On thanksgiving cooking

Well, that wasn't so bad. I made a full-fledged Thanksgiving dinner for six of us yesterday, and nothing failed, to my great surprise! I got a fresh semi-organic semi-free range turkey from one of the yuppie groceries, and roasted it without stuffing. It was fine (if not finished until an hour later than I expected), and my guests agreed. I even made the gravy without screwing it up this time. The only other time I've made a turkey (a Butterball), I made one of my most dramatic cooking mistakes ever. The gravy wasn't really thickening, so I said to myself, "self, why don't you thicken it with a cornstarch mixture, like a Chinese sauce?" So I grabbed the yellow box off the shelf, made a paste with some water, and whisked it into the gravy. Well, started to whisk, 'cause as soon as that paste hit the gravy, it erupted just like a science fair volcano!

Yep, wrong box. Instead of the cornstarch, I grabbed the baking soda. Turns out that gravy's a bit acidic. Well, it is until you stir a couple tablespoons of baking soda into it. It didn't impact the flavor noticibly, and when I added the contents of the right yellow box, it thickened right up...

In my opinion, the best dish this year was Bourbon Baked Sweet Potatoes, courtesy of a blog called 101cookbooks. I made it without the spicy pecans the recipe called for, since I was too lazy to chase down decent pecans. I think if I had used the pecans, it would sorta compete with the pecan pie, which is sorta unfair. I'm not sure to who -- the pecan pie (brought by an esteemed guest) was mighty good! In any case, the sweet potatoes were an interesting two-step process. First they were peeled, sliced, and oven-roasted with olive oil. Then you add a bunch of flavorful ingredients over the top: bourbon, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, lemon zest, maple syrup, and parmesan, and bake again. I definitely recommend doubling the recipe...

For the record, I also made a cornbread dressing (cooked separately) and caesar salad, and we had bread, wine, and the three traditional pies, the aforementioned pecan, plus an apple and a pumpkin. And very wonderful guests who washed most of the dishes last night! Thank you!

(And no, the picture isn't me, it's just one off of Google. I never made a volcano for a science fair. I think my science project in the 4th grade was to see if talking to plants made them grow faster. In fact, if I remember right, the only difference was that the one I insulted (for weeks!) grew a bit taller!)