The post-turkey-day report.

Lewisburg.

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I'm pleased to note that I'm not inundated in leftovers for the first time in years. To be honest, aside from the year I was in the UK, I can't recall the last time that I didn't have a week's worth of turkey, mashed potatoes and cranberries to contend with. My grandmother, you see, is rather adamant about having enough food on the table to send everyone home with loads of it. It was simply luck that Sharon and I weren't spending the rest of the holiday weekend at home, and thus couldn't take any with us. Other than a pair of slices of my mom's Jewish Apple Cake,¹ for breakfast the next morning.

I was responsible for the turkey this year, since my grandmother's tendency is to overcook any and all meats. For example: she uses the little pop-up timer from a grocery-store bird as a guideline. By which I mean that she waits for it to pop - which is often a sign that poultry's already overcooked - and will then wait another half hour or longer before taking it out of the oven. But my uncle will only eat stuffing that's been cooked inside the bird, and I refuse to do that.

It's a pretty basic temperature concern. In order to heat the stuffing - a pretty fine insulator - to a sufficiently high temperature to kill pathogens, you're all but guaranteed to cook the bird thoroughly dry. So, basically, you're looking at either a dry turkey or potential food poisoning, neither of which has a whole lot of appeal. Growing up, the solution was always to drown the turkey in gravy. Grandma has always made potful of gravy, using the turkey juices. All of the juices that have been squeezed out of the bird by the muscle proteins seizing tight at the high temperatures.

At any rate, we were at a bit of a bump in the road. Grandma's solution was to roast a second bird, stuffed, while I'd still do the main turkey my way. Sounded good - especially when I though it might be a stuffed chicken - until I realized that she meant a stuffed turkey. An eighteen-pounder, which was enough meat to feed all of us. So there was plenty of turkey to go around. Though it's worth noting that my brother leapt up immediately after dinner, snatching up all of the remaining pasture-raised, brined, carefully-roasted meat.

The other goodies we brought for dinner - some local, frost-sweetened brussels sprouts, a homemade loaf of whole wheat, rosemary bread, and Sharon's wonderful chocolate-covered cherry cookies and snickerdoodles - went over especially well with my immediate family. Not so much with the pickier eaters at the table, but at least everyone found enough to fill their plates. Anymore, in the attempt to please a wide variety of tastes, that seems like the best I can hope for. Unfortunately, it's an understood fact in my family that preparing Thanksgiving like I did last year - an all-local, all-homemade extravaganza - wouldn't make everyone happy. I have relatives who won't eat any vegetables other than corn or potatoes.² Even in the realm of pies, they'll only eat a sugar-loaded chocolate pudding pie; even pumpkin and apple pies will be left untouched.

So it was a genuine pleasure to do a sort-of-Thanksgiving dinner for Sharon's dad and sisters that was well-received. They'd spent the holiday at a resort near Cancun, and arrived back just in time for Bill's birthday. After a week's worth of resort food - some of which they found questionable - a dinner of "recognizable" food was just the ticket. Roast chicken with caramelized onions; milk bread rolls; broccoli; salad and vinaigrette; and a chocolate cherry cake for dessert. Even the broccoli received accolades, along the lines of "How did you make this so good?" It's amazing how careful blanching in thoroughly salted water can be so good.

And now there's just the remaining turkey in the freezer.

See, when searching for a local, pasture-raised bird, I mistakenly gave the impression that I wanted a bord to two different farms. Rather than call up one and cancel, I simply bought both. One went to Thanksgiving. The other's now sausage: one batch of Mexican chorizo; another spiced with the flavors of a Moroccan tagine; and the last flavored with fresh rosemary and shallots.

So I guess I've got some Thanksgiving leftovers, after all. But I'm entirely okay with that.

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¹It's a well-known recipe where I grew up, but some folks find the name a good enough reason to get uppity. But it's simple: the recipe modifies a traditional German apple cake to eliminate the dairy, thus making it okay with meat or dairy if you're one who keeps kosher. The one who pointed this out to me was the original chef at the Twin Bays Cafe in Phoenixville. He was Jewish; his wife was Catholic. But he preferred his mother-in-law's recipe to his family's, and so that was the one he kept on the menu.

²On the plate, I don't count those as vegetables. They're starches in my book.