Next Thursday is Thanksgiving. This means my once a year cooking marathon. Trust me on the "once a year" part. It takes parts of a week, most of a weekend. It's very work intensive, and the turkey itself doesn't count yet, not even touching the oven until Thursday. It will graduate to the fridge tomorrow, however.
This year was different. I did a double batch of my special stuffing muffins. We're having a friend over for the main meal, and she is gluten free. Since bread is the main ingredient, I did the first batch with gluten free bread (then reused the dishes with regular combined with the dab of leftover stuffing). She persuaded me that I could actually find decent (whatever that means) gluten free bread in the freezer section of the local store.
I was less than impressed as I pulled two loaves out. Apparently whoever froze them wasn't impressed either as they weren't put in the freezer with much care for the condition any of them would come out in. I decided not to care since they were going to be torn into bits as their next step in life, and hoped all the additions would make up for it. There's a lot of liquid in the recipe, between orange juice, melted butter, chicken stock and eggs. In case that's not enough to help the bread along - or worst case, help us ignore the bread - there's also cranberries, raisins, chopped onion and celery, and lots of chicken meat, not to mention oodles of spices.
Work started a few nights ago, tearing up the bread. All 4 loaves of it, or 5 pounds. Those crumbs go back in the bags they came from, then back into the fridge. I warn everybody not to shop too much so there's plenty of room there. At the same time I twisted Rich's arm into chopping two onions and two celery hearts. I did my best not to mind his running out of the kitchen every two minutes to give his eyes a rest from the onions. Or the language. I figure since he's not contributing financially, he can chop... and clean house later. Once the onion fumes cleared the kitchen, I soaked craisins in OJ along with a little orange zest. The regular bread crumb mix is part raisin bread, but gluten free doesn't seem to come that way yet, or at least not in the local store. I decided a pack of fresh raisins were moist enough and just sprinkled cinnamon into the main mix.
Yesterday was the last store visit for the event, which included a pair of roasted chickens. Right now they are a great deal, with two already cooked for $10. After a "little" nibbling on the meat (breakfast and supper), they got pieced up and plopped into a big soup pot to simmer for a couple hours, then cool enough to go into the fridge as it was now past bedtime. The pot came out again this morning to heat up on the stove again, just a short period this time, making up for the cooling. The broth got strained off, and the rest got picked through to salvage all the meat. And yes, all the scraps went immediately out into the garbage. (But somebody else gets to do the dishes!)
Since I was cooking anyway, I changed my plan from doing the final stages tomorrow to doing it all today. I got a little help from Steve, most notably that high reach to the top of top shelves to pull down the roaster pan which I use as a mixing bowl, being low and wide for easy access to mix every bit uniformly. I also didn't feel like beating the eggs, 6 at a time for each batch, since the only beating instrument in the house is a whisk.
I had the foresight to get two different kinds/colors of cupcake papers. The pretty blue ones now hold the gluten free batch, all three dozen. The all pink or yellow or blue ones hold the regular bread muffins, four dozen minus the ones Steve and I each had. Just a test, you know. Quality control after the fact.
The last batch out has now cooled enough to remove from the pans, not quite enough yet for bagging and putting in the fridge and freezer. So I guess it's time to quite killing time by writing this. Many of each batch will be frozen for meals through the next several months. My gluten free friend will get some leftovers, while others will stay frozen till February when Steve and I spend a few days with some Minnesota friends who are coming down for the "warmth" of Sedona. We haven't been able to convince them that Phoenix is actually warm then while Sedona isn't yet. Last time we joined them there snow capped all the red rocks for the entire visit. But she is also gluten free, so we can grace their table with something she can enjoy with us. Or is it that we can enjoy them along with her?
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