Thanksgiving Dinner: Follow-up

The homemade croutons helped the stuffing, but anything other than cubed stuffing is out of my future. The flavor of the cooked stuffing was good, but the texture was still too mushy for my taste. The cranberries (and blueberry craisins) were good. I see more experimentation in my future

The meat thermometer said the turkey was done sooner than expected in both the thigh and the breast. I'm usually horrible about letting the turkey rest before carving, but I did tonight. It was far from overdone, but nicely moist and reasonably flavorful. The orange-pineapple juice and porter added a light, sweet tone to the skin, but nothing discernable to the meat.

The cranberries were fine. Ordinary, but utterly fine at that. Pearl brand pitted olives are not as good as the Lindsay olives of my youth, or even my recent past.

The roasted asparagus was good, with the Australian bush spices with mountain pepper (another gift from David Russell) adding different tones from the garlic and Italian spice mix I often use. I'll have to try it again to see if I want to keep bush spice mix in the roasted veggie rotation. I think so.

I filled my plate once, ate about two-thirds of the large serving of stuffing and cleaned the rest of my plate.

Photographic evidence over on Google+. The Near Future Pumpkin Pie is now in the oven and starting to smell good.

Thanks for sharing your Thanksgiving dinner with me, and for enjoying mine.

Onward.

Today: Ig Nobel broadcast on NPR's Science Friday

Chief AIRhead Marc Abrahams reminded me, and I'm reminding you:

Today is the annual day-after-Thanksgiving Ig Nobel broadcast on NPR's Science Friday.

They have edited this year's ceremony down to a radio hour. As always, it will be fun to see how they managed to do that.

Details.

In Boston, it will be on WBUR (90.9 FM) at 2:00 pm. It will also be live-streamed online by a number of stations.

Chicon 7 Cyber Monday Sale!

Chicon 7 is offering a "cyber monday" sale. We will be reducing the cost of an attending membership by $15 and family memberships by $30. These rates are available only through the website.

The prices (for 24 hours) will be $180 for an attending and $510 for a family membership.

(I expect those 24 hours will run on Central Standard Time, though given it's a Worldcon, s bit of time travel may be involved.)

The Leftover Report

The stuffing is much better reheated by pan-frying, adding a welcome crunch to the texture.

The pumpkin pie was good warm (late, late last night) and is really good cold (today). I think the extra cloves, ginger, and cinnamon I put in helped as well as the quality of the Penzey's Vietnamese cinnamon. Served cold, the pie is clearly superior to store-baked, supporting my own view and experience in contrast with Garrison Keillor, who said:

"Pumpkin pie is the epitome of mediocrity. The best pumpkin pie you ever ate isn't that much better than the worst."

The turkey remains tasty. This is a good thing, as I'll be eating it for awhile yet.