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geo party, turkey gravy, and really yummy rolls
One of the many Canadians in the geology department hosted a Christmas Eve dinner today, and invited everyone in the department. Quite a few of us attended, bringing along our partners (or more rarely, children). Knowing that they'd planned a BBQ involving fish here at the house for Christmas day, when I got an invite to a proper Turkey Dinner, I leapt at the chance. You see, my all time favourite meal to cook is the turkey dinner we had for both Thanksgiving and Christmas every year growing up. But I haven't roasted a turkey since moving to Australia nearly four years ago. Not much point when I'm not really eating meat, the oven at the rental houses we've had is too small to take the turkey roaster, and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clovis_t isn't overly interested in leftover turkey or turkey soup. The one thing I was *really* hoping for is proper mashed potatoes, with plenty of butter and milk in them. Being as our host is from Canada, where food customs are similar to the parts of the US in which I've lived, I figured the odds were really good, and indeed, they did have *exactly* the sort of potatoes I'd been craving. For reasons I don't understand Australian families don't do mashed potatoes they "roast them"--this is actually an insidious torture technique wherein they pour some oil in the bottom of a pan (between 1/2 and 1 cm deep!) then place peeled, cut into quarters bits of potato into the pan, widely spaced, then put them in the oven, where they draw up the oil slowly as they cook, becoming both very, very oily, and crispy at the same time. I can generally manage about one bite before I have to stop. I'd rather have french fries--they take much less time to cook, and adsorb less oil in the process! However, even better than getting my mashed potatoes was having *proper* gravy to put on them! I timed it perfectly, putting down my sewing as they were carving the turkey and asking if they needed any more hands in the kitchen, to which they replied "are you any good at making gravy"? and pointed to a large roasting pan as full of drippings as mine normally is. I replied that I love making gravy, and went to work. She handed me the flour bin, and pointed out a box of gravy mix that was available if I wanted it. I rejected the box as unneeded, turned on the burner under the roasting pan and commenced mixing up flour and milk and asked after herbs & spices. Someone fetched me a handful of fresh herbs from the garden, and I found a whisk and soon had a huge pan full of yummy gravy. Not quite as dark as I normally make it, but for reasons we don't understand turkeys don't come with giblets here, so there wasn't any water from cooking the giblets to add, nor were there giblets to run through the food processed and add to the gravy. After I'd had my fill of yummy food I then went back and picked off the last of the meat off of the bones and put the bones into the (now empty) roasting pan to boil up for soup. It was so much fun to be permitted to play in the kitchen, and they assured me they'd be able to finish up the soup. So I got to do some of my favourite tasks for the holiday dinner, and I didn't have to deal with the clean up afterwards (though, of course, I did clean up my gravy & turkey mess as I went), and I won't have the left overs that I won't eat. Yes, I did have a few bites of turkey, but, hopefully, not enough to trigger the digestion issues which caused me to quit eating meat in the first place. And I've got left over rolls too! I made two plates of Christmas wreath rolls (make your favourite refrigerator bread roll dough, roll out, brush with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, roll up and cut rounds which get stacked in a circle, each just overlapping the next, bake, and frost them with a butter-powdered sugar-cream icing and decorate (this time with fresh raspberries and cake-decorating sprinkles) to make it look like a holiday wreath. I baked the remaining roll dough as plain knots (it is important to use only the middle slices of the roll, so that the wreaths are the same size all the way around) and took the lot. However, despite the large turnout, there was *tons* of left over food, and we brought home one full wreath and a couple of knots. This makes both clovis_t and I happy, as we adore both the plain rolls, and that particular frosting.
I managed only about 25 minutes of uni work this morning before heading to the party, but there is a good hour or more left available tonight before I need to do yoga and head to bed, so I'm hopeful of some progress yet to come...
(or was hopeful before I wasted ages and ages trying to deal with my unreliable internet connection--it will open some web pages, some time, but for reasons I don't understand, it doesn't seem to like LiveJournal today)
clovis_t isn't overly interested in leftover turkey or turkey soup. The one thing I was *really* hoping for is proper mashed potatoes, with plenty of butter and milk in them. Being as our host is from Canada, where food customs are similar to the parts of the US in which I've lived, I figured the odds were really good, and indeed, they did have *exactly* the sort of potatoes I'd been craving. For reasons I don't understand Australian families don't do mashed potatoes they "roast them"--this is actually an insidious torture technique wherein they pour some oil in the bottom of a pan (between 1/2 and 1 cm deep!) then place peeled, cut into quarters bits of potato into the pan, widely spaced, then put them in the oven, where they draw up the oil slowly as they cook, becoming both very, very oily, and crispy at the same time. I can generally manage about one bite before I have to stop. I'd rather have french fries--they take much less time to cook, and adsorb less oil in the process! However, even better than getting my mashed potatoes was having *proper* gravy to put on them! I timed it perfectly, putting down my sewing as they were carving the turkey and asking if they needed any more hands in the kitchen, to which they replied "are you any good at making gravy"? and pointed to a large roasting pan as full of drippings as mine normally is. I replied that I love making gravy, and went to work. She handed me the flour bin, and pointed out a box of gravy mix that was available if I wanted it. I rejected the box as unneeded, turned on the burner under the roasting pan and commenced mixing up flour and milk and asked after herbs & spices. Someone fetched me a handful of fresh herbs from the garden, and I found a whisk and soon had a huge pan full of yummy gravy. Not quite as dark as I normally make it, but for reasons we don't understand turkeys don't come with giblets here, so there wasn't any water from cooking the giblets to add, nor were there giblets to run through the food processed and add to the gravy. After I'd had my fill of yummy food I then went back and picked off the last of the meat off of the bones and put the bones into the (now empty) roasting pan to boil up for soup. It was so much fun to be permitted to play in the kitchen, and they assured me they'd be able to finish up the soup. So I got to do some of my favourite tasks for the holiday dinner, and I didn't have to deal with the clean up afterwards (though, of course, I did clean up my gravy & turkey mess as I went), and I won't have the left overs that I won't eat. Yes, I did have a few bites of turkey, but, hopefully, not enough to trigger the digestion issues which caused me to quit eating meat in the first place. And I've got left over rolls too! I made two plates of Christmas wreath rolls (make your favourite refrigerator bread roll dough, roll out, brush with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, roll up and cut rounds which get stacked in a circle, each just overlapping the next, bake, and frost them with a butter-powdered sugar-cream icing and decorate (this time with fresh raspberries and cake-decorating sprinkles) to make it look like a holiday wreath. I baked the remaining roll dough as plain knots (it is important to use only the middle slices of the roll, so that the wreaths are the same size all the way around) and took the lot. However, despite the large turnout, there was *tons* of left over food, and we brought home one full wreath and a couple of knots. This makes both clovis_t and I happy, as we adore both the plain rolls, and that particular frosting.I managed only about 25 minutes of uni work this morning before heading to the party, but there is a good hour or more left available tonight before I need to do yoga and head to bed, so I'm hopeful of some progress yet to come...
(or was hopeful before I wasted ages and ages trying to deal with my unreliable internet connection--it will open some web pages, some time, but for reasons I don't understand, it doesn't seem to like LiveJournal today)