Turkey Day Mental Simmer

Just a busy Monday mish-mash of all the things in my mind today. Basically all I'm thinking about at this point is Thanksgiving Day planning, my mind is buzzing with ideas and lists and possibilities.

My hopeful little invitation ended up being way more inviting than I ever dreamed...we won't have just our little nuclear family trying pathetically to down a turkey dinner. People are turning out in droves. Counting ourselves and the boys we will have between 25-30 people, give or take. I'm totally psyched!

Last night we solidfied the menu:

Roast Turkey
Honey Baked Spiral Glazed Ham
Giblet gravy
Fruit and Cheese Plate
Garlic mashed potatoes [1/2 batch made w/ olive oil and half with butter for the vegans in attendance]
Rolls or bread
Cranberry Sauce
Sweet Potatoes
Stuffing
Wild Rice with Wild Mushrooms
Curried Squash Soup
Green Beans w/ Olive Oil, Garlic and Toasted Almonds
Roasted Cauliflower
Cold Lentil, Persimmon, Pomegranate Salad

[Dessert]
Pumpkin Pie
Apple Pie
Poached Pears
Assorted Chocolate Truffles
Flourless Chocolate Torte
Whipped Cream

I realize this looks like proof of my certifiable insanity but I swear to you, most of these items can be made ahead, A is taking several of them and teaming with me to cook, I am delegating some dishes to guests and most importantly...even if it's crazy...I really want to be doing this and I'm excited to make it happen!

Now that the menu is all set, I'm collecting my recipes, making the big grocery list, drawing up a cooking schedule for the week beforehand and musing on other happy "Thanksgivingy" things.

Witness:

• A Thankful Paper Chain which could be a really fun activity to keep dinner guests occupied while the meal is being finished.
• Pretty decoration ideas from Better Homes and Gardens.
• The ever inspiring Martha. I especially like the leaf decorated glass jars with candles in them. I am imagining using any old recyclable glass jars we have in our bin. I think the boys would like helping make these.
• These ARGH! beautiful, beautiful harvesty floral arrangments by my floral designing idol Saipua.
• A very charming vintage card cover that makes me very happy. I may print it off just to prop in my kitchen window while I bake. Do you think I could pull off a little starched cap like that?
• This beautiful junk chair frame...turned autumn scene frame. Wish a stunning Queen Anne frame like that would get tossed in my neighborhood.
• Baby dormice, who are both British and alarmingly cute and autumnal...plus, they live in a pumpkin! What's not to love.
• Acorns so achingly beautiful that I want to go out and collect bucketfuls.

Related articles

• How Much Turkey Per Person? Use This Rule of Thumb (thekitchn.com)
• A Good Appetite: A Seven-Day Plan for Thanksgiving - A Good Appetite (dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com)
• 14 Great Examples of Thanksgiving Food Art (neatorama.com)
• What Are the Best Appetizers for Thanksgiving Day? Good Questions (thekitchn.com)
• Thanksgiving Menu Ideas (blogreader44.wordpress.com)

New CSA

We're a good bit of the way through the harvesting season with our new CSA and I have to say that I like it. It is just as handy as I imagined to have our pick-up location down the street, instead of 45 minutes away, and kind of fun to meet neighbors there who also happen to have a share. I didn't count on the community interaction bit, kind of a fun bonus.

I do miss going up to an actual farm. It was a great built-in break that we had going and I feel like we've removed ourselves a little bit from the food-land connection. There was one scheduled members day when our new CSA invited everyone to come up for a picnic and help pull garlic and then go for a dip in the creek. Have to make sure to plan on going next year. I am an organization klutz and through a lot of fumbling we managed to miss it this time around. Am still kicking myself  although this morning I found out there is a special autumn farm festival scheduled for September when we can maybe make up the difference! Hooray!

Since there's such a small actual farm connection to speak of via our CSA this year, I find that I'm seeking out chances to go to drive out to the country for other things: caterpillar hunting, listening to the frogs sing, rural estate sales, buying farm milk, picking up local meat...etc. Kind of fun to mix it up anyhow.

So, the time savings is great, the produce is great, the community connection is fun and over-all I think we made a fine trade. You never quite know when you make this kind of a gamble and switch everything up, but this time it worked out.

Tomato Stars

These shining beauties were the first tomatoes off our vines this year. Am a big fan of the orange streaks and stripes. It still takes my breath away to pluck something out of the yard and take it straight to the table for dinner, there's a really deep empowerment to the process, somehow being part of something deep and mystically sacred, much bigger than you, but paradoxically also something you did by the sweat of your own brow. I get fairly drunk on it all.

DIY Convenience Food

Today I made 16 burritos, indy wrapped them and stacked them in log piles in the freezer. I need convenience food and this is the first shred of an answer.

Have been thinking about ways to fairly painlessly nip and tuck our budget and one of the things I kept bumping into in my mind was "convenience eating." I know I don't seem like the Lean Cuisine type but every house has nights when dinner or lunch or a snack needs to be ready, instantly and there's no time for scratch cooking slow food. I tried to just use snack items for these times: granola bars, yogurt drinks, nuts, dried fruit...etc. Frankly, they aren't very satisfying and although I have good intentions I find myself saying, "Can we just run by that Thai place?" instead of picking out a granola bar and palming an apple on the way out the door. I wanted a real dinner, not snacky stuff.

We just had a trip to Michigan and back for the Thanksgiving holiday and we'll be doing it again for Christmas. We made amazing time there and back and for a while there I puzzling over and over about what in the world made the trip shorter than usual, both ways! Then I realized what it was. We never stopped to eat. I had the car fully stocked with food items, the boys had books to occupy them and A and I were discussing and reading a book of our own and so we never stopped except to gas up and we used the gas stops as potty breaks too so that meant even less stopping. Convenience food is my new nemesis.Most of the time the food you get on the run is terribly guilt-inducing because its expensive, and it's also extremely low in nutrition. I have been wracking my brain to solve the problem. I want food to stash in the freezer that is good for us but super quick (as in, a minute or two zap in the microwave and then eatable out-of-hand), stuff that tastes good and feels like a real meal.

There have to be other ideas out there...I have a dry brain lately and so the only thing I've come up with so far are these burritos. I was inspired by this blogger's idea and did something similar with ground turkey, black and pinto beans, frozen roasted corn (Trader Joe's is good!) and shredded cheese in whole wheat tortillas. I'd love more possibilities so that I can avoid the monotony of only one back-up plan when the going gets tough. Anybody got any other ideas?