Today is the day before Thanksgiving. We used to host a blow-out all-are-invited open house party on the night before Thanksgiving. People would start arriving at 7 and the last stragglers would depart at 1 AM. And then I’d get up in the morning and spend the entire day cooking a giant Thanksgiving dinner. Madness, I tell you. I don’t know how I did it, really. I had a lot of energy then.
“Then,” of course, means 2019 and earlier. We couldn’t hold the party in 2020, of course, and for one reason or another, we just stopped altogether. It’s OK. That party had a good, solid 12-year run. People still talk about it. Oh, the before times. But since we don’t have guests tonight, we’ll go to the Capitals game instead. Always a silver lining,
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I didn’t work today. Well, I took a vacation day and didn’t work at my paid job. But I worked like a fiend all day. Today is Thanksgiving prep day, and Thanksgiving prep day means potatoes, and potatoes are a lot of work. How much work? Maybe I’ll tell you.
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It’s 4:03 PM on Thanksgiving Day. Or day. You can style that however you like. The rest of the food is done and has been done for some time. Only the turkey has stubbornly refused to reach the recommended temperature of 165. It’s at 162 now, and it’s on the stove, resting. That turkey can fuck right off. I’m the one who should be resting. We’re going to wait five minutes, or maybe ten; and then we’re going to cut that turkey, and we’ll just see what happens. It’ll be delicious or it’ll be undercooked and we’ll all end up sick. There’s only one way to find out.
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I made a lot of mashed potatoes - enough to fill two large baking dishes. That is what I do - I make the potatoes a day in advance, spread them out in glass baking dishes, and then warm them up in the oven on Thanksgiving day. It takes almost ten pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes to make enough mash to fill two large baking dishes. Why two large dishes? Because these potatoes are really good and everyone wants leftovers, and I like to give the people what they want.
I worked like a swimmer, in sets - take five potatoes, peel them, cut them, and then take a two minute break to clean up or stretch or move the laundry from the washer to the dryer; and then back to the potatoes. Work methodically, psyching yourself by chunking tasks and setting very short-term goals, and you’ll be done in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, as Sue Ann Nivens used to say. I hate peeling potatoes like nobody’s business but it’s very satisfying to complete a hated chore a little bit at a time, and to watch your progress, counting down in five-potato units until you have a nice pile of potato peels and two pots of chopped potatoes boiling merrily on the stove.
Of course, that’s not all there is to it. There’s the mashing and the beating, adding butter and cream and salt (this is not vegan spa cuisine), continuing to beat until you have a nice fluffy puree that still has some potato texture. When you finally have the perfect potatoes, you dish out two huge bowls for your college student sons to have as a “snack,” and then you spread the rest out into the baking dishes, warning all present that the preview was a one-off, and that the rest of the potatoes are off limits until dinner on Thursday.
And then you clean up. And let me tell you that there’s no mess like a mashed potato mess. The coffee maker and the toaster and the sugar and tea canisters have absolutely no involvement in the making of mashed potatoes, but they all have to be thoroughly scrubbed afterward, along with the countertops, the stovetop, and the floor. Is it worth it? Yes, it 100 percent absolutely is. That’s how good these potatoes are.
Still, I won’t be making them again for another year, not in those quantities. I don’t know why, but if you double or triple a recipe, you will increase the mess by 10-fold or 100-fold. It’ll take a while to recover from that. The kitchen’s been through some shit.
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Did I tell you that the turkey was perfect? Well, it was perfect. It turns out that 162 is a good out-of-the-oven temperature, and that the turkey will continue to cook from the inside out for a few minutes after you take it out of the oven. I let it rest for 15 minutes, and then my husband started carving, and it was just right - not dry, but not undercooked, and very flavorful thanks to salt and pepper and onion and apple and celery stuffed in the cavity, and butter slathered all over the outside and underneath the breast skin. I have had very good luck with turkey roasting, but every year, I worry that the previous year was just a fluke and that I won’t be able to duplicate my turkey success. So now I have a written record. Even if no one reads this, I’ll at least have some notes to refer back to next year.
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The holidays are now well underway. We put up our Christmas decorations on Friday morning, as has become our custom since 2020. I used to put up our indoor decorations two weeks before Christmas, but 2020 changed that, too. And it’s nice having the Christmas things around a little earlier. No tree yet, because we get a real tree and it would dry out by Christmas if we got it now, but the house is festooned with all of the other Christmas swag and trinkets.
Last Tuesday night, I went shopping for some last-minute Thanksgiving groceries, and the Safeway was alive with the happy energy of all of the other parents welcoming college students home for the holiday, looking forward to four or five blessed days of having everyone under the same roof again. Those five days passed with lightning speed of course. Thanksgiving leftovers in the family room, Christmas movies on TV, kids coming and going, a house full of kids watching college football together, perfect silvery pale skies and early blazing gold sunsets, and now it’s over. We’ll all be back in the grocery stores later today, laying in supplies for the week, but the energy will be very different. Yes, they’ll be back for Christmas but every holiday is just a reminder that they’re only visitors now. But I’ll take what I can get, and I’ll be thankful for every minute. I am thankful for every minute.
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