It's been a bona fide Saturday cookathon. With ten items on the Thanksgiving menu for this coming Thursday, and only one item not being at all prepped by me, I've got a lot of work to do. Today, the priority was to work on the dishes that can be fridged or frozen, taken to the office, then broken out on Wednesday (if frozen) to thaw, or broken out on Thursday (if fridged) to be heated in the microwave. As much as possible, I want to minimize the need to heat anything up via my gas stove in the office; if anything, the only item needing the gas-stove treatment ought to be the gravy, which will be fridged and congealed until the blessed day, then reheated on the spot for best results. My ten menu items are (and depending on how you count them, there might be more than ten):
- turkey breast + gravy
- glazed ham slices
- stuffing
- mashed potato
- sweet-potato "casserole"
- creamed corn
- green beans with ham & shrooms
- cranberry sauce
- dinner rolls
- pumpkin pie
Today, I made the green beans, sweet-potato "casserole," mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and creamed corn. I won't be making the dinner rolls; those will be purchased from the nice bakery at the B1 level of the building where I work; they'll go very well with butter: they're large, puffy, and of a size to be used for hamburgers in the future. Still to be made or otherwise prepped: gravy (easy enough), turkey breast (sous vide on the day of), glazed ham (easy, and to be done Sunday), and stuffing (stovetop this time—no custard and no baking, just classic panko, meat/veg, and chicken broth). Finally, there's the pumpkin pie. I have a 2-kilogram block of frozen pumpkin purée that's been thawing for the past few hours. I'll do the stuffing, ham, and gravy tomorrow; the pie will done done later in the week (probably Wednesday), and so will the turkey breast, which I'll need to get up early to prep in my sous vide.
So as of today, Saturday night, more than half of the Thanksgiving meal is ready to go, and it ought to last just fine in the office's fridge/freezer for the next few days. Because there's no room in my fridge right now, I need to create room by (1) ferrying over to the office the dishes I've already made and (2) storing them in the office's two fridges. My team's office fridge doesn't have much room in it right now, but the large fridge in our kitchenette is mostly empty. so I ought to be able to store almost everything there. I'll bring the nicely heated turkey breast and the pumpkin pie on Thursday. Most of the dishes can be microwaved (ham, stuffing, regular taters, sweet taters, creamed corn, green beans); after microwaving, the dishes can then have the (still-warm) turkey, (reheated) gravy, (fridged) cranberry sauce, and (freshly baked) pumpkin pie added to them. I'm wondering whether the pumpkin pie might benefit from a shot of whipped cream. I can also just make whipped cream myself, but buying the canned stuff from downstairs might be easier. We'll see.
Expect photos soon.
