I dragged mom and Tay to the grocery store next. Coming from small college towns with "Kroghetto"s, they oohed an ahhed at my nice neighborhood Schnucks. We were shopping for our last minute thanksgiving supplies. Mom had a recipe that she'd gotten from a friend, which involved brining the turkey with ingredients like "candied ginger." I'd already bought the bird, a fresh 18 pounder which was incidently way huge. Mom asks me: "do you have a five gallon bucket?" Me: Nope. The only thing at the grocery store that is that big is a plastic trash can. We are, however, forgetting a very crucial ingredient of tay's mashed potatoes, which would lead to complications the following morning. (Hint: the ingredient is also in the name of the dish)
We drag our groceries and trash can home and mom gets to work on the brine. We pour it into the trash can when its cooled, and then all the ice and freezer packs in the freezer, and more water. Then we lower in the turkey. It does not look very appealing, a white bird jammed into a plastic trash can filled with muddy brown water and a scattering of peppercorns. I hauled it downstairs to spend the night in the slightly cooler basement.
In the morning, we realized that if we're going to have mashed potatoes, we'd probably need some actual potatoes. The regular grocery stores were closed, so this Thanksgiving, I'm also thankful for Chinese grocery stores. They had the bag of potatoes Tay needed, and also the fresh oysters in a jar that I needed. And then because mom was sure they were going to cancel Thanksgiving if we didn't have enough butter, we made a special trip to Wal-Mart to pick up another box.
The turkey was a big pain. Nobody in our group had ever made turkey before, and the turkey was probably too big by eight pounds. We didn't have plates big enough for it, it was a huge mess and pain to cut up, turkey juice and fat flying everywhere. Next Thanksgiving maybe I'll just do a ham, and maybe a smoked turkey drumstick for the hardline traditionalists.
Suffice it to say, the company was incomparably wonderful, the fare, much less so. The dinner menu:
- Turkey a la Bucket
- Oyster stuffing which was more like a bread pudding.
- Tay's famous mashed potatoes which won 'best dish' handily.
- Flat rolls
- White giblet gravy
- Salad
- and storebought cookies for desert
The wine was really good, a Malbec I inherited from mom when she moved.
After dinner, we sat around, chatting, and watching youtube videos, and debating which movie we wanted to see in theaters. My friend Dew dropped by to chat and have some tea and cookies, which was fun, and then we all took off. Mom and I ended up forcing Tay to see The Muppets by colluding on which movies we were taking off the table. It was a really entertaining movie, but its the same old rehash of Muppets struggling to put on some kind of production. Some great musical numbers though, including a song entirely covered by chickens clucking which was actually a riot.
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