Turkey Day Report!!

Did everyone have as delicious and blissful a Thanksgiving as I did? Mmm . . . I am drooling all over myself just thinking about it! Wilson and I decided to pass on the stress of travelling to see either of our families this year and instead stayed home in Brooklyn for Thanksgiving. I think it was a very wise decision (although our families probably wouldn't agree--sorry, guys!).

Wednesday night I carried on the three-year tradition of being the absolute last person at my firm to leave the office. It wasn't too late--around 7:00 p.m.--but when everyone else had left at 2, it sure as hell seemed late!! I rushed home to find Wilson working on the brine for the turkey with a pot of mulled cider warming up in the crock pot. YUMMY. We mixed in a little applejack and our holiday was underway.

Like Laura, I had a detailed chart dictating my every cullinary move (hooray for being nerdy!). Wednesday night called for baking sour cream biscuits and pumpkin pie, making homemade cranberry sauce and preparing the corn casserole so that I could simply pop it in the oven the next day. I gleefully got to work and continued to do so until every last item on that list had been checked off. It was after 10:00 p.m. before Wilson and I realized that with all the excitement surrounding prepping/cooking/baking our first Thanksgiving meal, we'd failed to grab anything to make for dinner! What were we to do? Luckily, we are runners . . . meaning, we always have pasta on stand-by. We cooked up some gnocchi, did the dishes and called it a night.

Thanksgiving itself actually turned out nearly perfect, if I do say so myself. As a result of getting shut-out of our local 5-mile Turkey Trot (geez, Brooklyn! Didn't you hear that the entire point of Thanksgiving is laziness and gluttony?), we got to sleep in until 9 AM, which was a nice treat for sure. We got up and Wilson started with the turkey, while I went to town making my homemade egg noodles from scratch. I don't get why more people don't do this . . . it's so easy! Oh wait . . . maybe it's the fact that it takes like three centuries to make the damn things! Riiiight. But the deliciousness more than makes up for it, I promise! I got those suckers made up and hung them out to dry, all while taking in a bit of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on the boob-tube and drinking coffee with a splash of eggnog. Pure bliss!

With my first task accomplished, I relaxed and watched some shitty football for a while (seriously, Lions . . . just forfeit the rest of the season and save yourselves the embarrassment!) and ate a delicious but light lunch of cabbage soup, leftover from earlier in the week. I also squeezed in a little online shopping and a nice, long shower. Then around 3:00, it was time to get serious! I got the gravy/sauce/soup concoction that I cook my noodles in ready and cranked up the crock-pot . . . then I peeled and cooked some potatoes. While the potatoes were boiling, I started making my delicious cranberry-apple-sausage stuffing . . . toasted the bread and cooked up some sausage and onions. I then took a well-deserved Budweiser tall-boy break while I forced Wilson to chop up the remaining ingredients for the stuffing.

I threw the collard greens on the stove--ham-hocks and all--just in the nick of time (or so I thought!) . . . then mashed my potatoes up with butter, sour cream and cream cheese (SO good!!). I mixed all of the ingredients for my stuffing together, looked at the clock and realized I was RIGHT ON SCHEDULE! You know what they say . . . there's a first for everything! And my hard work and dedication were rewarded with . . . a delinquent a-hole of a turkey. That stubborn bird just didn't seem to want to cook (or perhaps conversely our $30 smoker didn't want to smoke)! So I waited . . . and I waited . . . and I waited. Everything besides the turkey was ready to go; I just had to wait for the go-ahead from Wilson. He promised he'd give me 45 minutes warning so I could throw the potatoes, stuffing and corn casserole in the oven.

Wouldn't you know, we ended up watching the entire first season of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" before that bird heated up enough for us to safely devour him (hilarious show, by the way! I highly recommend it!)! Finally, around 9:00 p.m., we had our Thanksgiving feast laid out on the table. Doesn't it look heavenly?

And because I'm super proud of my masterpiece side-dishes/pie (and Wilson's yummy smoked turkey too!) . . . I am going to force you to look at close-ups of all of our trimmings!

Collard Greens (pre-ham-hock removal--it looks cooler that way!)

Corn casserole.

Baked mashed potatoes.

Cran-apple-sausage stuffing.

Sour cream biscuits.

Cranberry sauce.

Smoked turkey.

Pumpkin pie!

And finally, a photo of my loaded plate . . . please note the big fluffy homemeade noodles on top of the mashed potatoes . . . apparently I forgot to take a picture of them to post above. They are SO good.

After seeing our delicious spread, the cat was not so happy about her own Thanksgiving dinner. I gloated all night about how the tables had turned and my cat was finally jealous of ME (but we were nice and gave her a little turkey anyway). Here she is, trying to figure out why her meal sucks so much:

I can't believe I'm about to post this, but I took the following self-portrait after Thanksgiving dinner in an attempt to express just how stuffed I was . . . sadly, Wilson and I were unable to bounce back from our glutton-fest before passing out, and thus, the pumpkin pie went untouched . . . (until Friday, that is)! Here is my "I'm stuffed and possibly about to vomit" face:

And this next photo is my "I am the Thanksgiving champion!" pose (can I just mention how damned hot it is in our apartment now that the heat has come on? HOT. I've never heard of anyone having that problem in a NYC apartment, but whatever. On a related note, please don't think that I ALWAYS wear crap like that . . . I had on a very cute dressy outfit before our apartment spontaneously turned into a broiler, I promise!)

Here is poor Wilson, taking care of dish duty for the umpteenth time that day:

And finally, the cat (Nico) was seriously tuckered out by Thanksgiving (damn tryptophan!) . . . and, I think, possibly affected by some sort of heat illness. This was the result:

Hope you all had wonderful Turkey Days! I'll be back soon with a long run report for this weekend.