- Joined
- Mar 31, 2016
- Messages
- 2,117
- Purraise
- 2,892
I have helped with the side dishes at family dinners, but I have never managed a major dinner on my own. Earlier this week my husband gave me his wish list for Thanksgiving dinner. Turkey, ham, green beans, succotash, mashed potatoes and gravy, crescent rolls and a chocolate pie for dessert. I counted the number of people in the house, a whopping three, and said, "Are you crazy?!? What are we going to do with all that food???" Sigh.
The kid had to work today until 3pm, and the husband has to be at work at 4:30am tomorrow, so I planned dinner at 4pm. In addition to his list I added Martinelli's and stuffing. I got a different stuffing brand than usual, didn't read the back carefully. I hate cranberry gel but Target didn't have the cranberries in sauce, so oh well. There's plenty of food. I also picked up two Fancy Feast turkey cans so the boys could also have a Thanksgiving dinner.
Things are going along stunningly smoothly. Even though I have a tiny galley kitchen I managed to figure out where to put everything. Of course a couple of things usually on the counters went on the floor, especially the Sodastream and the empty but not quite empty spare tank. Yeah, I know CO2 is not flammable, but I don't want the tanks bursting from the heat expansion of gas.
Thinking I was actually going to have everything done right at 4pm, I looked at the stuffing bag. Um, celery? I was supposed to get celery??? So I texted my daughter to bring home celery, and while she was at it she could get the cranberries as well. So first thing to go wrong. Then I got to a point where I needed to have the potatoes boiling, the succotash and green beans heating, and when the kid gets home I'll have the stuffing started. The potatoes were already going, so I turned on burner #2 and got the green beans going. Then I tried to turn on burner #3. Nothing. Turn it off and back on. Still nothing. Sonofa---. Well, I can wait a bit on the stuffing. So burner #4, which has the same feed as burner #3. Nothing. Second thing to go wrong.
So I submitted a maintenance request and went back into the kitchen to try and figure out how to cook three pots with two burners. I kept trying the burners and finally got #3 going. Yay! The potatoes were done so I turned burner #1 off and dumped them into the colander. Turned burner #1 back on and nothing. Auggghhhh!!! I guess there has to be a heat sensor, as it's an electric/gas hybrid.
Since I had taken the meat out and put the rolls in when I dumped the potatoes I finished the rolls and then just waited for the oven to cool down a bit before trying the burners. They work! Then the husband and kid came in, I quickly chopped the celery and in the end everything but the stuffing was done minutes after 4pm and the stuffing was done before 4:15pm. I looked around my tiny kitchen and everything looked good. Everything looked amazingly good. There wasn't a dirty dish or spill anywhere. Not even the lids to the pots holding the veggies and stuffing. Whenever my daughter cooks it always looks like a bomb hit my kitchen and I'm always getting on her case about cleaning up the blip blip kitchen. And she's always saying it's because she was cooking. So I called her in and told her to look around and pointed out I just cooked a major dinner and asked her if she saw a mess. She looked and looked and finally pointed to a whole tomato I had put in front of the microwave and pointed to it and said "This is messy." Really? I told her that if I could keep a kitchen clean while cooking, she can manage it too.
I refused to cut the turkey and ham, and both were the two kvetching. And apparently my knives are dull, so there was more kvetching. And the use of many knives to try and get a clean cut. Third thing wrong. And while they were kvetching I realized something very odd. The tiny galley style kitchen traps in a lot of heat when I use the oven, especially an oven running for 2 hours with two burners going. And I was in that kitchen most of those two hours and I'm wearing a jacket and I'm feeling fine. My internal temperature gauge is definitely on the fritz.
We're eating in front of the TV with the Forged in Fire marathon going, so we were in the kitchen filling our plates and I realized I had forgotten to chill the Martinelli's. It's sitting on top of the fridge, in that hot little kitchen. Ugh. So fourth thing going wrong. I put it in the freezer and the kid's freaking out about how that's such a bad idea. I'm not leaving it in there all night kiddo. While we were eating I went in there once to shake it a bit. Not as bad as it sounds, I shook it the same way you shake a Sodastream bottle to mix the syrup into the carbonated water. Then when I finished with my plate I shook it again, opened it and it was perfectly chilled.
So my very first holiday dinner ever. 15 minutes late, uncooperative burners, forgotten celery, dull knives and warm Martinelli's. I don't think I did that bad.
The kid had to work today until 3pm, and the husband has to be at work at 4:30am tomorrow, so I planned dinner at 4pm. In addition to his list I added Martinelli's and stuffing. I got a different stuffing brand than usual, didn't read the back carefully. I hate cranberry gel but Target didn't have the cranberries in sauce, so oh well. There's plenty of food. I also picked up two Fancy Feast turkey cans so the boys could also have a Thanksgiving dinner.
Things are going along stunningly smoothly. Even though I have a tiny galley kitchen I managed to figure out where to put everything. Of course a couple of things usually on the counters went on the floor, especially the Sodastream and the empty but not quite empty spare tank. Yeah, I know CO2 is not flammable, but I don't want the tanks bursting from the heat expansion of gas.
Thinking I was actually going to have everything done right at 4pm, I looked at the stuffing bag. Um, celery? I was supposed to get celery??? So I texted my daughter to bring home celery, and while she was at it she could get the cranberries as well. So first thing to go wrong. Then I got to a point where I needed to have the potatoes boiling, the succotash and green beans heating, and when the kid gets home I'll have the stuffing started. The potatoes were already going, so I turned on burner #2 and got the green beans going. Then I tried to turn on burner #3. Nothing. Turn it off and back on. Still nothing. Sonofa---. Well, I can wait a bit on the stuffing. So burner #4, which has the same feed as burner #3. Nothing. Second thing to go wrong.
So I submitted a maintenance request and went back into the kitchen to try and figure out how to cook three pots with two burners. I kept trying the burners and finally got #3 going. Yay! The potatoes were done so I turned burner #1 off and dumped them into the colander. Turned burner #1 back on and nothing. Auggghhhh!!! I guess there has to be a heat sensor, as it's an electric/gas hybrid.
Since I had taken the meat out and put the rolls in when I dumped the potatoes I finished the rolls and then just waited for the oven to cool down a bit before trying the burners. They work! Then the husband and kid came in, I quickly chopped the celery and in the end everything but the stuffing was done minutes after 4pm and the stuffing was done before 4:15pm. I looked around my tiny kitchen and everything looked good. Everything looked amazingly good. There wasn't a dirty dish or spill anywhere. Not even the lids to the pots holding the veggies and stuffing. Whenever my daughter cooks it always looks like a bomb hit my kitchen and I'm always getting on her case about cleaning up the blip blip kitchen. And she's always saying it's because she was cooking. So I called her in and told her to look around and pointed out I just cooked a major dinner and asked her if she saw a mess. She looked and looked and finally pointed to a whole tomato I had put in front of the microwave and pointed to it and said "This is messy." Really? I told her that if I could keep a kitchen clean while cooking, she can manage it too.
I refused to cut the turkey and ham, and both were the two kvetching. And apparently my knives are dull, so there was more kvetching. And the use of many knives to try and get a clean cut. Third thing wrong. And while they were kvetching I realized something very odd. The tiny galley style kitchen traps in a lot of heat when I use the oven, especially an oven running for 2 hours with two burners going. And I was in that kitchen most of those two hours and I'm wearing a jacket and I'm feeling fine. My internal temperature gauge is definitely on the fritz.
We're eating in front of the TV with the Forged in Fire marathon going, so we were in the kitchen filling our plates and I realized I had forgotten to chill the Martinelli's. It's sitting on top of the fridge, in that hot little kitchen. Ugh. So fourth thing going wrong. I put it in the freezer and the kid's freaking out about how that's such a bad idea. I'm not leaving it in there all night kiddo. While we were eating I went in there once to shake it a bit. Not as bad as it sounds, I shook it the same way you shake a Sodastream bottle to mix the syrup into the carbonated water. Then when I finished with my plate I shook it again, opened it and it was perfectly chilled.
So my very first holiday dinner ever. 15 minutes late, uncooperative burners, forgotten celery, dull knives and warm Martinelli's. I don't think I did that bad.
