Post-Thanksgiving Roundup

I'm doing a very short post now, but will post more within the coming week--taking advantage of vacation time. I promise that in the not-too-distant future my out-of-control work schedule will be somewhat tamed and I will be making more regular appearances. I'm also in the process of getting my own domain--more info on that to come.

Thanksgiving
This was our fourth year of hosting a vegetarian party, anchored not with Tofurky but with a seitan "pot roast." Much tastier, and surprisingly easy to make; most of the time involved is spent letting it cook, making it a good choice when one is laboring over the many side dishes. Photos can be found here. Despite our best efforts to get the guests to carry away as many of the leftovers as possible we still have a fridge and freezer full of food, and have no excuse for buying any more groceries for about a week.

I had to work the three days before, and spent some of the less-frenzied time surfing pre-Thanksgiving writing. This Slate piece details taste comparisons of vegetarian turkey analogs, though not really an equivalent of my homemade seitan. I'm not that crazy about Tofurky; as the reviewers do, I find it palatable but not great. With the seitan I get a lot more control over the final flavor.

Slate also amused me with this article about why food writers find this such a challenging holiday; it's hard to be truly inventive and write something new when the traditional meal structure is such a powerful force. "It's like redrawing the Kama Sutra when readers really only care about the missionary position," says the author.

Food Books
A bit ago I finally got around to reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. As I had suspected, Pollan rather beautifully lays out the ethical and historical underpinnings of the Recipes of the Damned--even to the point of advising readers to avoid purchasing food at gas stations. Which means I can spend less time elaborating that in my book proposal, and more time making fun of Jell-O.

Almost Ready for the Big Day

By which personally I mean I have a great deal more shopping, cleaning and cooking to do before tomorrow's third annual vegetarian Thanksgiving feast at the RotD Compound, but at least I am now on vacation through next week and so have a shot at accomplishing what I need to, instead of greeting our guests with a grimy living room and the menu for the nearest Indian takeout place.

In honor of tomorrow's holiday, here's a reminder not to deep-fry your turkey indoors. It's a major fire hazard. Deep-frying is for outdoors, preferably with a considerable buffer zone and possibly a fireproof bunker a la Mythbusters. If you need convincing, click through on the Gothamist story to the Underwriters Laboratories site and watch the video, which demonstrates that deep-frying a turkey indoors will ensure a memorable holiday, as in "In memory of Dad" and "Remember the year the house burned down and we had to go to a shelter for Thanksgiving dinner?"

Hello. stranger

Yes, I know, I'm a terrible blogger, and I think I'm going to be crazy busy through Thanksgiving Day, so I can't promise real updates before then.

But, hey, Thanksgiving. Anyone have any horror stories?

My senior year of college four of us stuck around in our rented house and made a pretty good feast. Everything was really good except the sweet potatoes; the two of us who were on sweet potato detail had never prepared them before, and didn't really know what we were doing. I'm pretty sure we didn't cook them long enough before attempting to mash them for serving en casserole; then we realized we had nothing to mash with except a blender. Gamely we gave it a try. Undercooked sweet potato granita, anyone? The consistency was simply awful, and the taste not good enough to make up for it (failure to get appropriate spices at the store, anyone?). The crowning insult: Upon dissassembling the blender for cleaning we found the embossed legend "Not to be used for mashing potatoes." Oh, NOW you tell us. Fortunately we had plenty of other good food, and were able to laugh at the sweet potatoes and only feel a little bad about their going to waste.

Anyone else? C'mon, share.

And if I don't get back to you with a new post before then, happy Thanksgiving!