Leftover Madness

We have so many leftovers from our turkey dinner. Next time I decide to invite over half as many people as we have food I will remember to buy some extra tupperware and force everybody to take stuff home. I love leftovers but I would also love to continue to fit into my pants.

Not only do we have leftovers, but we have a ton of veggies that we didn't end up using. Since I HATE wasting food, I'm trying to find ways to use everything. Tonight I made a Thanksgiving Leftover Shepards Pie. I got the idea from crazy Martha Stewart but turned it into my own thing. I layered everything in a pie plate. Stuffing, then turkey, a few plops of gravy, cut up carrots and green beans and the whole thing topped with leftover mashed potatoes. It was ok. A little dry and VERY filling.


As for the rest of the vegetables, I'm going to have to be creative. Unfortunately, the only thing I feel like cooking right now is Christmas cookies and candy! I'm going to restrain myself until most of this food is gone though. Bummer. Luckily, our friends gave us this awesome cookbook called The Illustrated Kitchen Bible and every recipe has pictures! I've already looked at it for a few hours and found some inspiration. Time to start cooking!!

Gobble gobble highlights

- Standing in line for 45 minutes at the neighborhood bakery to buy bread for dinner and stuffing. It would not have been so bad to stand there with my coffee, smelling fresh bread, except that the lady next to me felt the need to talk stream of consciousness about her whole life. After the bakery I hit Trader Joe's where the wine guy told me all about his Thanksgiving plans, in way too much detail. I guess I just bring out the chattiness in people. Of course when I got home with four loaves of bread Frenchie informs me that those are too beautiful to use in stuffing so we had to ask one of our guests to bring bread.

- Frenchie massaging the turkey with butter. Hopefully he will give me permission to post the video on here because it's funny.

- Me waking up at 5:30am to make the pies which included pureeing pumpkin, followed by "What the hell are you blending?"

- Mismatched dishes, tables, chairs, glasses and silverware. Food being served in measuring cups because that was all we had left! Me realizing that we really should have married in the traditional way where we give people a night of food, cake and dancing, and they bring us some freakin' serving platters!

- Me realizing that it didn't matter how the food was served as long as it tasted good and people enjoyed eating it

- "This is the best pumpkin pie I've ever had!" : )

- Tons of potatoes, none made by me, thank goodness.

- My first ever turkey and gravy was a complete success. I had lots of compliments and I also thought it was good. The gravy was a lot of work though. I might have to do some exploring with gravy recipes in the future. The turkey and gravy recipe I ended up using was from Bon Apetit of course. Roast Heritage Turkey with Bacon Herb and Cider Gravy. Of course we didn't actually use a "heritage turkey" but it probably didn't make that much of a difference. If I can ever afford a heritage turkey, I will definitely use this recipe to prepare it!

- More posting to come, as soon as blogger starts to work properly. Check out more pics at Flickr.

Goddess Grunt

I recently had the realization that I go to an old lady gym. That's right. I'm 27, and I work out like an old lady, with old ladies. This was pointed out to me by an anonymous review on the internet, and ever since I read it I've started noticing things. First, the gym does not play music. I noticed this when I first joined but thought maybe it was just a bare bones gym. This is the first independent gym I've gone to and I didn't know how it worked! Second, if you go in the middle of the day or the morning there are only old ladies (this was a pretty big sign). Third, there is a woman in one of my classes that wears a unitard, kind of like the one below, but on a much larger lady. More power to her, but I'm pretty sure this one is the same one she had in the 70s when she was Jazzercising.

I usually go to the classes in the evening because a) I don't like entertaining myself between 4-7 (that's another story) and b) I like to watch Ellen in the morning (yup, still unemployed). After 4 or 5pm the crowd is a little younger; the teachers from the area or students. Then I don't feel so young. Yesterday, however, I decided to go to yoga in the morning and found myself a good 30 years younger than the next youngest person in the room, perhaps including the teacher. The class started and got moving pretty slowly but I had hopes that it would pick up. Oh...it did. At the climax of the class we did the goddess pose (below) and all of the sudden all the women started sighing. "ahhhhh" "ahhhhh" each time we went in and out of the pose. Then the teacher said to pick up the pace and all the women started loudly grunting! "grah" "grah" It took everything I had not to laugh!



I still like this gym but I wonder if I would be getting a better workout with music playing and harder classes not catering to the older crowd. At least it's entertaining!

Prep

You still need to eat when prepping for Thanksgiving. My almost famous enchiladas.

Testing pumpkin pie recipes. Aren't they cute? Turns out you can make mini pumpkin pies in ramekins.

My favorite thing at Russo's. These cute herbs bundles. They have tons of herbs and they are cheap!

The featherlight yeast rolls. They actually are getting better with age. Frenchie even said they are good.

So far..

We bought the turkey and about half of what we needed at Costco, even in our hungover state. Plus a bunch of stuff we didn't need of course, because that is how Costco works. Frenchie: "Check out that beef (with stars in his eyes). We should get this. I mean 8 lbs of beef chuck is kind of a lot, but we can always freeze it. And it is only $3.59 a pound! Oh, and look over here! 2 whole chickens for 10 bucks! What a deal!" Emily: "Hey, can you pick up that gallon of whipping cream?" Frenchie: "Are you sure we need all of that?" Emily: (rolls eyes) "It's Thanksgiving!"

You all know what I mean... Well, my family does at least. Whipped cream is important. Way more important than the turkey.

The turkey was a "Fresh, Young Turkey" for 99 cents a pound. Hells yeah! Cheap and I don't need to defrost it. We were wondering; if the young turkey is so cheap, the "Not so fresh, and not so young turkeys" must have been really cheap. Those were apparently sold out though because we didn't see them. : )
Anyway, we went for one that is 20.09 pounds. For the upcoming year (which is going to be a great year, BTW).

I've come up with most of the menu.

Menu

Munchies
Roasted Hazelnuts (from my grandparents farm)
Trader Joe's Kettle Corn (if I don't eat it all before Thursday)
Cranberry Champagne Cocktail

Meal

Turkey
Cider gravy
Fennel, sausage, squash stuffing
Mashed potatoes (brought by a guest, so I don't have to worry about it)
Green beans with shallots
Sweet Potatoes (still figuring out how I'm going to prep these)
Cranberry sauce (still working on this recipe too)
Brussel sprouts with buttered pecans
Rolls (I'm trying out a recipe tomorrow to see if making them is a possibility. If not, buying them somewhere)

Dessert
Pumpkin pie
Apple pie with walnut streusel
Lots of whipped cream

I can tell you are all jealous now. What are you doing for Thanksgiving?

Discovery

I've made a discovery! Going to the gym in the morning means you get to start drinking earlier in the evening! Which leads to a very slow Saturday morning. I think I'll go back to evening gym classes. : )

5 people...7 bottles of wine. Nuff said.

If we can get off our butts we are going to brave Costco today. Need to find that turkey so I can start defrosting it. Right? How long do they take to defrost? I am definitely in over my head... Actually I think I'm more worried about the mashed potatoes after last week's situation. Maybe I can put one of the guests on that one.