freezing didn't work. I didn't bring any other food, but DH made 2 pies, and apple pie, which as always was delicious, and a cranberry pie he saw someone of the Food Network make, that looked good to him. It wasn't. Oh, well, at least we had his delicious pie. Oh, the part about not communicating, on Thanksgiving morning as we were getting ready to leave, DH saw on Facebook that she had rolls for the dinner. I called her and she said she had just gone out and bought some, so go ahead and bring mine.

As for Thanksgiving at SIL's in the future, I will never, ever bring any food again, except DH's apple pie. SIL never really wants me to bring anything, I think, and she always makes the same old stuff, that always tastes the same. I mean, each dish tastes the same. If I were blind folded, I couldn't tell the difference between her broccoli casserole, her green bean casserole and her brussell sprouts casserole. DH says it's because she uses the same canned soup in all of the casseroles. Oh, well, I don't get the fun of cooking for Thanksgiving, but I do look forward to Christmas, where I get to do the cooking, and nothing's going to taste like Cream of Whatever soup!

Sally

I just re-read what I hurriedly wrote, and it sounds mean spirited, to say the least. My SIL goes out of her way to accomodate me in making lots of veggie dishes. Her deserts are always very good, too. I may be disappointed I don't get to do much for Thanksgiving, and that we have completely different taste in food, but it's the one time of year, it seems, that DH gets to spend time with his whole family. That makes it worth it. My apologies to my SIL for my rude comments.

Sally

I did not think it sounded spirited. The holidays can be stressful and you were writing hastily.

Does your SIL belong to the CF? No - well then I wouldn't worry about it! :-)

sorry Beachlily....my practice comment and the notes on overproofing were meant for Jasdip who asked the question.

The puppies seem to be fine.

Well, I was making T day dinner for us and my parents, so I wanted to get ahead and do a little the day before.

Wednesday night, I chopped thee cups of onions and three cups of celery, put them in plastic storage containers, and into the vegetable drawer in the fridge to be ready to make dressing the next day.

Then I made my pies and put the pumpkin pie in the fridge when cooled, wrapped in foil.

In the morning, the onion smell in the fridge was incredible. When it was time for pumpkin pie, I was saddened to find the crust around the edge had taken on an onion flavor. Although the pie was still very good once you broke off and discarded the piece of crust from the edge. But it was a bummer.

I made: Turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, cranberry sauce, frozen cucumber salad (recipe from this site, it was a nice compliment to the rest of the meal and the first time we had it) pumpkin pie, and rhubarb blueberry pie. This was the first time ever that I have made T day for anyone but me and my husband.

I botched my boeuf bourguignon for Thanksgiving this year. It was supposed to be an alternative to my sister's roast turkey. Normally I can make this dish in my sleep. But I couldn't find any really fatty, gristly beef cut at the grocery store, and came home with a bottom round. No luxuriant fat cap, no thick veins of fat. Then the dish kept moving around to make room for everything else that needed to be baked - started in the oven, got evicted to the stovetop, then was crowded out to the counter, finally got some desperate pressure cooking. Aaaaugh. The sauce was very good, two bottles of wine, two cups of beef stock, and four cubes from our diminishing stash of demiglace, reduced down to two cups of intense sauce. But the meat was awful - far too lean, nothing melting , even stringy. My dear daughter, the teen food critic, kept unfavorably comparing this b.b. to past ones. I didn't even finish my serving. Total fail.

Fortunately, my sister did an excellent job on her turkey, so my fail didn't imperil our thankfulness.

I made croutons for the stuffing and put them in the oven to dry out....the next day I turned the oven on to preheat for the apple pie and proceeded to leave the kitchen. I wondered what smelled burnt to me and when I opened the oven door to put the pie in I discovered my problem. I had to go out to the store and buy more bread. Time I really didn't have to spare. As always, it all gets done in the end.

My T-Day dinner was early... around 2 pm... a VERY good thing for me. Was making coconut custard pies. I'm NOT a big baker and just have not mastered pie crust so bought frozen ones... have done that before. Blind baked crusts after posting on a few bulletin boards and get recommendations to do so.

The recipe was simple... from classic BH&G red/white plaid, ring binder cookbook... beaten eggs, sugar, scalded milk, etc. I had made the recipe before and it was successful. But this time... not so much!?! Apparently the custard mixture made its was UNDER the crust and the result looked like mountains on top and totally runny underneath?? Total disaster.

When DS visited last week, we had an early Thanksgiving. Dinner turned out pretty well, but there was one unfortunate mishap: I had put the sweet potato casserole in the oven, added marshmallows on top (they only needed a few minutes to get toasted), and was busy carving the turkey and finishing the gravy. My son and cousin were in the kitchen, talking to me, too, and I was distracted ... till I smelled the distinctive odor of burnt sugar. When I opened the oven door, I saw melted marshmallows cascading over the edges of the casserole dish and billowing onto the oven racks and floor! What a mess! It didn't make for a very elegant presentation, but we managed to salvage most of it, and it tasted good anyway. My only regret about the marshmallow fiasco was that I had to clean my oven that night.

On the "real" Thanksgiving, I paid attention and prevented the marshmallows from going overboard.

Sue

No mishaps this year, as I was responsible only for pies and all went well, thank goodness.

I would love to have the frozen cucumber salad recipe that greenmulberry mentioned. Have done a search using THS search engine and google, but no luck. Can anyone post this, pretty please?

Here you go empress. I made two batches of these when I was overloaded with cucs in august and they have been waiting in the freezer since. They are the recipe from the second post, FREEZER CUCUMBER PICKLES. It says to freeze them in jars but I just used quart freezer bags. This was the first sampling and they were pretty good.

Here is a link that might be useful: FREEZER CUCUMBER PICKLES

Only a very, very, VERY minor thing.
If you're going to serve Habenero Gold over cream cheese, then for Pete's Sake, bring the cream cheese!! LOL

Luckily, Sis-in-law had extra on hand.

I didn't do the cooking of the main dishes, only a broccoli salad, rolls, cranberry/orange sauce and the Hab/Gold appy.
And a pumpkin pie.

All went well and we had 11 total. From our youngest daughter (21) to MIL (86). It was a blessed day and got to see all four of our kids, son-in-law and a daughter's boyfriend all at the same time! No complaints here.

Lots of turkey, ham, sides and dessert.
I cooked a (24+ lb.) turkey today just for DH & I and the leftovers. We ate well this afternoon and I've several more meals in the fridge and freezer. I also made Ham and Lima Bean soup from the ham bone SIL sent home with me.
I'm pretty sure I won't need to cook this week unless it's just for a change from turkey and ham!

Deanna

Momof2, I'm really impressed! I'd have canceled it and gotten Chinese food. We had a little Thanksgiving fire of our own. A cigarette butt or some embers dropped between the slats of the deck, and there was smoke billowing out by the time we caught it. Luckily no damage. The only thing the family didn't like was the caramelized fig and goat cheese ice cream. But I refuse to call it a fail, because it came out just how I wanted it! :-)

Jessica, that sounds like ice cream I might like, cause I like figs and I love goat cheese. It's kind of hard to imagine goat cheese ice cream, but hey, it really sounds interesting. Can you share the recipe?

Klseiverd, maybe you could have just re-named your pie and called it custard cobbler.

Thanks, Teresa, for your kind comments. I've actually thought about introducing her to this forum, but maybe now wouldn't be a good time. lol

Sally

greenmulberry,

THANK YOU! I will have to try those out very soon.

The fig ice cream was just caramelized figs (get some color on the figs, then add brown sugar to the pan and stir it around) put through the food processor with cream added.

The goat cheese was here: http://kitchenconfit.wordpress.com/2008/08/06/goat-cheese-ice-cream/

I partially froze both and then swirled the two together.

I tried yet another sweet potato recipe on my non-sweet-potato-loving-family and I have to agree it was only so-so. I love sweet potatoes - not the sweet marshmellow-y kind - but no one else in my family likes them I guess. The recipe looked so delicious that I had high hopes but... meh. I won't make it again. Or force my family to try to like sweet potatoes lol

Here is a link that might be useful: Scalloped Sweet Potatoes

That does sound delicious! Too bad. Sweet potatoes are tricky, aren't they? I don't like them with sweet stuff, but sometimes they seem to sweet to go with savory stuff. I think I usually end up making them very plain for that reason.

I thought I didn't really have any missteps, as it wasn't at my house, and I didn't bring much of anything (only mashed and sweet potatoes. They don't appreciate all of the other stuff, so I only do it for myself. I decided years ago to quit bringing them my good stuff). But I did have a misstep! I was supposed to bring stock so I could teach my sister how to make gravy. Big fat duh!

cookebook, I'm sorry that recipe wasn't what you were looking for, I made it and really liked it.

My family really likes those really sweet and marshmallow-y sweet potatoes, me not so much. So, I peeled and sliced the sweet potatoes, baked them with some orange juice and served them plain with a side of marshmallow cream mixed with wsweetened condensed milk and a bit of cinnamon, it was thin enough to drizzle and so my girls were happy and so was I.

Annie

Yes, we did have some mishaps this year. I think because I said we never have a dry bird I jinxed myself. Smiles. Not really. What did happen was that I put the probe in the turkey and had a back spasm just then and knew I didn't put it in correctly. Sat down for a few, then forgot to reposition it. While the bird was cooking and everything else was under control it was time for me to go lay down while Christy watched things. Welllll,..she called me when the bird got out so we could then finish making the meal. When I got down I checked the temperature of the resting bird. Uh oh, some parts were 200degrees. I love the leg and it was still good. LOL. Christy ate the white meat with the gravy, which was so good, so that was good. She can deal with the overcooked white meat so she's been eating it on hot and cold sandwiches. I used some of that breast and the thigh meat and made a food processor turkey salad with lots of garlic. It's actually quite good like that.

The other misstep was the brussel sprouts were a little underdone. Not a big deal since there was plenty to eat and easy to cook them some more for later meals we had. Other than that, the gravy was wonderful, my white sweet potatoes were delicious and the stuffing turned out great. Good thing since it's for Christmas too. Here is a pic of four loaves of bread in my big pot waiting for the onion, celery, broth and spices.

Does anyone else use an electric knife to cut their bread? I don't use it often, but it earns it's storage space to just be used to cut up bread for stuffing or bread pudding. Four loaves of bread and zoom, done in a few minutes. When I was a kid it was our job to tear the bread into pieces and still when there are kids around I give them that job. They love it and even quite young children can do it.

The pumpkin pie was great too. I had made the crust for a chocolate pudding pie but good sense prevailed and I just saved the crust. I'll make that tonight since we are finally done with the pumpkin. Dessert each night and a few breakfasts took care of that.

"What did happen was that I put the probe in the turkey and had a back spasm just then and knew I didn't put it in correctly." POOR COCONUT!

It almost sounds like a turkey voodoo doll since it happened right when you put the probe in! Yikes!

LOL Cookebook. It does sound as though the turkey got me back this time. My back is always iffy at best, and I'd been doing a lot of cooking for a few days so it was more or less the usual. Thanks for the sympathy. Smiles.

This year I saw some contributions to the groaning table from my kids for the first time. Younger son visiting from the other coast pitched in with setting the table, reaching for the too high storage, and washing the wine glasses that had not been used since last year and other odd jobs. Local son and girlfriend brought lovely homemade yeast rolls and a homemade apple pie. Sister and her husband brought wine, vegetable, and salad. Son-in-law brought wine, DD and busy, darling grandsons. I roasted the stuffed bird, made the gravy, pumpkin bread, corn pudding, candied sweet potatoes, twice baked potatoes, minced meat peaches, coffee, and cranberry relish. I don't know how I would do it without our old and trusty double ovens. Everyone kept commenting that this was the best Thanksgiving dinner ever, but I don't know why. We have a basic holiday meal we like to make and only vary the dessert, salad and vegetables. However, it was too much but yummy.

The first Thanksgiving dinner I've cooked in many years turned out delicious. I was so please with myself.

I made the most beautiful gravy - but what I will not do again is put chopped up giblets in there (I used them for the stock, then fished them out and chopped them very fine and added them to the gravy). They didn't have any flavor left in them, and were just little rubbery pieces of meat.

The other oops was - I made WAY too much mashed potato for DH and I! Since I cook mostly from scratch without a recipe, making too much of something is one of my "issues" LOL. I have so much left over. Last night I made salmon, and made some potato croquettes, which we ate with jalapeno pepper jelly. Yum. But I STILL have a bunch of mashed p's left! I'll stash them in the freezer, that's what I'll do.

Gina, I make gnocchi with them. An egg, bit of parm if I want and enough flour to make the dough how I like it.

We had ours at DD's. I brought dressing which I had overcooked and dried out, plus I made too much. Lessons hopefully learned for next time. The giblet gravy turned out really well and so did the cranberry jezebel. I though the deviled eggs were good until DD asked after dinner if I put any mustard in them. I put so much that I was afraid it was too much mustard. All in all everything went great except DD was not feeling up to par.

coconut, that's exactly what I was going to say to Gina. I almost tried to find you so you talk me through your fork flip, but I ate my "extra" mashed potatoes too quickly to do it. Parm, huh, sounds good!

Extra mashed potatoes? No such thing! I have a bread recipe that uses mashed potatoes, and they're the topping for shepherd's pie.

Coconut, sorry about your back.

Annie

Yes, my dear Native American-Irish sister, no such thing as leftover mashed. Hence, my " around them. Potatoes forever! And why I didn't have any left to ask coconut about fork flipping gnocchi.

;)

Funnily, but when I asked my sister if I could bring some or if they were being served, she said, "But we already have potao salad?", as if that was enough. Sheesh. I remembered a great deal of commenting last year about none (actually not me!), so I pressed the issue to have them. This year was the lack of ham. She continued saying, "You can't get enough potatoes, can you?" I said, "Well, we didn't make boiled, fried, chips, tater tots, or baked. We could make those too!" and continued to offer more ways of making potatoes. By the way, I am 1/4 Cherokee, along with my English and Irish heritage.

LOL, Rob, we ARE sisters. I've never met a potato I didn't like. Some more than others, admittedly, but I've never actually turned one down. There's even a place for instant mashed potatoes, in my bread recipe!

Annie

To help my aunt, I made gravy, which I have almost zero experience with but I just looked up the directions in a cookbook. It LOOKED great, velvety, etc., but it was very salty. I wonder if that was because the drippings came from a Butterball turkey. Aren't they injected with some type of brine?? Anyway, I wish I knew how to "desalt" gravy. Can you just add more unsalted broth??

The meal was delicious, the turkey tasted great. So did the smoked one my cousin's BF made the next day.

L, you can "desalt" the gravy, but you need to add more broth and then you'd have to add more thickener, whatever you used. I use flour.

Annie