Dinner is Over - The Feast of Leftovers Begins Tomorrow

We're all stuffed to the gills. Turkey, cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole with french fried onions baked in and sprinkled on top, seriously candied yams and 'apple thing'. Oh, the rolls. We always forget the rolls until we're seated. This year, at least, they weren't smoking up the kitchen, although they were a bit crispier than I like.

'Apple thing' is a favorite around here. I never would have guessed when I first tried it out last year but it was well received and back by popular demand this year. As to how it got stuck with the name 'apple thing', I made the mistake of writing down 'apple thing' on my list of steps to take (so everything would finish at approximately the same time) and times to take them. I place the list on the counter. Everyone who goes in the kitchen reads the list. Now everyone calls it apple thing. I bet there's a real name for it. Don't tell me. I'm happy with it as is.

As a public service, I give you the Apple thing recipe:

Pour two cans of apple pie filling in a round pyrex lidded bowl and top with crumb cake topping and cook it with the turkey for the last half hour. (you can do it in any pyrex dish so long as there's a lid - I just happen to have a round one I like.)

Topping: pour out a mound of Bisquick into the bottom of a medium sized mixing bowl, don't ask me how many quarts or what, just medium, and the mound - well lets say a couple cups. It doesn't quite fill half the medium bowl.

Add 3/4 of a stick of butter, about a half cup of brown sugar, a generous dash of cinnamon - mush it up 'til it's all clumpy. Pour it over the apple pie filling.

Should I write a cookbook or what? I think it would go well with icecream. Serve warm or cold. We like it warm.

Things I really need to buy at Williams Sonoma:

• A ricer, I heard a chef on NPR say that was the best way to make mashed potatoes
• A good oven thermometer, I have NO IDEA when my oven has pre-heated. My old stove had a little light that went out. This one has no such indicator. I just turn on the gas and wait about 20 minutes
• A gravy boat, I'd like one in my china pattern, but Lenox has discontinued the McKinley pattern from its Dead Presidents line of china so the only way to get a gravy boat is to buy it from a discontinued patterns place which, right now, doesn't have any gravy boats. We used a large melamine bowl and a spoon for the gravy. Classy.
  
• A knife block
  

I read that a nice Zinfendel (the red stuff, not that pink stuff) goes well with turkey. I don't like Zinfendel in any color. With dinner my son and I had Merlot. His girlfriend had some Chenin Blanc. My daughter put Coke in her wine glass, the SO put his Snapple Iced Tea in his. We toasted to a Happy Thanksgiving and everyone dove in.

My son put about 3 cups of dressing on his plate. He ate most of it. He wanted to take the left over stuffing home with him. I like to whip up a plate of hot turkey with gravy and stuffing after Thanksgiving, so I suggested he make his own and gave him a box of Stovetop to go. By the way, did you hear that Ruth Siems, who is credited with inventing Stove Top Stuffing in 1972, passed away the other day? She's one of my culinary heroes.

We had a 12 lb. turkey and there's a nice lunch or two left after the 5 of us finished dinner. My daughter's beau is having dinner with his folks, so he'll be over a bit later for pie and to help the girl finish packing. The drive down got moved to Sunday and I'm completely dreading the traffic. I wish we could have kept with the Saturday plan. We're gonna hit L.A. and it's gonna be gridlock the rest of the way south unless we can get started at 5 am or thereabouts - and I'm not even sure we won't hit bad traffic anyway. I probably won't blog on Sunday.

I hope those of you in the US had a lovely Thanksgiving and for those of you elsewhere, I hope you had a lovely day as well.


Dawno, AppleThing, Thanksgiving