Thanksgiving is one part being extremely greatful and one part eating a massive delicious meal, right? Well none of the above happened today in my home.
Saying that, "everything went wrong" would sound too overly dramatic and unbelievable so instead, I'm going to take you through everything I did that really messed up our Thanksgiving dinner.
We'll start off with the night before when I had to make a last minute run to a grocery store because I went through my recipes and relized I forgot to pick up unflavored gelatin. Now I wasn't informed that stores are now open the day of Thanksgiving. Maybe it was a lack of 21st century common sense or maybe it was the fact that typically I've never stepped foot out of my home during the holidays epically as a child, and I've always assumed the rest of the world was doing the same. Wrong. So I'm making this late night trip and I can't find what I need at one store and end up having to go to another. By the time I get home it's a quarter past midnight. Not so great for my game plan of, "get a bunch of sleep so you can wake up early and cook all day!"
I finally shut my eyes and my alarm clock is sounding five minutes later. Well it was actually seven hours later but it felt like an instant. The thing is, holiday or not, I am not very good at being very good in the mornings. I've been known to be excessively mean and snappy. In fact, my husband nicknamed me the dragon. And you don't wake the dragon. But here I am, dragging myself up and out, scales and all towards the kitchen.
That's when I noticed that the pretty sparkling clean kitchen I had the night before in preparation for the day was gone. My cutting board was layered in something black as night and juicy. I would have believed it was poison if I was told so. And then there was the nice dirty pile of dishes I needed to use in the sink to my right.
That's when the first fight with my husband began as he cleaned his mess. From there on, it was all down hill. Maybe there really is a wrong side of the bed to wake up on.
I started cooking my pumpkin pie first when I realized I needed more brown sugar than we had. I had a mini meltdown about the stores being closed and that's when Nick decided to tell me our neighborhood store was open today. Why he couldn't tell me this last night, I'm not sure. I sent him out and he returned with what I needed. Everything went smoothly until I got around to the whipped topping. I should point out that I, in fact, thought I could play Martha Stewart this year and cook every single thing from scratch. I even used all Martha recipes with no exceptions. So I intended to make the whipped topping myself.
At one point my brain said, "Duh Jessica, you don't have a mixer of any kind so how are you going to whip this up?" But my heart faithfully responded, "I'll do it by hand really fast!"
When I failed to make puffy peaks of heavy cream and sugar I asked my husband if he could do it any faster than I could. When he couldn't, I said, "I know! Get out the blender!"
Nick poured our failure into the blender and started it up. Five seconds later there was smoke and cream turned into charcoal-like chunks flying everywhere. Apparently nick didn't screw the bottom of the blender together. Cue second argument of the day. By that point, I pulled out the cool whip that was bought in case of an emergency and slapped that on my pie instead.
I was going through my next recipe, for stuffing, and pulling ingredients out when I saw that our celery had spoiled so I had to send Nick to the grocery store yet again which was asking for another fight and demand to check all recipes for missing or insufficient items. Fast forward to the part where I take my stuffing out of the oven and realize that 50% of it stuck to the bottom of the pan and the rest of it is soggy. I accepted my defeat of the stuffing and was optimistic that everything else would turn out smoothly.
Smoothly is an antonym you could use to describe both my mashed potatoes and sweet potatoe casserole. You see, I thought it would be a smart idea when I bought my potatoes to put them in the freezer so they might keep longer and I set them out to thaw the night before. This was wrong. They thawd out into a soggy but not questionable enough mess of spuds. I kept working on them and went about making regular dishes. As I said before I don't own any kind of mixer and I also don't yet own a potatoe masher. I used my husbands strong arms and a fork to mash the potatoes. Or to fail at mashing the potatoes. When I thought the lumps would be little enough to grin and bear I let him stop and set the potatoes aside along with my finished sweet potatoe casserole that I wrapped aluminum foil over to keep warm.
I also made green been casserole which seemed to go normally enough.
Everything was coverd with foil and set aside.
The turkey went last, which is apparently, the wrong order to work in, and was probably my biggest disaster of all. I managed to dry out the meat but leave the skin soggy and in the end it was the worst turkey I had ever tasted, not just from myself, but ever in my life.
After the turkey came out Nick wanted me to quickly reheat everything in the oven. So we put everything in, at the same time, while covered in foil. This is really where Thanksgiving burried itself alive at our house.
My marshmellows melted into the lumpy sweet potatoes. My stuffing turned black. My green beans went soggy. Yet we still dressed the table and piled our plates high like we were going to enjoy every last bite. After one bite of each item, I actually began to cry. I have never in all my loved years of cooking screwed up everything in a meal at the same time. Especially not on a holiday meal that consisted of so much planning and thought.
Not to mention the stress the day had brought and the petty fights my hubby and I got into. After everything, I was a exhausted broken down and broken hearted sobbing mess.
My husband held me for a while after my fit and we said our sorries and promised to have more patience with each other next time. Then we agreed that some day, maybe not tonight or a month from now, but maybe five Thanksgivings from now, (while we eat all of our boxed and canned Thanksgiving foods) we will laugh about this.
And that's what brings me to what I'm thankful for.
And this year, I'm thankful that my pumpkin pie didn't taste like shit.
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