After two full days of no-cooking recovery (yea leftovers!), I'm finally ready to post about the adventures of making a ten-dish Thanksgiving dinner in 120 minutes. I wrote about it here on my work blog, but that was the nice version, clean from swearing and frustration that sometimes chases our little cooking adventures. Somehow I didn't think my boss wanted to read about me saying "Melt, damn you! Melt!" to the cheese sauce at 6:58. Or the quote of the day, uttered at 7:03, "Holy shit, we did it."Oh it was a fun day. J got to my house around 5ish, so we didn't get started until 5:15. After she saw my minute-by-minute schedule, we decided it'd be easier to set the clocks back than try to adapt the timetable as we went.
Full disclosure-- Anything I could do ahead of time (legally), I did. Therefore, if you could buy it chopped, diced, or sliced, then I went ahead and chopped, diced, or sliced it, starting with the apples for the crisp and ending with the celery and onions for the stuffing which, by the way, would have been delicious had I remembered to make it!
That's right. After we finished cooking, I did a little inventory to see what exactly hadn't made it. I'd cleared a pantry shelf so, at the end of the day, it should have been empty. Instead I found all the makings for stuffing, the coconut (for the ambrosia), and the turkey seasonings for the gravy. The lesson here? Making a full dinner can be done that fast, but I don't advise it.
That said, J and I had a blast. From figuring out how to bind the turkey to where to put it when it was done (what counter space?), it was a blast. I loved hearing her yell, then coax, her little yeast rolls to rise, which they finally did, and it was even more fun when our other friends showed up and realized that no one knew how to carve. Thank God L had watched before or at least pretended she had.
There's something so fun about having a big family-style meal with friends. Last year we cooked Fauxgiving for everyone at the apartment and it was a blast, but sitting around a table with my four dear Birmingham friends was just fabulous. Plus we had Finding Nemo on in the background, so it was definitely the kids' table atmosphere.
No disasters this year, though I did learn (through a search, not necessity) that my apartment doesn't have a fire extinguisher. Good to know!
Don't get me wrong, I have full confidence in my cooking, but last year we did set the stove on fire. A friend brought the turkey and managed to spill the grease all over the range without telling anyone. Perhaps it speaks to my cleaning abilities, but when I went to boil a pot of water the next day, flames. Literal flames.
I put it out and called my mother, "Sounds like an electrical fire," she said. "What did you do?"
"Um, I dumped the water on it?" I replied.
"On. An. Electrical. Fire?" she asked, pointedly.
"There were flames!" I replied.
"Use flour, sweetie! Or put a lid over it." she said.
But I assure you, looking for flour and stretching my hand out over those flames were the last things on my to-do list that day, so water it was.
I told my roommate the next day not to use the stove until we figured it out and her friend, the turkey bandit, piped up. "Oh, um. Yeah. About that..." he said, then confessed to the great grease spill of 2007.
So the fact that there were no flames (yet) makes this "Fastgiving" an upgrade from last year's "Fauxgiving." Plus there's the satisfaction of knowing that yes, I could cook a whole freakin turkey dinner and still live to talk about it. Next year, I think we'll slow it down some, though.
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