Thanksgiving Hiccups

Even when it's just the two of us, Thanksgiving dinner takes time to prepare. I wanted to spend Thursday outside planting my winter vegetable garden, not inside cooking, so I was in the kitchen first thing doing what I could. I made the lentil loaf and the pie, and stirred together the dough for the dinner rolls so it could slow rise in the fridge all day. Maybe the early hour was responsible for the challenges I encountered in the kitchen.

My favorite Thanksgiving tradition is listening to Turkey Confidential on NPR from 9-11 a.m. Lynne Rossetto-Kasper fields calls from people across the country trying to get dinner on the table. Lynne is a masterful problem-solver. One caller had left the eggs out of her pumpkin pie filling and it wouldn't set. Lynne suggested turning it into a parfait - scooping the filling out of the pie crust and layering it in individual glasses with whipped cream. And of course telling the guests it was the latest dessert from Paris.

Lynne reminds us that the Thanksgivings people remember are the ones where there was a calamity. She said that no one talks about the time she gilded apples and pears with gold leaf, instead they laugh about the time she dropped the turkey on the floor.

I remembered this as I stumbled through my Thanksgiving cooking this year. My stand-by never-fail lentil loaf did not work. (Did you try it - did it work for you?) I guess I didn't cook the lentils long enough, because it did not hold together well. It was a lentil casserole, not a lentil loaf.

I baked an apple-pear pie with a rum crust from Diana Shaw's Vegetarian Entertaining. I baked the pie crust blind for a few minutes, using dried chickpeas as pie weights. When I took it from the oven, I tipped out the chickpeas and the whole crust slipped out with them, crumbling into pieces of partially-cooked dough. So much for pie. I poured the filling into the bare pie plate, covered it with the lattice top, and baked it.

I spent the day planting, and Larry and I met in the kitchen at 4:30 p.m. to put dinner together. When his pre-cooked turkey part came out of the oven, the rolls went in. I made calabacitas and mashed potatoes while Larry heated gravy and stirred together stuffing.

We had a good meal. The lentil loaf was a pile of lentils, but the calabacitas were a delicious sauce for it. The mashed potatoes rocked, and the rolls were light and fluffy.

By the time we'd eaten all this food, we had no room for dessert. The not-quite pie made an excellent breakfast the next morning.