Okay - T-day disasters? Or cheers?

D

dawnnys

Well-known member
I'll start - I ended up making only the turkey and the pumpkin bread/cake. Everyone helped this year more than usual.

Everything was great except there was so much food only 2 people tried my dessert (large Bundt cake pumpkin bread). More for us, I suppose, but a little disappointing when no one eats your food :eek:( It was great - just like pumpkin pound cake, will make great breakfast food with a little cream cheese on a slice or two for a few days.

 
We met family members at New Ulm for a sumptuous buffett -- all the trimmings

but the servers didn't know what "just half of that" meant. AAARRGGHH. Great food, but waaaay too much! The only snafu was the directions to get to the golf club. The cute little map from their web site was all in straight lines. We left Bastrop in plenty of time to arrive at noon (we thought). Once we left the main road, instead of those nice little straight roads we found ourselves driving around every little ranchette that had corners -- 30 miles an hour curving around and around. Some BIG rancher must have sold out in 40 acre parcels from LaGrange to Columbus! We were about 20 minutes late.

I must write them for the recipe for their sweet potatoes. I usually don't take them, but they looked interesting. Wow, they were heavenly! Light and only slightly sweet with pecan streusel.

 
Mine was strange with a feeling of things coming to an end.

We take everything to my 93 year old grandfather's house where we have always celebrated. We are thinking this may possibly be the last year with him and the house. He has done so well up to the last two years (he was a psychiatrist and just stopped seeing patients last year), but is now starting to have serious pain with spinal stenosis and I think he is just sorta quitting. Right before we sat down to eat, one of my younger cousin's wife got a call that her aunt who had been hospitalized and (she thought) doing better with kidney failure was dying. They decided to leave their four kids with the rest of us to drive the hour to the hospital. Auntie died before they got there. Came home and my poor dog is still mourning his elderly pal I had to have put to sleep two weeks ago. He is out of sorts and bored and finding things to chew up which he has never done. Lunch was nice but I feel kind of weirded out and I miss my old dog too. I am very greatful for everyone still remaining but it was a bittersweet holiday.

 
Lobster

It was just the two of us this year on a beautiful, crisp November day. As DH dislikes turkey, he ordered lobsters. We gorged ourselves on fresh lobster, corn on the cob, clarified butter and lemon. It is only two week until we leave for Maui where we will indulge in seafood fresh off the boat, island fruit and sunshine for three weeks.

 
((Melissa)) Sometimes all the losses, and impending losses, peak at one time.

What a great man your grandfather is to have still been practicing at 90!

 
Cheers. I roasted the turkey breast-side down....

and the white meat was so tender that I couldn't
even cube the leftover, it just fell apart in
shreds under my knife.

Also, we had forgotten to buy cranberry sauce,
so at the last minute I made a mad dash to the
grocery store, only to find that they had no
cranberry jelly, so I bought two cans of the
whole berry kind.

Turns out the stuff is really delicious!

 
Sorry to hear about these things. Enjoy

people and pets while you have them, I guess is the thing to keep in mind. You're lucky to have your grandfather around at your age - mine all died before I became an adult but I'm glad to have the memories.

 
I did that too... very moist and it made the 39-cent-a-lb frozen turkey taste like a fresh,

PLainville one... one of the best I've ever tasted, I think.

 
My favorite was a combo of roasted vegetables

that included asparagus, Brussel sprouts, and cubed butternut squash, blanched for a few minutes, then drained and drizzled with evoo and sprinkled with salt, and roasted... better than dessert - my tastebuds are changing (luckily!).

 
My almost disaster, I cubed the bread for dressing, spread it on a sheet pan and stuck it in the

warm oven Wednesday night. Yep, that's right, I forgot it was there and turned on the oven to preheat for the pumpkin pie Thursday morning. Lesson number 2...when you smell bread toasting but no one's cooking, pay attention! The cubes were pretty browned on one side, but I discarded the completely browned ones and used the rest. Dressing came out great.

 
big cheers for the Pumpkin Cheesecake up at 16967 and the sweet potato biscuits in T&T

I'm enjoying those biscuits today with ham. yum. my dough was very very soft and I thought I had a disaster, but I just used plenty of bench flour and just patted it out gently and cut into squares

 
Oh, Melissa! These transitions are so HARD! Bless you for caring so much -- he is really worth it!

I loved the article about him in the Daily Oklahoman. I had an uncle, a dentist, who was in the "death march" Bataan -- they kept him alive because of his medical training. He had left his wife and two children behind in San Antonio, but returned to them after the horrible march. He only lived a few years after his release, however. You had your wonderful grandparent all these years, and he continued to help people until so recently -- wonderful!

 
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