Alright, so I had an idea a few years ago circa Dan coming back from Afghanistan that I was hoping would bear more fruit than it did. I realized that some soldiers getting home from a long ass deployment may not have someone or someones to meet them excitedly and coming home may not be any different from being away, aside from the things you can do in your down time. That didn't sit very well with me. I asked the girlfriend of a then friend of mine if she'd be interested in setting something up where we arranged to gather up all of the soldiers coming home to a non-existent welcome wagon to have us as their welcome wagon. We'd round them up, take them out to breakfast or whatever on us, and just be generally welcoming. We tried to get that set up, but it didn't pan out because we both dropped the ball. I desperately wanted to do it, but not badly enough, it seems. I honestly chickened out at having to do the legwork because I didn't want anybody to see me as a try hard or laugh at me or whatever horrible scenarios my social anxiety would paint in my head about what would happen if I actually tried.
Skip a few years ahead, Derek and I made it a tradition that for every big holiday, we'd prepare a huge fucking feast at our house and the soldiers far from home and not being able to make it back to their families, or without families/loved ones to spend holidays with, could come be with us. We had parties, it was a huge to do. Every year, several times a year. We would have so many soldiers running in and out of the house, there was always so much food, and it was always kind of a nice cheat day for my vegan ass, slipping in some turkey or a bit of ham. It was always nice to play den mother. I am not pro-military, I'm honestly very anti-military, I'm one of the least likely army wives. I did my best to date outside of the army, and I was VERY successful, until Dan. And then it was like everybody I fucking MET was in the army, or the military, and I just kind of leaned in. I tell people a lot that I didn't marry Derek's job, that was a choice he made without me, because when people hear my views, they're always shocked to find out that I'm a military spouse. I bring this up because it wasn't a sense of patriotism that made me want to be a surrogate family/welcome wagon for soldiers, it was the general sadness I feel for people who haven't chosen to be without their families because of rifts, but because of circumstances. It breaks me up inside to think of people wishing they were home but not being able to be, and instead just...sitting in some shitty barracks room eating who knows what spice. I feel the exact same way about the homeless (which is why next year is being spent volunteering at a soup kitchen, more on that later). I am so lucky to have people around and to have food, and not sharing that feels like a fucking crime. So we did.
Last year, our first year here on island, we tried to set that up again. We had a bunch of people interested, but nobody ended up coming. Derek and I made so much fucking food, and I was deeply hurt that nobody even bothered to cancel, they just simply didn't show. We put out feelers for Christmas, but with minimal returns, so we just did our own thing (we have a new-ish tradition where every Christmas we make holiday foods from some other part of the world. Last year was Punjabi food, the year before that was Caribbean, and this year we're still trying to figure out if we're doing Chinese or Ethiopian). We are not religious people, Derek is a staunch atheist and I am an agnostic that leans heavily toward atheism, so the whole Christmas thing is more out of habit than belief, and I'm super fucking anti the bullshit of Thanksgiving (we always talk to Gabriel about the Wampanoag massacre instead of the fake as fuck pilgrim nonsense), but I will never turn down a chance to make a fuckton of food and flex on my kitchen.
Also, this being Gabriel's first holiday on island, he requested a feast of traditional proportion, so we delivered. We didn't invite anybody else, it was just the three of us, and I really fucking preferred it this way. Of course, my silly ass documented the entire thing. But on my cell phone, because I'm not trying to take editorial pictures of a lazy cooking day.
Here we go!
We decided to do a dry brine on the turkey, because all of the food people we follow from BA said dry brine is the way to go. We've had a lot of success with liquid brines (the one I did two years ago was an apple cider vinegar spiced brine and it was fucking delectable), but we wanted to see what this dry brine was like. We only ended up brining it for about 36 hours instead of the max of 48, and I wish we had done the 48 hours because it was supremely tasty. That being said it ended up being a good thing that we didn't, but I'll reveal why later. So Wednesday morning after we got the control arm fixed on Jasper, we prepped and brined our 10 pound turkey. We debated on spatchcocking it instead, but a whole roast is more traditional, and Gabriel asked for tradition. We delivered.
Check it:
Look at that crusty ass lump of flesh that used to be a living, breathing animal. Don't get me wrong, meat is delicious, but the taste wasn't why I went vegan (I'm a vegetarian now because I cannot afford to be a keto vegan while we live out here. It's just too god damn expensive, and keto had to take priority, health-wise). Anyway, this brined up dead bird had to sit, uncovered, in our fridge.
Judge my husband all you'd like for that repugnant Coors Light in the fridge. That tiny little ham was my idea, because Gabriel's grandmother always makes turkey AND ham, and Gabriel asked for both, but I didn't want to buy a fucking 12 pound ham. So I bought a two pounder. Again, cheat days are delicious days for me, but I always always ALWAYS feel wracked with guilt on the days where I eat meat. I fucking hate it.
Speaking of fucking hating it, I hate that being keto means almost all traditional holiday foods are things that I just cannot enjoy unless they are keto-ized, and I've found that most things are fine, but a lot of things have very altered tastes, and it makes my tastebuds sad. One of those things is eggnog. I did alright with no eggnog last year, and the years before I found vegan eggnogs to be delightful facsimilies of the non-vegan thing. This year, I wanted to make a keto eggnog, so I looked at recipes, but uh...no lie, I didn't really do my due diligence. I have two keto blogs that I follow fairly religiously, but I went to the internet instead of their blogs, and I picked a new keto food blogger.
Mistake.
The eggnog recipe didn't call for vanilla, didn't call for nutmeg, didn't call for ANYTHING. So I gave it the ol' flavor makeover, and it was....well, initially, it was barely palatable. Not gonna lie.
I was so fucking disappointed, ESPECIALLY once I saw that my two keto food bloggers each have their own delicious, far closer to traditional (AND SPICED), recipes. I told Derek I'd make another batch, because the creamy egginess that makes eggnog delicious just wasn't there. It tasted like almond milk. That was it. I'm no snob, almond milk is great. It's what I use. But come the fuck on, man, this is supposed to be eggnog. But we let it sit overnight, Derek was convinced the flavors would steep, and he was more right than he was wrong. 24 hours later, we found it was still boring, but a good deal less boring. So I saved myself the effort and didn't make a second batch. I'm saving that for Christmas food day.
Thursday morning, I got up at my usual 7am and tried to go downstairs, but found myself blocked by a trio of ruffians.
These beautiful morons blocked my way and yelled at me for a solid minute before running down the stairs and howling about their empty bowl (I feed them in the morning, I'm not a negligent cat owner. Their bowl was empty for a reason). I fed them super fast, and then got to making food.
We didn't have to do anything with the turkey until 2:30, so all morning and afternoon was just prep work for other dishes. The first thing I made were my keto drop biscuits.
Very much like scones. They were definitely bland, and even just eyeballing the recipe for them I mused about adding some herbs to the butter as it melted so it would be a bit more flavorful, but I ended up not. As a general rule, Derek and I go by the recipe the first time, and then tinker with it as we go. These are a really good keto biscuit base, but they need other flavors. Because they're so bland, they could be sweet (I was musing about a blueberry scone take on the biscuit base), or they could be savory (Derek and I both talked about them needing an herbacious punch), but this recipe is definitely s keeper for me because it's so flexible, and it really was close to a carby scone. That isn't a biscuit, but it's as close as I'm going to get. The crumb was tight and springy, it was texturally lovely. Just boring on the palate.
Next up was the gravy.
A couple of years ago, I made the most AMAZING mushroom white wine gravy. A gorgeous roux, lots of mushrooms simmered in white wine and a bit of cream, fresh herbs, just a true treat on the tongue. I told Derek I was going to be making a mushroom gravy again this year, and he was so excited, thinking I was going to make the same white wine mushroom gravy I made circa 2017. The joke was on him! What I ended up making was very tasty, but it was essentially just a mushroom and onion smoothie.
Those mushrooms and onions simmered and caramelized in that butter for about 45 minutes. We cooked them down super slowly, they were GORGEOUS. I added the veggie broth (it called for beef, but I cut out animal products everywhere I could. I'm not a total monster), let that simmer for the 20 minutes it called for, and then literally dumped it all in a blender and blended it until it was as smooth as it was going to be. Which wasn't as smooth as I initially thought. It wasn't clumpy, but it had a definite grit. The taste was on point, though. I didn't take a close up picture of it because it literally looked like sick diarrhea.
I had been working by myself for the most part (Derek popped in to help when asked, but I told him I'd do the lion's share because we kind of trade off who does the most cooking on holidays. This big fat food day was my turn), so I asked Gabriel if he wanted to come help.
HE said, "no thanks".
I rephrased the question to a demand, because I'm a mom and I can do that sort of thing. He was greatly displeased, but I told him he didn't have to help until it was time to make mashed potatoes, one of three non-keto items for our meal. Everything else was keto because it was the easiest thing to do.
You know who DID want to help? Mr. Floopies.
He was underfoot the entire time I was cooking. Or trying to get onto the counter so he could be in my face. As I was washing the mushrooms for the gravy, he was sitting on the counter next to me, tapping me on the shoulder with his paw and meowing in my face. He's my best friend.
Except he isn't, he just wanted treats.
We kept to a pretty tight schedule with cooking. Everything had a start time so we could have dinner at 6:30, the normal time we eat. Because electricity is so fucking blindingly expensive out here, we had to optimize oven usage (which should be done even if electricity is cheap), so it was a very delicate tango we were working with. So delicate that I didn't have time to take pictures of the sun dried tomato zucchini bake I made, or the cauliflower onion bacon casserole I made. But I DID get photos of Derek unbrining and prepping the turkey!!
Mostly because my husband is hot as fuck. It was less about the turkey and more about Derek. He's definitely the yummier of the two.
Presenting the turkey to the kingdom.
Patting the turkey dry, so tender.
Oh, turkey! You so coy!
The dry brining really did alter the color of the turkey (though I suppose the exposure could have done that, too, it may not have been the brine at all).
When I packed the brine on, it was a sickly grey pink color. You know, the color of dead meat. Yuck. After 36 hours in the brine, it was a deep purple. The color of brined dead meat! What a change!
We popped that mother fucker in the oven and let it get nice and brown, and while it was browning, I made an herbed garlic butter to put on top. When it was time to start basting, I poured that shit on top of the bird and set the timer for every 11 minutes to baste and turn and baste and turn and it was fucking hot and exhausting,. Why the fuck do we do this shit.
Gabriel got called into the kitchen to make the one dish he had to make. We told him that everybody cooks on big fat food day, and he was dispassionate, to say the least.
He had zero interest in helping, but tough shit for him! The camera doesn't capture the argument that came after because he had such a shit attitude about having to help, but no biggie. I told him he could hold the knife and smile like a homicidal maniac. This was the best he could muster:
Terrifying.
He didn't want me taking photos of him while he was cutting the potatoes, but when have I ever listened to anybody? Never, that's when. So he kept making faces. Joke's on me, I guess.
Turns out I lied earlier, and as I've done before, it's more fun to call myself a liar than go back and edit my lie. I DID document the other dishes. I asked Derek to cut up the cauliflower for me, because I get very persnickety and I will only cut perfect florets. Derek will rough chop, which is faster and better.
Gabriel hamming it up in the background, fairly literally. He was sniffing about the ham.
The turkey recipe called for a 12-14 pound turkey, and we only had a ten, so we changed the times the recipe called for, and set our timer to check the doneness earlier than we would have if we had had a 12-14er.
Given that I am not very strong when it comes to numbers, it should shock nobody that my math was WAY fucking off, and while we definitely cooked the turkey for a LOT less time than the recipe called for because it was smaller, we still managed to overcook the turkey. By uh. A solid 15 fucking degrees.
Whoops.
This is why I'm glad we didn't dry brine the turkey for 48 hours, because we overcooked it, and I convinced myself it would have been drier than it was. This, of course, is the notion of an idiot, because even overcooking it as hard as we did, the turkey was still juicy as fuck. So brining it longer may have saved it further. But my brain tells me otherwise, and once I get a notion like that in my head, it's hard to dispell it. I could google it, but I'm lazy.
Derek is preparing to do the scariest thing on earth (opening a can of biscuits, duh), and Gabriel is getting ready to mash the potatoes. The turkey is resting, because being overcooked is hard fucking work.
He did not want to put any muscle into the mashing. He was very lackluster. Submitted a poor performance. Gave attitude the whole time. Pre-teens should be PSAs for not getting knocked up, or allowing abortions. I am very pro not having babies or having abortions instead (and always have been, champion abortion haver right here, ayoooo! Thank you science! Thank you doctors!), but showing a day in the life of being a pre-teen parent would be effective advertising for either option.
After the turkey and potatoes were done and the cauliflower was baking, I made my zucchini.
Those gorgeous caramelized onions were so wonderfully fragrant. True story, this dish was meant to have friend onions on them, not caramelized onions. But um...fried onions are very keto friendly, and it turns out I cannot keep myself from eating them if they're in the house because they are delicious. So. They had no crispy onions. The dish didn't suffer for it at all, it was still absolutely delicious (it tasted like pizza).
In both photos, you can see my measuring cup full of doodoo gravy. Mmmmmm.
While we're speaking of fuck ups, I forgot a couple of things on Thursday:
1. I didn't make my roasted radishes. At all.
and
B. I didn't fucking blanch my god damn cauliflower, I just put it in the fucking bowl like an asshole.
I swore about the latter for a good two minutes, and then added a bit of heavy cream to some water and poured it over the mix to give it the liquid it would have had from the blanching.
It turned out spectacularly. It cooked with the non-keto biscuits, and by this time, the house smelled so fucking good I could barely breathe. We definitely practice the breakfast then fast all day technique, so we were all ravenous.
But because I was cataloging everything, we had to take an additional thirty minutes to carve the turkey and the ham, and neatly arrange all of the food so I could get a picture of everything we made.
There it all is, in its big fat food day glory! And here is a sideways picture of my plate.
It doesn't look sideways, but it is. This meal was so far from vegan it isn't even funny, but it was WAY keto. I ate more carbs and calories than I normally allot myself in a day (19 net and 1250, respectively), but it was big fat food day. And I didn't regret a morsel of my overages, it was delicious.
We talked a lot about the history of Thanksgiving and the whitewashed, revisionist history version that gets sold to us. I asked Gabriel if he thinks Native Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, and then we read a piece from various tribes about how they go about their day. I explained to Gabriel that this is why I haven't called it Thanksgiving in ages, and instead call it big fat food day, and that every single day should be about being grateful and thankful, not just one day a year. We talked about how gross it is that people understand the Friday after big fat food day as Black Friday instead of Indigenous Heritage Day, and that this is exceptionally typical behavior from a capitalist society that has always brutalized the non-whites they encounter. I never pass up an opportunity to shit on capitalism, or colonialist attitudes, and I sure love discussing America's fucked up history because it's really fucking important that we understand it instead of trying to ignore it. Ignorance helps no one.
All in all, it was a fantastic day. I fucking love cooking, I love being with my boys, I love eating. We ate leftovers all fucking weekend. There are still leftovers in the fridge that I will polish off today (Monday, four days after Thanksgiving) while I study for my final fucking exam.
Two more weeks of school, and then I'm off for five weeks. I am so fucking horned up for not having to deal with school. I was talking to Derek last night about whether or not I want to keep going. I am so fucking unsure. I am tired of academia, it's a rigged system. I'm immensely good at playing into it, but I really hate participating in something that perpetuates bullshit and benefits certain groups of people more than others when none of us can really change our circumstances.
UGH. I miss having people make my decisions for me.
