5 posts tagged “fakesgiving”
With the turkey thawing in the sink (oops, I forgot about that whole... thaw in the fridge for two days... thing...), dishes getting reading in the dishwasher, and pumpkin pie about to be started, Fakesgiving is off to a ...boring?... start! Since Vox got all the love last year, this year's liveblogging will be done via Twitter. Follow (HA! get it?) along if you're interested!
...You know. Cause it's called "following" on Twitter.
OH SHUT UP.
Very thin gravy ultimately thickened itself up; frozen corn and canned green beans were pieces of vegetabley cake after all the homemade crap we'd worked on; very high class beverages of Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper were served. (Come on; one has a hyphen and the other a doctorate. Can you get any more fancypants? I sincerely doubt it.) The only thing left was the most important thing of all (and thankfully, not my responsibility): the turkey.
Brian examined it. It had managed to retain that what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-it look, largely attributable to the strange, indescribable phenomenon around it: it looked like meat had poured out of the turkey in some gelatinous form? We chose to avoid it all together. Brian used one of my whopping two real kitchen knives to cut it... and it looked fabulous!
[This is where I would insert a picture... except for things got a bit hectic towards the end of dinner preparations, and erm... I sort of forgot to take pictures. Whoops.]
Not only that, but it tasted amazing. Brian put it best: "Okay, guys, we've done it. We've created an entire feast with no grown-ups!"
HAPPY FAKESGIVING, EVERYONE!!!
Don't you love these arbitrary choices of how many chapters have passed? I do.
After we returned from the store and showered, it was time to get down to business. ...Disgusting, raw-meat, make-me-remember-why-I-don't-enjoy-cooking business. Fortunately, Brian is in charge of all things turkey, sparing me from the ickiness.
Meanwhile, I've been working on cleaning the apartment so it's not such a mess. I even got to enjoy the ultimate girly joy of making the table bigger and then setting it. (Also, may I say? I love my plates/bowls/etc. like nobody's business. Pretty much any kitchen item you can imagine, I have it, and it has cherries on it. Woo!)
A much less exciting chapter... which is probably a good thing.
Thorough oven scrubbing led to the ruining of a sponge and a kitchen cloth... but a cure for the smoke situation! (Sometimes sacrifices must be made for Fakesgiving... but that's part of the holiday. We must honor those who sacrificed themselves so that we can be free to bake pies without smoke filling our apartments.)
I created the pumpkin pie mixture as directed by the All-Knowing Can o' Pumpkin, and used my ever-so-fancy bowl-with-a-pouring-tip-thingie to put said mixture into frozen pie crust. I did have a mini-breakdown in which I wondered about the directions on the pie crust package--"Bake pie crust?! Why!? What!!!"--but this was cured by another of what will probably total 50+ phone calls to my mom, who assured me these directions did not apply to a pie such as mine would be. After a very careful pie delivery to the oven, I began the deviled egg process.
This was much less scary than anything else will be today; deviled eggs are usually my responsibility on family holidays, so I've done most of this stuff before. Not to mention since it's my Brian's and my Fakesgiving, I was free to leave out things that tend to freak me out in deviled eggs: onions and pickles. Perhaps the most exciting part of all of this is that I'm finally getting to use some serving dishes that I've literally had for over two years and never used:
A lot of waiting, some embarrassing moments as Brian pantsed me (forgetting that the window was still very open after the smoke-filled apartment incident) and it was time for the pie to come out...
...but the pie was still liquid!!! Another of the 50+ phone calls to my mom, and I was reassured that it would actually be okay to leave the pie in the oven longer than directed to by the apparently Not-So-All-Knowing Can of Pumpkin.
A few weeks ago, while planning for Brian's upcoming trip out here, I thought about how close it was to Thanksgiving--and realized that due to all sorts of circumstances, he and I have never gotten to celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas together. I decided it was time for me to do something about it, and thus Fakesgiving was born.
(There might possibly be a tiny, minute, excessively girly part of me that just wants to prove that I can make a Thanksgiving dinner for people, but y'know. That's neither here nor there.)
Plans were hatched. We'd do it on Saturday, November 10th, as that was the only day of his week-long trip where I had the entire day free (and we didn't already have plans, like yesterday). And to make it a less pathetic and more challenging Fakesgiving, we decided to do the Ultimate Act of Coupledom and invite another couple.
Their plans required dinner to be around 7pm--a little late for Thanksgiving, but certainly no issue for Fakesgiving!
And so Fakesgiving was on its way...
A swift load of the dishwasher (and hand-washing of the pot I needed immediately) and a quick calculation of what needed to be done first decided that while I was hardboiling eggs for deviled eggs, I would need to be working on pumkin pie first. I found all my ingredients (most of the spices of which were handily provided by my mother in the exact amounts I would need.... <3 my mom!!) and started getting ready.
3/4 cups of sugar. Splendid. I start scooping out of my sugar canister which is... much less full... than I remember it being? One 1/4 scoop, not quite full. Two 1/4 scoops, not quite full. HALF A 1/4 SCOOP, AND I'M OUT OF SUGAR. And apparently, I don't have another bag up in my cabinets. And I look at the eggs boiling, and the oven preheating for the pie, and the Brian-is-in-bed-because-he-couldn't-sleep-last-night and think I do not have time to go to the store.
After scouring my kitchen, I decide I'm going to have to turn everything off and run to the store. UNTIL I NOTICE A BOX OF GLORY: my mom had gotten me a million packets of Publix sugar once for my coffee, and I still have aaaaall those packets. I fill the cup packet by packet, and toss a few packets into the bowl for good measure. Again, saved by mom!
Then I notice something odd: smoke? Already? I thought I'd make it farther into Fakesgiving before starting a fire. I look at my stovetop, and see it billowing from a burner that's not on. I discern that it's actually coming from my oven, and open the oven door to.... POUR SMOKE INTO MY APARTMENT. Something in the past two days has magically boiled over onto the bottom of my oven (despite the tin foil layer I have on my bottom rack to prevent this from happening?), and is now making ridiculous amounts of smoke.
I've given my oven time to cool down while typing this, and opened windows in hopes of removing the stinky haze that fills my apartment. Time to clean the oven...
