Thanksgiving Dinner with Pictures
November 24th, 2006 by Michael Gray in Random Thoughts, Social NetworksIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
While this post isn’t technically about SEO that doesn’t mean you might not get a few ideas on how get more out of some social media tools by reading about my Thanksgiving Dinner
For me cooking has always been an outlet for expressing creativity. Growing up some of my fondest food memories are of my great grandmothers cooking. While I experimented with cooking as child I didn’t get into it in an enthusiastic way until we bought our first house. As my love for cooking grew so did my culinary hardware requirements, which necessitated a major construction renovation. This construction which went over budget (shocking I know) actually started me to take on side work, which eventually led to my going solo and starting my own business.
The first time people come over my house for dinner, they peak early. They overeat on the appetizers and never make it to dessert, which is really the best part of the meal. We started off with some fruit and vegetables, and this year I went with a swan theme as you can see in the picture below
If you click through you’ll see some extra notes on the pictures. Now before somebody jumps down my throat saying hey Gray why are you wasting food carving them into shapes when there are people starving in <insert country of choice here>, let me clarify. The fruit inside the melon’s was saved and made into a coulis for dessert, and when you are under 10 you can often be tricked into eating fruits and vegetables when they are in fun shapes. It satisfies an impish desire to be bad, by eating the head and wings off the swan, and it’s good for you.
Once everyone had arrived it was time for the hot appetizers, first up some toasted french bread with spicy mayonnaise (garlic powder mixed with buea monde, and cayenne pepper)
Then stuffed mushrooms and romano cheese
followed by puff pastry spirals with ham and cheese
Pretty much everyone needs a break here, so I built in a 90 minute buffer between hot appetizers and turkey to give everyone a chance to rest and digest. Some of you are asking hey Gray how do you keep all that food cooking at the same time? Well remember the part about going over budget, well a 30″ double wall oven gets expensive, but on holidays it is a godsend. Now if you entertain you want to be able to talk to your guests and cook at the same time. So I have a 45″ stainless steel cooktop from thermador which lets me do just that, again worth every penny.
I like to watch the Food Channel and my favorite Chef is Alton Brown. He’s sort of a mad scientist, combined with a chef, and entertainment producer, which makes him highly entertaining. I like him so much I met him and took a cooking class he gave. The problem with turkey is most people over cook it and it comes out dry as sawdust. However AB has an excellent recipe for brined turkey (turkey that sits in a salt bath) that solves a few of those problems. Firstly the salt bath draws seasoning into the meat making it tastier. Second it bring the turkey up to room temperature and shortens the cooking time, so I was able to cook a 20 pound turkey in 4 hours
For side dishes we had stuffing with dried cranberries, apples and pecans
the classic green bean bake
sweet potatoes with marshmallows, and pepper salad. Sorry no pictures Mrs GW said “put down the damn camera already and put out the food will you!” Dinner was followed by a nice 1 hour nap.
After dinner comes the dessert. For me the plated dessert is like art, you can eat. First up we had A double layer devils food cake, with whip cream frosting sitting in a pool of raspberry and chocolate sauce
The colors go a little washed out but hopefully you get the idea ( check out the unedited version for a laugh). Lastly a white cake in melon and strawberry coulis. On the side are two mini jello cups, and inside each of the jello cups is a piece of pound cake. Around the outside I ground up some hard candy but it got washed out in the picture
There was also a bit of fudge, however the little hands weren’t patient, so I wasn’t able to get a picture off before they demolished it. After dinner the carcass gets picked dry and goes into the pot to make turkey stock which has more “mouth feel” than broth. The pickings will be used in turkey gumbo, a post Thanksgiving tradition.
Sphere It
November 24th, 2006 at 5:01 am
Looks nice, I’ve just got back from vacation in America. You guys do have great food compared to the U.K but i just cant eat it all in its so big…
I never tried stuffed mushrooms but looking at your picture i wish i had now (mouth watering…..)
Glad you had a good day i can’t wait till Christmas now
November 24th, 2006 at 6:10 am
This post is making me hungry!
November 24th, 2006 at 11:28 am
How about some pictures of the kitchen renovation?
I disagree, this post is very much about SEO. I get most of my traffic one my home and garden site from personal projects I have done. Show and tell.
November 24th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
To make it on topic, have a contest for someone to write a guest SEO post. The winner then gets to join you for next year’s Thanksgiving dinner. Looks like it was a great dinner, thanks for the post!
November 24th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
That looks good. I wish i had a family
November 24th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
Wow! It looks like you went all out!
A while back, I had a crazy roommate who was a gourmet chef (Italian food). The guy would take “Food & Wine vacations” to Italy every year so he could visit the best vineyards and restaurants, etc. The guy was obsessed with Italian food.
His other goal was marketing. He would do all this traveling, etc, so he could have fantastic and authentic stories about great Italian food & wine “experiences”.
His philosophy was that no one wasts to buy a $400. bottle of wine. What they want to buy is a story about the wine, how it was made & why it costs $400.
Since he had usually been to the actual vineyard and sometimes eaten with the family who owned it, he always had a great story about the wine.
One year on Thanksgiving, he removed all the bones from the turkey, (Legs, wings and everything). Then he seasoned it from the inside, stuffed it, and then sewed it back up to make it look like a normal turkey again.
He then took the bones and boiled them for about 12 hours to make the stock for the Turkey gravy. It took forever as you can imagine, but it looked and tasted great! (It also made for a great story, which I believe was his primary goal)
November 24th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
Awesome! I learned about brine last year and had done it, to huge success. This year I did a brine and herb solution again, for a 20lb turkey and everyone at the table just wouldn’t shut up about good it was. I made the same stuffing you did too, but there’s no way I did a theme or had the decorative touch you do. I did make a different kind of green bean dish…with bacon, sweet red pepper, onions, that went over really well. A tremendous effort you made…you’ve inspired me for next year!
November 27th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Geez Graywolf! Whatever happened to opening a $.50 can of cranberry sauce, slicing it up, and plunking it onto a plate? You put my family’s Thanksgivings to shame.
November 17th, 2007 at 10:50 am
This year my wife decided to have a dry run thanksgiving day to test out her recipes. We soaked the bird in a brine solution she got at William Sonoma it really kept it moist. OMG, the turkey was so good and I get to do it again in a few days!