Immeasurably More

The subject line of the email read: This is a weird hypothetical question. HYPOTHETICALLY, if the family took a 12 day China River cruise this November over Thanksgiving, would that be something a person might be interested in?  The person (who is of the female persuasion) would have to share a cabin with one of their male cousins.  (twin beds, obviously) Any thoughts? I imagined each of my three cousins as a cabin-mate.  I frowned at my account balances.  I thought about my plans to visit friends in New York that I haven't seen in years.  I wondered how much I would hate working Christmas week almost entirely alone in the office while everyone else was on vacation.  I almost decided not to go. And then I remembered the family Thanksgivings we used to have - trying to fit everyone into my grandparent's house which was decorated with Chinese silk paintings and knick-knacks.  Friday always included a movie and Chinese meal.  Sometimes Grandp...

Following advice from Alton Brown's book I'm Just Here For the Food , I put my turkey in the oven for 30 minutes at 500 degrees to brown it. Yeah.... 30 minutes may be more than necessary. Or my oven runs hot... I cut the heat at about 20 minutes to keep Mr. Turkey from burning instead of browning. Another dousing with boiling water and Blue Dragon plus an aluminum foil wrapping and he's resting at a comfortable 325 degrees until the thermometer beeps an internal temperature of 161. And I still haven't cleaned...

When I first bought my bottle of "Naturally Brewed", "No added artificial flavours" Blue Dragon soy sauce, I was dismayed to discover that it was sweetened . Yes, the second ingredient is, in fact, sugar. What does one do with sweetened soy sauce? My family swears by my grandfather's method of basting a turkey with a mix of soy sauce and sugar. Looks like Blue Dragon has found its purpose at last.

I'm prepping my bird for the oven. I've got it in a roasting pan with celery and carrots and an onion inside. This turkey came with strict instructions: It is recommended that the liver is not used as it may give the gravy a slightly bitter flavour. But which one is the liver?! My giblets bag has 4 pieces inside. Neck - check. Heart - check. And....? Saved by Google again! ( Giblets. )

I'm running about 20 minutes behind schedule, as I stopped to ask the local vintner what red wine to pair with turkey. His recommendation: Pinot Noir. The turkey (pictured above) is a fresh free-range bronze turkey. I'm personally hoping that he will "bronze" up nicely for tonight. At the moment, he's resting comfortably in my fridge. I had to dislodge the bottom rack to fit his box in. PS. In the top left corner, you'll notice the toll house pie I made last night.

When the Thanksgiving planning began, I assessed my oven to determine the size of bird I could buy. I've got a 5 Kilo (11 pound) turkey on order from the local butcher. I didn't think about things like stuffing and green bean casserole all of which also need oven space. Yeah. My oven's not going to cut it. I've decided to try the following: Have green bean casserole and stuffing ready to go into the oven immediately when the turkey comes out. For convenience and food safety, the stuffing won't go into the Turkey. Instead, I'll start it on the stove in a cast iron pot and then it's straight to the oven and straight to the table with no extra baking or serving dishes required. Here's the timeline. 10:15 - First trip to town to pick up turkey. 11:15 - Second trip to town to pick up everything else I don't want to carry along with a 11 pound turkey ............Clean...................... 2:00 - Trip to office to pay for dry cleaning that will be de...

I'm eating breakfast cross legged on the floor because I've already started setting the table for tonight. But just got a phone call that one of my American guests is ill and won't be able to come. Re-org! PS. Notice the laundry hanging out in the background. Yes, some tidying remains to be done.

I'm so excited! I'm hosting Thanksgiving dinner for 6 people (3 American, 1 English, 1 Finnish, 1 Dutch) plus me. This is only the second time I've prepared a turkey (and I don't actually have the turkey yet), but as it's not a holiday here, we can always pop down the pub if it all goes wrong! There will periodic (short) updates throughout the day and possibly a photo or two. An probably poetry as well.

I have several freecyclers stopping by today to pick up various things that I have found around my apartment and no longer have any use for, like VHS tapes and 35 mm film. It is a wonderful feeling to know that they will go to someone who can use them and an even more wonderful feeling to know that, however small their size or slight their weight, I will not have to see, pack, carry or ship them ever again. Similarly, I've been giving out a few things around the office, so far mostly Kinder Surprise toys accumulated from my previous travels. There is general agreement among my co-workers that the Kinder Surprise engineers are geniuses of their trade. If you don't believe me, you design a super-hero-chasing-a-super-villain-over-NYC toy that will disassemble and fit into a plastic egg about 1 1/2 inches long. Two other things that will be leaving my apartment today are a library book - Bill Bryson's Notes From a Small Island , which I enjoyed, but don't think is his b...