My battle plan for an Easy Thanksgiving Meal worked like a charm.
The turkey breast was the moistest, most succulant white meat I think we’ve ever had. While the quadraplegic bird was defrosted when it began its 15-hour sojourn in the rice cooker, not a burn was to be had. A teensy bit of browning on the upper portion of the bird, cos I put it in with the breast down (for thatt purpose and to make stuffing the cavity easier).
The potatoes were cooked to perfection. A lil shuashing with a fork and they recieved additional gravy easily. And the gravy? Yum. Yeh, I used a mix and a lil more water than called for, to surround the bird and be a partial bath for the potatoes (which nevertheless came out as though they’d been roasted instead of boiled), but with the juices from the bird, the added onions, celery, carrots (some in the stuffing and some whole or coarsely-chopped around the bird with the potatoes) and sage and pepperuffing and on the bird), the gravy was tasty indeed.
The bread made in the bread machine, with ground flax seed and Post All Bran cereal added in place of some of the flour, was terrific, a keeper.
Lovely Daughter dressed up the canned cranberry sauce with some live cranberries and I added some sprigs/leaves of mint from the flower bed around our front walk.
Oh, and I have a pledge from Lovely Daughter to send me her recipe for “smashed yams”. She twice-baked yams, scooping the innards out of baked yams and spicing ’em up, then returning the smashed yams to the yamshells (*heh*) for the second bake. Delish.
My modification of her pumpkin bread recipe underwent further mods: reduced the molasses by 1/2 (substituting brown sugar). Worked well.
All-in-all, not only the easiest “traditional” T-Day meal I’ve prepped, but it was also just as delish, if not more so, than most I’ve had.
Yum. Easy. Delish. Right up my alley.
