after dinner sneeze

t says:  g and I normally cook up a storm for Thanksgiving at my parents’ house.  This year was a little different, as we did a lot of cooking at her mom’s house.  While I just hate to toot my own horn, I have to say that the food turned out pretty darn good.  g’s mom and family took care of the classics (mashed tatoes, sweet taters, dressing/stuffing, lasagna), while g and I took on the remainder (forcing everyone to enjoy new-to-our-Thanksgiving additions of cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and fennel salad) and coordinated the cooking schedule.  What does that mean to “coordinate a cooking schedule”.  Let’s just say that I run a tight ship – a dictatorship (buzinga!).  See what I mean:

the master schedule ... color coded slots for ovens (pink and blue) and stovetop (orange)

We finished approximately 15 mins behind schedule due to some unforeseen baking pan mishaps (one pan was too wide for the oven so it had to wait until I could free up another pan from another use).  And another hiccup included using extra virgin olive oil for high heat roasting (i.e. it smoked a LOT).  Our only real folly of the evening was forgetting to put g’s special sauce on the table (a gouchuchang-based sauce that’s sweet and spicy … just like g … i’m sooo funny).

Oh – and a special shout-out to honorary family members k and cm who brought their homemade cranberry sauce (not to be confused with Ocean Spray’s can-berry sauce [g interjects: i’m so funny!]).  g’s mom hopes that their recipe gets posted on adsz so she may use it in the future.  We made the case that this is unnecessary just so long as k and cm come to every Thanksgiving from here on out.  Be that as it may, we’ll also have to see if cm can divulge his secret family recipe.

k and cm also get a second special shout-out for the stroke of genius that occurred at their recent Thanksgiving gathering.  Somewhere along the line, one of their guests was looking for a vessel for the gravy for cm’s turkey.  Not having a gravy boat on hand, it was suggested that a pitcher be used for the purpose.  This was genius.  With a large enough pour-ready vessel, we didn’t have to get up to refill the gravy boat 17 times throughout the dinner.  g and I stole this idea and, inspired by Apple’s brilliant strategy, served our gravy in a brand-new, colorful, aesthetically-appealing pitcher of our own.

the all-new most technologically advanced gravy boat ever: a pitcher ... sure, the technology's been around for a while, but I'll still claim it's "new" and "never before seen" ...

lc felt that perhaps the pitcher had too small a base and was easy to tip over, having demonstrated its propensity to tilt on a number of occasions.  As a result, we took another strategy from Apple by learning from their dealings with the iPhone “death grip” fiasco: we told everyone that they simply had to be careful when setting it down, as clearly its instability is not a fault of the product’s design, rather, something that we should just adapt to.  Duh!

So three cheers for Turkey Day 2011!  Hip-hip-hooray!  Hip-hip-hooray!  Hip-hip-hooray!