Thanksgiving, A review of

It goes without saying that the 2010 Buendia Family Thanksgiving was a total disaster. 

Lex drank wine the entire day. 

We cut the back out of the turkey and smashed it down as low as possible, as suggested by Mark Bittman, which made it look like it was dead (which it was). The idea was to create more surface area, so the turkey would cook faster. Bittman said 35 minutes. We figured 75 minutes. Instead it took more than 2 hours, so our dinner was later than we had anticipated. 

The guests got bored waiting for the dang bird to cook:

Mom drank too much:

Finally, we could put the food on the table, join hands, and each say what we are thankful for. 

"I'm thankful I am not a turkey."

Thanksgiving Day Menu:

Appetizers

Fresh bread (by Max), king salmon lachs, cheese, roasted almonds, apple slices

Dinner

Triple D Farm roast turkey

Quinoa, giblet, mushroom (compliments of Lex), onion, ginger & dried cranberry dressing

Mashed Alaska Yukon Gold potatoes (made by Dave Morris)

Roasted beets with garlic and walnut dressing (Mark Bittman recipe), plus lemon

Lex's sauerkraut

Tebhen's Mom's sauerkraut and bread&butter pickles

Rhubarb, apple, onion chutney

Fresh cranberry orange relish (with ginger)

Dessert

Lex's huckleberry & currant cheesecake

Yam coconut pie

We had lots of the usual family togetherness and all that crap. Lukas from Germany and Tebhen joined us. Marta and Jan came, after eating a dinner at Brian Erickson's. Teeka was out of her mind the entire day...and weekend. She spent most of the time in the garage in the back of the Baja. Later, she decided she liked the ski bags behind the ski rack.

The nice thing is we got to ski that morning. It started snowing early in the morning and by 10am we had appx. 4 inches of new snow. This came after dismally warm conditions and pouring rain on Wednesday evening. Thanksgiving morning we skedaddled out to Kincaid to enjoy the new snow. No one enjoyed it as much as Teek. She was in what you call absolute bliss.

All I can say is Thanksgiving is not the same without Nicky.  

God bless us everyone.