RSS Thanksgiving for humans
Filed in Food
This post is way overdue, mostly due to my “excellent” organizational skills. Slowly I am improving, but still, I wish I’d posted it while people were still thinking about Thanksgiving. My other option would have been to wait until next year… ;-)
This was my first attempt at making a big meal in an RV. I have cooked a large turkey twice in my marriage and each time it was a waste of time. There are only two of us and we don’t eat that much. So, we’ve learned to either do a small chicken or to buy one of those “box roasts” which is basically a meat loaf made from compressed turkey meat. Both are tasty and both fit in the oven. I’m also quite used to coordinating what is essentially the same menu every year.
This year I did a combination of real food and convenience food. Cooking in a small space requires a certain amount of planning because there just isn’t any redundancy of space. I have two frying pans and three regular pans and that’s it for stove top devices. I therefore had to figure out what I would do in what order and it worked out quite well.
The night before
I made cheese straws with a recipe emailed to me from Scotland. I’m going to have to try them again with a) more salt and b) self-rising flour. They were nice, and it was fun to bake, but I’ve made better.
Still, there weren’t any left by the time I served the actual dinner.
Two hours before
I ignited the oven. Then I set to work on the “julienne” carrots.
Julienne strips are thin matchstick-like strips of carrot. I have always found that very laborious and don’t have a very sharp knife, so I cheat. I peeled and quartered two large carrots and then cut them thinly lengthways to create “discs.” These go onto a square of aluminum foil. Then you add a few large dollops of butter, some salt and pepper and fold the foil over to fully enclose the food. I stuck it in the fridge for the time being, and then I put the roast in the oven.
The plastic bowl is for waste.
Next came the brussels sprouts. I filled a pan with water in advance, then prepared them. This means rinse, chop off the thickest part of the stalk, remove outer leaves that might look a bit skanky, and cut a cross-shape into the base. Then these could go straight into the pan of water and onto the stove to sit at room temperature for a short while.
Same thing here–I filled a pan with water, peeled my baby spuds, and put them straight in the water. This could then store on top of the stove until liftoff time.
After this, I cleared away what I’d used as I wouldn’t be needing it any more, and then I could relax for a bit.
Half an hour before
I put the heat on under the brussels sprouts and potatoes. I know that you’re not supposed to put them in until the water boils, but this works just fine and is more convenient.
This is also when the carrots are supposed to go into the oven but to be honest I forgot. ;) They went in ten minutes later and were a bit crunchier than ideal, but still yummy.
I set the table, and opened the can of cranberry sauce.
Ten minutes before
Now I used my third and final pan. (When I was picking dishes out, I had to compare the number of pans with the number of dishes and act accordingly, not to mention what would fit in each one.) This time I boiled water for the package stuffing and got that going. I also rustled up some gravy, again from a mix. By the time all this was ready, so was the rest of dinner and so I dished up. It looked kind of pretty.
We munched, had a feast, and then waited several hours before digging into our pumpkin pie. I had cream with mine.
And we didn’t need the Tums. ;)
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