The Long Thanksgiving

My favorite holiday: Thanksgiving. This year our family is eating at Porter and Katie's new house. This seriously curbs my ability to browbeat everyone into doing what I want for the menu. My efforts to coordinate the menu via phone calls, e-mails, and Google Docs were completely ignored.

I talked to Mom last night on the phone about the pumpkin pie I'd already announced I would be bringing. Mom said that she had already made three pies - apple, pecan, and coconut meringue. Add a pumpkin pie to the mix and that's chaos, people.

I think people like me are the reason the holidays get ugly sometimes. Some idiot gets a plan in her head and gets very rabid if anyone varies from it. Control freaks like that tend to pout, cry, and act like martyrs at the table. "Well, I wanted to do the mashed potatoes LIKE I ALWAYS DO EVERY YEAR." Sniff sniff.

I'm in charge of the turkey, chimichurri sauce, roasted pears and salad, and the Sweet Potato Not Pie that I subbed for the pumpkin pie. This is the menu as far as I know it, but then again, who knows what I'll find when I show up for dinner?

Menu:
Roasted turkey with chimichurri sauce
Cornbread dressing
Mashed potatoes
Corn Rice Casserole
Roasted pears with blue cheese on salad greens
Cranberry salad
Sweet potato not pie
White rolls
Pecan pie
Apple pie
Coconut meringue pie


6:30pm update: We had a superb Thanksgiving dinner. Porter and Katie have a beautiful home and that newlywed glow that makes everything even better. The food was wonderful.

I was pleased with the turkey. I combined 3 minced garlic cloves, a couple teaspoons of lemon zest, the juice of a lime, 3 chopped jalapeños, and a handful of chopped cilantro. I spread this mixture under the skin of the turkey breast along with butter and a mix of cumin, ground coriander, kosher salt, and black pepper. Rubbed more butter, cumin, salt, and pepper on the skin. I think this method should be standard for Thanksgiving now. I do think, however, that I'll return to brown gravy. The chimichurri sauce was good, but last year I made the best gravy of my life, and I just can't move on. It'd be one thing if the whole menu were Southwestern or Latin, but you need gravy on top of cornbread dressing, and that's all there is to it.

That roasted pear salad was easy to make, and that was a nice presentation. I got the Sweet Potato Not Pie recipe from Casserole Crazy, a blog I could see myself falling for. I made the recipe as described in the video below (it's long, but hang in there), using habaneros and honey goat cheese. As you can see in the picture above, the melted goat cheese makes it look like the old standard sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top.