two down

Last week, D and I hosted Thanksgiving dinner!

I flew back from Zurich on Tuesday, arriving just before 7pm. D's parents arrived around the same time; his mom coming from Houston and his dad from Taipei. On Tuesday night, I cooked the brine for our Google-sourced Heritage turkey.

On Wednesday, I made cranberry sauce (with port and orange juice), started the homemade bread, and D made his scrumptious key lime pie.

On Thursday, we made candied sweet potatoes (with bourbon and marshmallows), sourdough sausage stuffing, and sauteed green beans. D's mom helped us roll some maki sushi, and both the turkey and ham (with brown sugar and pineapple) went into the oven for several hours. We timed things pretty well, finishing around 3:30pm.

The guests started to arrive about 15 minutes later, and they brought a ton of food too. In addition to everything that we made, I vaguely remember eating papaya salad, shrimp salad, "oily rice" (aka you fan), glass noodles with pork, bacon mashed potatoes, saltine toffee, and way too many Baked by Melissa mini-cupcakes (fresh from NYC).


Anyway, that's two down for my 35-before-35 list! I declare #5 (cook something for longer than two hours) and #20 (host Thanksgiving dinner) complete. The 17 of us even finished off all 13 lbs of turkey that night, which I think must be a first for an Asian Thanksgiving party. I also made progress on #25 (master a bread-from-scratch recipe), but although the bread was much improved from the last time, it still did not rise as much as expected. I think the kitchen was too cold during the rise phase...will have to try again over Christmas.

Next up, #28 (put up holiday decorations)! Due to allergies, we've decided on an artificial tree, so I guess we'll be shopping for one this weekend...