captain_midnight

I ate the last of the thanksgiving leftovers last night. It seems to me that every year I end up going home with a smaller and smaller portion of the Thanksgiving leftovers, but then after I thought about it, I kind of realized that since my brother in law started coming to Thanksgiving dinners and stuff, and he's a picky eater, we end up eating a much smaller variety of stuff. So this year, no sweet potatoes, no stuffed artichokes and tomatoes (my specialty), no crab cakes as appetizers, nothing. It was just plain old turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, carrots with butter and brown sugar, and wild rice.
I'm not so sure I'm a big fan of this, it doesn't really seem like a feast if its a bunch of food you could just as easily eat any other day of the year. I fancy myself a bit of a chef, so I like to make everything really tasty and really interesting to the palate. One of the big ways to do this is with the brining of the turkey, basically you mix together spices and whatever else you want and a bunch of salt, then you soak the turkey in it for 24 hours before you cook it. This year I did an apple cider, allspice, and garlic brine, which may sound a little weird at first, but when you think about those flavors mixing together with the taste of turkey, its good.
Anyway, I cooked up the turkey and pretty much everything else that day for a couple of reasons. 1. I have this inability to stay out of the kitchen when its time to cook, and 2. I like to avoid family time until the last possible second. So there I am in the kitchen cooking up all of this stuff. It was less of a flurry of activity this year than usual, because there were so few entrees, so it was actually pretty relaxing. So finally, everything is ready and I bring out all the various trays and platters and bowls of food, my sister says grace (which always makes me uncomfortable, I'm just glad no one ever asks me to do it, because I neither believe in that sort of thing, nor do I think I could come up with a good prayer). Then, as I'm noticing how tasty and juicy the turkey is (this was a new brine recipe for me), I watch with horror as my brother in law slathers his turkey with ketchup. I spent a lot of time making sure that this turkey turned out just right and that it was flavorful and juicy and all around really yummy, only to watch him dump ketchup all over it.
I could have grabbed him by his big fat mustached head and screamed at him for doing that, but then I realized that for the sake of family harmony I better just bite my tongue, so I did. You can't expect a total rube to appreciate good food anyway.


After all this, I went home and banished all ketchup from my house.....no more freakin ketchup GODDAMMIT!!!!!!