I hear she cooks delightfully
Among the things I never thought I would willingly spend huge amounts of time and energy on, when I was younger: children and food. I'm not a super foodie. I'm not a scientist or an artist in the kitchen. I am usually perfectly happy letting other people create food for me to eat. But somewhere along the line, cooking became something of a hobby and I'm willing to venture that having kids and being a part-time single parent had a lot to do with that.
But anyways, what I'm saying is that I'm realizing that I've managed to get decently good at creating reasonably tasty dinners on demand, and connecting that with the result of nourishing and caring for others means I occasionally enjoy doing so. So being a host for Thanksgiving dinner for family and a few orphan friends is more of a fun things for me to look forward for me. Of course, there are plenty of other stressful parts, but the food itself was nice.
For the food of the actual day: there was a ham, because after years of making turkey, all the members of my family realized that we liked ham much better than turkey, and there hasn't been another turkey in our holidays since. There was a duck, since the Boy still wanted a bird, but I refused turkey, and chicken is boring, and I wasn't up to anything more exotic. It was my first time cooking duck and I think it could have been better but it wasn't awful. I tried out a new crockpot stuffing recipe, because of requests for stuffing (but no bird), that came out fabulously and I may attempt to repeat in the future. The jboys made pies, which they are getting quite good at, with moderate supervision from my mom. xuth made duck fat potatoes from the aforementioned bird drippings, of which there were not nearly enough. A few other sides to round it off, a small amount of oven juggling, and it was a great day and dinner. Leftover ingredients (for the week) include rendered duck and ham fat (I don't bother keeping chicken fat), duck/chicken/ham broth (or jelly, really), and duck/chicken/ham meat. Everything else pretty much got finished off within a couple days.
The rest of the week included managing dinners to feed 7, which it turns out really isn't that much more work than dinner for 5, and is infinitely more rewarding when the guests are adults who are vocal about how much they enjoy the food and willingly help clean up afterwards. Much wine was consumed, a couple movies watched, gossip caught up on, and all the necessary homework done.
It also let me know that I'm really horrible at actually doing this "relaxing" thing when I'm at home (and particularly when I have guests/kids around), and although it was relatively a very nice non-stressful time, I really didn't feel refreshed or do anything particularly useful. So of course on Sunday, after the guests had gone and the household chores were mostly managed, I went back to the kitchen and turned some of the leftovers into a big pot of yummy soup. Tomorrow I have plans to do similar. It's meditative and satisfying, which I didn't expect from me, but I'm not going to question it.
But anyways, what I'm saying is that I'm realizing that I've managed to get decently good at creating reasonably tasty dinners on demand, and connecting that with the result of nourishing and caring for others means I occasionally enjoy doing so. So being a host for Thanksgiving dinner for family and a few orphan friends is more of a fun things for me to look forward for me. Of course, there are plenty of other stressful parts, but the food itself was nice.
For the food of the actual day: there was a ham, because after years of making turkey, all the members of my family realized that we liked ham much better than turkey, and there hasn't been another turkey in our holidays since. There was a duck, since the Boy still wanted a bird, but I refused turkey, and chicken is boring, and I wasn't up to anything more exotic. It was my first time cooking duck and I think it could have been better but it wasn't awful. I tried out a new crockpot stuffing recipe, because of requests for stuffing (but no bird), that came out fabulously and I may attempt to repeat in the future. The jboys made pies, which they are getting quite good at, with moderate supervision from my mom. xuth made duck fat potatoes from the aforementioned bird drippings, of which there were not nearly enough. A few other sides to round it off, a small amount of oven juggling, and it was a great day and dinner. Leftover ingredients (for the week) include rendered duck and ham fat (I don't bother keeping chicken fat), duck/chicken/ham broth (or jelly, really), and duck/chicken/ham meat. Everything else pretty much got finished off within a couple days.
The rest of the week included managing dinners to feed 7, which it turns out really isn't that much more work than dinner for 5, and is infinitely more rewarding when the guests are adults who are vocal about how much they enjoy the food and willingly help clean up afterwards. Much wine was consumed, a couple movies watched, gossip caught up on, and all the necessary homework done.
It also let me know that I'm really horrible at actually doing this "relaxing" thing when I'm at home (and particularly when I have guests/kids around), and although it was relatively a very nice non-stressful time, I really didn't feel refreshed or do anything particularly useful. So of course on Sunday, after the guests had gone and the household chores were mostly managed, I went back to the kitchen and turned some of the leftovers into a big pot of yummy soup. Tomorrow I have plans to do similar. It's meditative and satisfying, which I didn't expect from me, but I'm not going to question it.