Director's Commentary

With Monica's birthday and all, I offered to take care of the meals on Thanksgiving. I enjoy cooking. But, as a pretty much self-taught cook, the whole baking thing really kind of escapes me. I prefer things that you can see, fuss with, make changes to — not things that you have to combine in a precisely measured combination and put in an oven for a particular moment within 10-55 minutes and trust that it'll all come out.

We started the day with strata, a reliable standby. Tossed a couple green chiles into the mix for some local flavor. Combined that with an MST3K DVD from the comic shop for some added nostalgia.

For dinner, I had consulted Melanie, who has prepared our wonderful Thanksgiving meals for the past seven years. I needed things that I could handle but that would meet her standards. She gave me a menu and instructions. Because I can never follow a recipe exactly, I kind of went from there.

The roasted butternut squash soup combined her recipe with one from Los Barrios that includes pears in the mix. We already had a pear thing going on, so it fit, and it was a smooth, tasty soup. Asparagus had to be steamed, not roasted, because of oven space. Instead, along with the turkey, I was roasting sweet potatoes (combined with some white potatoes, per a local chef on one of the talk shows here) that got mashed together with some maple syrup. For only two of us, I opted for a turkey breast instead of a whole bird, but it followed Melanie's time-honored brining tradition. For the preparation, I followed Rachael Ray's instructions but with Mark Bittman's timing. It all tasted (if I do say so myself) pretty great in the end. We finished off with a mixed green salad with walnuts, craisins, blue cheese, and a pomegranate vinagrette. Preparations had already begun for the pear/blue cheese tart for dessert, but we'd already eaten way, way too much. Hopefully, we'll get to that tonight.

thanksgiving

For now, as requested (hi Mom + Dad), just some pix.









I'm thankful for many, many things, but most especially for this guy.

happy birthday, Beeeeeeeej!

24 November 1969

are you going to Scarborough faire?

The Thanksgiving preparations are well underway.

the law of conservation of matter

Shortly before we left Arlington, we put in a huge dry cleaning order at Bergmann's, mostly sweaters. Admittedly, we were cutting it a bit close, with our pickup date just a few days before the movers were to show up. Well, when we went to pick up our stuff, there were three sweaters missing. Three of Bram's sweaters. We returned several times in the remaining days before the move, but still no sweaters. All we could do was leave our new address — so that they could ship to us — with the semi-literate front desk staff and drive to Santa Fe. Over the summer and fall, our dear friend Miz P (who is having troubles of her own with Bergmann's) has been checking for us — still nothing.

I called Bergman's HQ around the end of October, spoke to customer service (not the front desk staff) and they were able to help me retrieve the tracking and lot numbers (reciepts were long gone) and interceded with the troglodytes who run the big carousel-o-clothes out front. There were two calls made, the sweaters were declared, at various points, missing, delivered, and picked up, but were finally located. Grunty the Wonderclerk actually had the sweaters in her hands, and proved it by describing them to me in her own... um... words. In my excitement, I agreed to have them ship to us. This was November 11. Upon further reflection, I became less and less confident they would do it. I should have told them to expect a visit from Miz. P. But all's well that ends well. Arrived today; made very welcome:



PS: Miz P. the number for B'sHQ is 703.247.7600. Make sure you talk to customer service and whatever you do, don't let them transfer you to the front.