Thanksgiving Flashback, One

Honestly, no matter how much I wanted to there was no way I was going to post right after Thanksgiving. I think I wash more dishes in the months of November and December than any other month throughout the entire year. (It was worth it, definitely.)

This is called 'fun with turkey'. My mom was prepping it and called me over. "Who does this look like to you?" Seriously? After telling her that I had absolutely no idea, even though there are some people who could resemble an animal, like dogs and their owners (but never an aardvark), she said it looked like the character D.W. from the kid's series 'Arthur', the one about the aardvark.

Shy D.W.

Mom read somewhere that cooling down the breast meat before roasting helped to make the cooking time even, helping the thigh and breast meat finish cooking roughly around the same time.

Coy D.W.

Here's D.W. before being put in the oven. My mom decided on a brief stint in the oven to give D.W. some color, then popping her into the roaster to finish cooking.

Cider serving station

Probably my most favorite part of Thanksgiving is the hot spiced cider. I look forward to it more than anything, really. Yes, I still consume many cups of coffee, but nothing is better than watching the parade while sipping a mug of cider.

We don't really have a regular breakfast on Thanksgiving, though we normally make something to nosh on. Well, we forgot. Luckily, there was leftover mashed potatoes in the fridge (from another meal) and I came up with the idea of making potato-sausage patties. I cooked the remaining sage sausage that my mom used for the cornbread dressing, added that with an egg and some flour, shredded cheese, salt, 'baby bam!' seasoning I mixed up earlier, then I formed the mixture into patties and dipped each side in flour. That really helped it brown nicely and kept the soft mixture easy to work.

As another snackable, I made banana muffins from Once Upon a Tart cookbook. I really like this recipe, though it's not my ultimate favorite recipe for banana bread. This version, though, has whole wheat flour, which I figured would be better to have for breakfast. The finished muffin is not heavy at all, and there are some banana chunks. Instead of the poppy seeds the recipe uses (I had none left), I used roughly the same amount of finely chopped pecans. You couldn't taste it because the pecans weren't toasted, but I'm sure it lent a nice flavor.

What's especially nice about the muffin recipes in OUaT cookbook is that it produces nicely crowned muffin tops. Very aesthetically pleasing, even though you shouldn't judge a muffin by its top.

Next post will feature the remaining process of cooking stuff that led to the feast.

Cider, potato-sausage patties, and Merry