Thanksgiving Report 2011

It was an awesome Thanksgiving. I enjoyed it immensely. We hosted a dear group of friends for dinner and then did the family thing for games that evening at my sil's house. The mashed potatoes and collard greens were outstanding. My persimmon pudding very good. Really the main deadbeat was my stuffing. The brand of seasoned bread was Canterbury organics and it made the most dry stuffing ever. Luckily gravy fixes most things like that on one's plate.

The turkey had a good flavor but also seemed on the dry side. Did the stuffing dry the turkey out? Was the turkey already dry and that contributed to the dry stuffing? I don't know that I will ever ever know the answer but that did not seem to dampen anyone's enjoyment of each other which I think is more important than the food. [did my italian ancestors just roll over in their graves?]

No writing was done Thursday but still my word count is doing well: 49, 897

Since it is November 26th and I have a fiendishly busy week ahead I don't think I'll make my goal of 'complete first draft' done by Wednesday. So I am going to shoot for at least 60K. That seems attainable but still a stretch with the long days I need to put in Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Time to write like the wind.

I hope everyone who celebrated enjoyed the holiday and happy weekend to all!

prepping for thanksgiving

So much has been happening in this great week so far. But at the moment I have 2 things on my mind, getting ready for Thanksgiving and writing.

word count= 45,079

I am feeling odd about that word count, winning nanawrimo is more than on track for the month. But finishing an entire first draft is seeming more dreamlike than ever for this year. However after I told my wife about my latest plot the idea for the final climatic scene came to me, whereas before I had no idea how this story was going to end. I knew stuff that would happen in the end but now I have a drama to build up to....

A much easier task is getting ready for Thanksgiving. We are gong to be a smaller group this year which sounds lovely to me. I love the changes from year to year. My wife is picking up our fresh turkey this morning, the celery and onion are minced for the stuffing, which I will put together tonight. I baked my rustic apple tart this morning. I wonder how the crust will turn out, has my crust luck finally changed? It did seem a bit dry to me. When I get home from my lunch with a friend I will make the persimmon pudding, finish setting the table and check things off my list. Hopefully I will end up with time to write as well.

A big thanks to all of you who are reading, seems appropriate to mention that this week. xo

so how did that stuffing turn out?

Or wait, perhaps you are not here for a stuffing report but this:

Word count = 34, 485

I wasn't able to write at all yesterday but I am feeling good about that word count, I am only about 8K off the pace and it's the long free weekend for me, so I plan to write and write and eat yummy leftovers.

But before I do that, how to sum up Thanksgiving this year. In a word; crock pots. In an attempt to keep food warm before serving, my crock pot and several others were used. One warmed the mashed potatoes [made earlier by my sister in law], likewise the yummy bean/tomato dish. One crock pot kept hot the sweet potatoes with chambord sauce. [all the alcohol burned off first]. A platter of the carved turkey was covered in foil and kept hot in the toaster oven. And I think it helped. The food was hot when served, or at least warm. It was a freezing day of about 15 degrees, more like January than November so it seemed even more important to keep the food above room temp. Ah well, perhaps one day I will have a double oven so that I can keep stuff warm with ease.

The company was wonderful, the food very good I thought, although this year continues to be the year of 'fighting with pastry'. The turkey, which was stuffed, quite moist. The gravy made by my chief ninja fabulous. The pies ok, and the persimmon pudding good. The artichoke dip, seriously the best I have ever made, with just the right amount of kick.

I hope everyone else, whether you are celebrating american Thanksgiving or not, working your fingers to the bone writing or not, is having a great week and is well fed!

Newsflash=bread does not need sugar

If I had the time I might actually be interested in finding out how we got the idea in this country that bread must have sugar in it. Sure it may help to get your yeast going quickly but you do not need it. But virtually every recipe you see will call for it unless it is subclassified 'european' and the sugar may be suggested any way. le sigh

The most delicious bread I have ever eaten is made of flour, yeast, salt, a bit of fat and water. This is in fact the bread I grew up with and yes it spoiled me. We have been known to travel with it in our carry on luggage. After all my family has been eating it since 1926 when the bakery first opened.

Not only did we use the old bread for breadcrumbs in our home made meatballs, we bought balls of dough for pizza crust and bags of old dried [seasoned if they came from Jenny Lee's] cubes for stuffing. I wonder if they still fire up the old brick wall ovens?

Which brings me to my stuffing issue. I haven't been collecting old bread for the past 6 weeks so I need to buy my bread cubes for my stuffing. This usually is not a problem but for some reason every bag of cubes I look at either has sugar in it or worse corn syrup! Blech.

That means I'll be spending time I don't really have trekking out to Whole Foods on questionable roads to get bread for the stuffing this morning. Oh well. Does this make me a food snob, perhaps? But if you grew up eating the bread that I ate you would be as well. [Hmm I just noticed they actually sell their cubes online now....I had no idea. Perhaps for next year!]

Happy thoughts about this though...Word count = 25, 587

I am over the halfway mark and it's downhill from here folks. Be safe all and I hope you all have good bread to eat!