TGIF!

“Thanksgiving is Friday!’  Our Thanksgiving came on Friday this year.  O.k., I’m late.  TG was Thursday, our nation’s most unique and wonderful holiday when we express the gift of gratitude while stuffing our faces before or after watching the Lions lose.  Oh, that waxing gibbous moon, can’t beat the heavens!

Our Thanksgiving Day began sprightly enough.  I’d been working on the menu for several days and had it in hand.  Our duck was swimming in its brine.  Just the two of us this year, so no bigger bird necessary.  I’d done the chop-chop-chopping prep for the sides Wednesday, so just a couple hours in the kitchen and the sides were ready.  The goal was to get a meal to warm up after the Lions game.  But something must have happened.  Faced with another gorgeous sunny November day, we thought a little hike through Cedar Bend Park and North Campus might be in order.  I’d really slacked off on my walking routine, so Kathy was happy for anything that got my ass out of the house.  We picked quite a hilly path (we do live on top of a glacial moraine).  The old man negotiated it ably, with no falls, slips, or even stubs, and only a few pauses to rest.  Much of the path went by the flowing Huron River, very soothing.  Home, my activity tracker said I’d done 2.8 miles.  Not bad.  Do that every day for the next year and maybe I really will get back into my 501s.  When Kathy offered a glass of sparkling water, our usual post-hike beverage, I instead opted for a Wolverine Brewing Massacre, the wonderful potent dark lager they put out this season every year (1).  With all that red wax on top of the bottle, you have to work to drink one, but it’s worth the effort.  Then I had a few nips making those sides.  All great chefs are alcoholics, which I guess I become facing the stove.  My red cabbage dish called for Calvados, a French apple liqueur (2).  I couldn’t find that, but did find a Michigan product “Spirit of Apple” from Black Star Farms in Traverse City, an 80 proof apple brandy (3).  Michigan apple growers, second largest producers in the nation (4), have finally figured out when you turn your product to booze, you really go to town.  I pulled down one of my túath glasses (5), meant for Irish Uisce Beatha, and splashed a little of that apple juice in.  Pretty tasty!  Don’t know how many refills I had, but when I put the 375 ml bottle away after my kitchen morning, it was half empty!  And there might have been another Massacre in there, too.  But I figured the fresh air, and a good walk would burn that all off. The walk came after the morning kitchen chores.

Once home, I managed snacks of roasted Brussels sprouts and Indian-rub grilled chicken breast to have for the football game.  I stayed up long enough to watch the Lions suck and to snarf up my share of the snacks.  But Morpheus was upon me, and I slithered off to bed.  The duck was in the oven with plans to emerge about 5.  I slept through the entire game, which Kathy assured me was no loss, and when I finally got up, hardly chipper, the duck was done, and it was time to swing into action for Thanksgiving dinner.  I still felt stuffed from the game snacks and was in no mood for a feast.  Kathy was very understanding, and all courses sat in our 35⁰garage awaiting a rewarming for Friday.

Come Friday, I was facing a pretty easy Thanksgiving dinner prep.  Can you call them leftovers if no one’s touched them yet?  My giblet stock had had a chance to cook.  I didn’t put it up yesterday until I emerged from my nap, about the same time the duck-is-done timer was going off.  That stuff should go at least an hour, and is critical to the gravy, so I was looking at a shortchange right there. Sleeping on this meal was the right thing to do.  And why not extend the feeling of Thanksgiving?  I know the day after has been given over to rapacious capitalism and often violent combative pursuit of bargains, but the only shopping we ever do this day is for our Christmas tree, and maybe some more beer.  That morning outing at Braun’s Tree Farm, a mere 4 miles from here, seeking out and cutting down the perfect tree in the brisk late fall air provided us with something we lacked yesterday: an appetite!  See us arriving home with our 9’ concolor fir bounty.  Our 2-dr ’16 Wrangler is the only of our 2 cars that can handle a big tree (the 4 dr Wrangler is also a soft top, but lacks the buttresses on which to bind a tree).  34⁰ and sunny is fine convertible weather.  As our Norwegian ancestors said “there is no bad weather, only bad clothes”.

So, once we got that tree in a bucket in our garage, we were ready to heat up them leftovers!

Friday after TG is also the day we break the seal on all things Christmas.  Decorations make their way up from the storage room and we start playing CDs from our big shoebox of Christmas favorites, even a few LPs. What else we do depends on our ambition and the weather.  Sometimes even the outdoor blue lights go up.  With Kathy finding ever more things to string lights on, the effort becomes more extensive every year.  I turn a few thoughts to our Christmas letter.  I know highly organized people get their Christmas cards out day after TG – and that letter is our Christmas card – but I’m not quite in that club yet.  So, you can see here some activities needing a little fuel!  Please see here our station.

Here’s our modest table.  Kathy’s congratulated me on my portion discipline.  The cutbacks were mostly dictated by supply issues.

Still wearing the Lions’ gear to show we’re not fair weather fans. If you want to try to make any of these things yourself, here ya go.

The main course: the duck.  We like a duck over a turkey if it’s just the two of us.  Even the smallest turkey inundates with leftovers.  We got our duck at Meijer’s, even though my former colleague Michelle and her farmer husband Mark raise them (6).  But those free-range ducks are muscular and lean, and you want your duck flabby and fat (translates to tender and tasty).  I’m hoping Kathy has the same opinion about husbands.  The brining experiment was new this year, and well worth the effort.

The sides.  Here came the biggest challenge.  Like Fats Waller sang, nothing worse than seeing “all that meat and no potatoes” (7).  But my Kathy’s been on the low glycemic index train all year, with excellent results. We’ve found you can cheat a lot with cauliflower, and sure enough there’s a faux mashed potatoes recipe.  Not quite Yukon golds and turnips, but it soaked up my gravy fine.

Red cabbage.  Both the Dutch and German-English sides of my adoptive family were big fans of red cabbage.  I always ate some dutifully but was disappointed it didn’t taste near as good as it looked.  Some years ago, I acquired a recipe in response to a radio announcement (I forget the program), and it’s been a hit ever since.  Feels good to place it on the table and think about all those family dinners of my youth.

Sprouts.   The Ikes loved these little cabbages.  Once I discovered the wonders of garlic and chicken stock, they became our favorites, too.  Since we had some purple pearl onions lying around – such great fun to prep – the sprouts came out this way this TG.

Dessert.   Here I cheated.  Since Kathy lost her sweet tooth several years ago, she’s not much for desserts of any kind.  But that box of Walker’s mincemeat mini tarts caught my eye.  

The Slaters used to shriek with joy whenever anyone made or brought a mincemeat pie to the table.  I don’t think they ever fed me any.  Clearly an adult taste.   I enjoyed the few Walker’s I sampled pre-TG and even got Kathy to take a bite.  Still too sweet.

When I wrote up our TG dinner 3 years ago, I included the wine list (8).   We’re a little less fancy about it these days, since we’ve found that with our Vivino apps (9), we can get some pretty good wine at Busch’s, which has some amazing discounts in addition to their 10% off if you buy 6.  Duck and pinot noir pair well.  We had a bottle of  The Prisoner 2021 with some Crossbarn 2019 waiting in the wings.

Leftovers were few.  Carcass and bones were carefully gathered for the always much anticipated duck soup (10,11).  The cook was beat and gathered himself to an early bed, the better to rest up for Saturday’s contest.  Go Blue!

References

1. Wolverine State Brewing Co.  Massacre Imperial Dark Lager https://www.wolverinebeer.com/massacre

2. Lev-Tov D.  Everything You Need to Know About Calvados, France’s Historic Apple Brandy.  WineEnthusiast. https://www.wineenthusiast.com/culture/spirits/calvados-french-apple-brandy-guide/

3. Black Star Farms.  Spirit of Apple https://blackstarfarms.com/winery/distillery/spirit-of-apple/

4. Apples https://www.michiganapples.com

5. THE Túath.  Ireland in a glass.  https://www.tuathglass.ie

6. Local Harvest.  EMMA Acres Farm.  https://www.localharvest.org/emma-acres-farm-M51437

7. Fats Waller.  A That Meat & No Potatoes (remastered).  YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaJRg-RZ8Vo

8. Ike B. My favorite holiday.  WordPress 11/27/20 https://theviewfromharbal.com/2020/11/27/my-favorite-holiday/

9. Vivino.  https://www.vivino.com/US/en/

10. Warming Duck Soup.  DukesHill https://www.greatbritishfoodawards.com/recipes/warming-duck-soup

11. Duck Soup – 1933 Trailer.  YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSpavlMe9ZM\