Looks like this blog has turned into a Thanksgiving planning space for me. That was unintentional – but maybe lack of intentionality is the problem.
Well anyway, Thanksgiving is ten days out, and I’m getting pretty excited! Have decided to smoke a turkey on the Weber grill this year. Previous years, I’ve used an electric roaster to make the turkey which leaves the oven free for all the other stuff I have to use it for, but I have never figured out how to achieve a uniformly-colored bird with that roaster. I wanted to try the oven but couldn’t figure out a way to cook the turkey AND all the casseroles/rolls that I’ll be baking on Thursday. How do people with one oven do it all?! I don’t want to know. So — planning to do a wet brine and then smoke it on Thursday.
The rest of the meal will be your standard Southern Thanksgiving fare. The only new dishes for this year will be a broccoli casserole, and some glazed carrots. I always want to do carrots but never end up planning any – so have fixed that problem this year. I am trying a new cranberry relish this year too- half cranberries, half apples, with some citrus. I’m thinking of getting some Calvados to spike it a little too.
This last weekend (today is Monday), I made a bunch of hog bone broth (with some hog bones from our CSA) and also cleaned out the freezer. Did some cleaning and re-organizing in the kitchen too, hoping to make it feel less cluttered in there. I need to clean out the grill sometime this week, but otherwise I’m mostly caught up until this weekend. This will give me plenty of time to try to finish playing Red Dead Redemption (the original) so that I can start playing RDR2 on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I started RDR1 several months ago after Liesl strongly recommended it, and sorta got distracted by stuff after making it into Mexico. I decided to get RDR2 because I DO like the feel of the game, and the new one is supposed to be spectacularly gorgeous, and I wanted a new game to play after Thanksgiving. I preordered Fallout 76 but then canceled the preorder after reading too many bad/skeptical reviews. I’m not much for PvP games. I feel like a traitor to the franchise, and will probably get the game later once it’s not so expensive, because I do love FO and have played the last 3 games. But I didn’t want to spend $60 on something I’m not sure that I’ll like (duh). Plus even though I have put HOURS into FO4, I have still not ever actually finished the game because it keeps bugging out on me. First playthrough I couldn’t finish off the Railroad and the Institute because – though Deacon had already died – the game thought that he was still alive and living on top of the Mass Fusion building. Second playthrough I can’t finish off the Institute because f’ing Desdemona won’t even acknowledge me (I think this is because I let a Railroad agent die during the battle of Bunker Hill). Drove me crazy, may never play the game again. (I DO have some mighty fine settlements from both playthroughs though, I will note.)
Anyway, so there you have my Thanksgiving plans. We just got new dishes and new wine glasses too, and I got a new roasting pan (purely out of necessity since I can’t very well use the electric roaster on the grill) – so yeah, excited about using everything. Not nearly as excited about the next five days at work, but I’ll live.
No Promises This Time 