Lpink, glad all went well. Sorry about your recipe going AWOL. We had cream of escargot soup at a wonderful restaurant in Heidelberg, Germany, many years ago. When we returned home, I wrote the restaurant and asked for the recipe. They very kindly sent it (this was pre-emailing everything). I was so excited to have it, I put it away somewhere safe. I hasn’t been seen since. 🤯 I was too embarrassed to ask for it again.

Use your cranberry jelly on pork or chicken sliders. Combine 1/2 red onion, thinly sliced, with 1/2 cup red wine and 1/4 tsp salt. Let set for 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Construct your sliders with thinly sliced meat, onions, and cranberry jelly on some sort of rolls. I like Hawaiian Rolls.

The cranberry jelly would also be good on grilled cheese sandwiches, maybe with a thin slice of ham.

That all sounds great! Congratulations on the successes.

I had some minor emergencies, like I set the oven to preheat so it would be good and hot, and found it cold when it was time to put in the "bird". 9 pound double turkey breast. I figured the latch didn't completely catch so it didn't turn on. It heated quickly, however, and didn't really affect the timing much. Breasts don't need the kind of resting time than whole, and I made sure all the dishes, etc., were pulled and placed, and that which stood still was washed and put away. The turkey breast was just sprinkled with poultry seasoning and placed in an unbleached parchment turkey bag. I couldn't help myself, however, and (literally) threw in a wedged onion, a couple chunked carrots and a couple chunked celery stalks. :) Tore open the top for the last half hour. Perfect! Steamed in its own juices.

The gravy was made ahead with chicken stock, plus some turkey juice day of. I've been making this gravy for years. It's little more than a velouté. Dead easy. Foolproof. Plus, I use Wondra. But just now, I managed to make lumps in Wondra. And it separated in the fridge. Not broke. It never came together. It was a suspension. As I was heading to bed, Wednesday, something I often have said came to mind: Once something has been emulsified in the Vita-Mix, it stays emulsified. Couldn't hurt, I thought. So I dumped it in, gave it a whirr and got a perfectly velvety, never to separate gravy. :)

OTOH, I overcooked the beautiful broccolini. :( Not badly, but enough It still got mostly all 'et up.

The stuffing was a success. A few years ago I figured out the key to making it like my mother's. Her instructions didn't work for me. Instead, I pretend I'm making bread pudding a la velouté instead of custard. :) Not really. The eggs go into the dry bread first, then the stock, but it's the quantity of stock that matters. I bought a loaf or organic par baked French bread because I was in no mood to bake bread for the stuffing. I baked it off according to directions, and was surprised that it was very sour on the sourdough scale. Not my usual definition of French bread. But it lost some of that sour as it dried out. I added some mandlin and matzah, and a big bag of restaurant chow mein, for variety. And was very proud of myself that the quantity I eyeballed in my bowl was exactly the right amount to fill my mother's dish.

The cranberry sauce was ... normal.

The Libby's recipe pumpkin pie was fine, but not very pumpkiny. Not the texture I was looking for, like my autnie's, but very much like Lindac's recipe, which I make with fresh pumpkin. The whole wheat spiced crust was a good call. I used Stella Parks's pinch recipe for the crust for the apple pie. It was wonderfully flaky, but it was obvious that gluten had developed. I used Gold Medal AP, as usual. I think it spent too long in the fridge and went all no-knead dough. I have Swansdown, which it never occurred to me to use, but I think I'll buy some pastry flour if I want to make the dough ahead again. It tastes good, mind you. It's just not 100% "right". Not that anyone noticed. They gobbled it all up. :)

lpink, your dinner sounds amazing!

I think the tradition of turkey is responsible for generations of stressful Thanksgivings. Turkey is hard to roast, I think, being such a big bird. It is physically heavy to manipulate. It is so large, and usually filled with stuffing, that by the time the stuffing is safe the breast is often overdone. The legs are stringy and chewy. It’s just an awful bird, in my grouchy opinion, and there’s a reason most people only eat it once a year. Sure, it can be tasty, but anything can be tasty if drenched in gravy.

Subbing a chicken, or simply two smaller turkeys, makes so much sense to me. Or a duck.

The only bird I like less than turkey, as the one cooking it, is a goose. We used to make goose at Christmas, because we wanted to be all Charles Dickens. I remember the lakes of fat, the stuffing dripping with oil, worrying that my oven would catch fire. I can’t recall if I liked the flavor. By the time we were ready to eat, I hated the goose with a passion, not just that particular bird but the entire species, and went straight for the ham.

We had:

1. Canard a l’orange.

2. Honey glazed ham.

3. Stove top stuffing.

4. Pumpkin soup.

5. Creamed spinach. Gruyere and brie cheese.

6. Mashed potatoes. DD refused to make cheesy mashed potatoes, for some obscure ideological reason.

7. Green beans a la nothing. We ran out of energy and simply boiled them...

8. Various desserts.

9. A bottle of my favorite winery’s 2004 Reserve Cabernet which had gone off in a slightly weird way, it was drinkable but definitely not the treat I’d expected.

10. Moscow Mules, during cooking.

John, about turkeys, I generally agree with you. However, my DSIL can smoke a flavorful turkey and my DBIL can fry a mean turkey. I will eat a bit of theirs, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for most turkey.

When my daughter was about 7 or 8, she wanted to carry her lunch to school. And she wanted turkey. I bought every kind of deli turkey I could find, but I couldn’t seem to find the turkey of her dreams. Finally, she said “I want dry turkey, like Grandmommy makes!” 🤦🏻‍♀️ My mom was the queen of overcooked _______ [fill in the blank].

Well, I made spaghetti carbonara with guanciale from Zingerman's. It was fabulous and a friend came by to pick up a paper plate of it to take home with her.

Not quite traditional but very good.

Lpink, I'm glad your Dad was happy with dinner, I know he's difficult to feed much of the time. Like you, I'd just as soon have a plain roasted sweet potato as any of the sweet casseroles that are traditional, but my girls LOVE the sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping. I'll get my plain sweet potato another meal!

We definitely went traditional and I LOVE turkey! So, we had turkey, LOL, Elery roasted it in the "oil less" electric fryer and it was moist and perfect, the skin was crunchy and those who eat poultry skin liked it. I couldn't stuff it that way, of course, so the stuffing was actually dressing, done in the oven. The full menu was:

Roast Turkey (a 22 pounder, so I have leftovers on purpose!)

Glazed Ham

Cornbread stuffing with sausage

Onion/celery and sage stuffing

Woodie's 7 Layer Salad

Corn pudding

Green Beans with bacon

LindaC's Cranberry Jezebel

Cranberry Apple Relish

Mashed Potatoes

Gravy

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Macaroni and Cheese

Sol's Honey Rolls

Cheesecake with various fruit toppings

Apple Pie

Lemon chiffon (gluten free)

Yes, it's a big menu for 9 of us, as we did not have Mother or the aunts or any of the friends we usually have. I don't care for ham, and like turkey, as does Elery. The kids prefer ham. Elery is from the south and likes cornbread stuffing, and my oldest daughter is celiac, so they get the cornbread stuffing. My other daughter and the grandkids want the "regular" stuff. The gravy was made with cornstarch so everyone can have it. Elery and I want LindaC's cranberry jezebel with the horseradish, but everyone else wants the relish. I added the 7 layer salad because I have lettuces in the hoophouse and a LOT of eggs to use. I have some left, I'll eat it for supper tonight along with leftover turkey. I want mashed potatoes and gravy and Madi will eat mashed potatoes in lieu of dessert. Amanda won't touch them, nor will Makayla, so Amanda gets candied sweet potatoes and Makayla just eats the mac and cheese. Everyone wants rolls except Amanda. Amanda also has diverticulitis and can't eat corn, but Ashley wants corn pudding, as do the kids. Elery, Amanda and I would prefer the green beans. Desserts happened because I needed one thing that was gluten free (the lemon chiffon) and I had the apple pie in the freezer and needed to make room because beef will be processed in the next couple of weeks.

There were plenty of leftovers for each of the girls to take home, and lots left for me, so everyone was happy and still is. They food coma could last for a couple of days.

Annie

Hubs made a roast turkey breast last night. It too was surprisingly moist. I think now days that most birds are injected with some type of solution that insures moistness.

My beloved late Aunt used to make barbecued turkey on the spit outside their summer home for big gatherings with lots of garden fresh accoutrements. Memorably good meals. Turkey is a fine bird but just doesn't seem to benefit taste-wise from breeding for huge-ness, IMHO.

Before I met hubs, duck a l'orange was our fancy bird meal of choice since our family gatherings tended to be on the small side albeit with a few notable exceptions. Mom experimented with goose (a really fatty/oven smokey horror) and capon. Some of my favorite alternative TG meals have included special flown-in Pacific salmon, stuffed pork loin roast, and vegetarian stuffed acorn squash. But now I am married to a TG traditionalist who wants WHITE meat turkey for the meal. Dad favors dark meat, so I have the archetypal competition between Dad and son-in-law over the meal. Hard to please both, and my desires for something cool and vegetarian always take the back seat. I have a small pumpkin shaped squash of some type waiting for me to have the time to make a vegetarian stuffed squash meal . . . .

All six of us enjoyed our Thanksgiving meal. Had a fifteen pound turkey. Everyone got some leftovers and mine are about gone. All I have left is a bit of dessert. Growing up we never had turkey. I was married before I ever tasted it. So turkey for me can be any time of the year and I have some in my freezer.

Glad it ended well for you.

Sue

If my freezer wasn't awaiting thawing and cleaning I would be tempted to tell hubs to pick up a big turkey now on sale and we could cook and freeze it and have gads of turkey for later. Right now we have enough ham to last us half the winter . . . .

I still can't solve the mystery of the disappearing tart tatin recipe. And I have another package of puff pastry to use up . . . Oh well, there are others on the Internet I can find . . .