Kate's Mystery Tour: December 2010

For the first time in my life, I got up Thanksgiving morning and started preparing the meal and kept working on it until it was time to eat that afternoon. With Tari managing the kitchen mess and her helper, Vaida (aka Fadia), straightening up the mess the kids made of the rest of the house, the day was actually fun. At noon, Tari and I had a Courvoisier as a tribute to Mom.

I had thought Matt, Kim & Quinn would be flying in that afternoon, but their flight had been changed so they were actually arriving Wednesday night. Quinn wouldn't sleep in a room by himself, so the whole family piled on to our modest double bed in the guest room...not the best sleep. We did breakfast...I bought a quiche...Thursday morning, and then I took them to Doon Estates, a shopping area. Kim helped with the stuffing and young berry cobbler. Matt kept an eye on the turkey and made the gravy. David got back from work in time to start making early afternoon mimosas. Bettina and her three kids (+ another helpful nanny) arrived at 2, and we ate around 3:30. Some Mercy Corps guys, Amanuel and Mort (visiting) joined us about mid-meal.

Over all it was quite edible. Here's the menu review:

Turkey: alternatively called "young" or "is that a chicken?" Shipped from Brazil, it was the only turkey available in town and half the size of an American one. Still, it tasted great. We used the Blackberry Farm cookbook for this and other recipes.
Gravy: a bit too heavy on the flour for my taste but one can't easily critique one's husband's boss. Still: edible.
Stuffing: BBF cookbook. Not as good as Mom's mom's recipe. Peppers and giblets (don't like). However, we were able to use a number of ingredients from the garden: herbs, peppers, celery, etc. Found that mealie meal (staple of diet here) makes for a fine cornbread, so will be doing that again for sure.
Mashed Potatoes...BBF - fine
Roasted broccoli medley...colorful but not anything to get excited about
Roasted butternut squash with sage...should have doubled the recipe and we forgot to throw in the craisons AGAIN
Pumpkin bread-pudding...too mushy but tasted ok with the pears soaked in Courvoisier and fresh whipped cream
Young berry cobbler...too liquidy and lemony and the crust didn't turn out right but still tasty...and it had to be on the menu given the number of young berries growing outside the kitchen window
Pecan Pie...hands down the winner in excellence!! This one was 100% Tari's. Recipe from BBF but had to substitute the sorghum syrup with good old corn syrup...although it was not nearly as thick and gooey as pecan pie usually is.
Bettina also brought a salad and sauteed spinach which we needed as the above wasn't enough (see below)

After dinner, we moved under the big pecan tree for dessert...highlight of the evening was eating pecan pie under the tree that supplied the pecans. When it was dark enough to light the fire in the fire-pit table under the tree, the after work crowd started rolling in. (D forgot to mention to me that we would have another 5 guests coming.) This was the crew I'd gone with to Kariba the weekend before. They ate up most of the left-overs which was great since we were heading out of town the next day, and the night ended very pleasantly with fireside chat.

The kids who had basically been allowed to roam around late into the night were found half asleep on their feet when I eventually figured they should be put to bed. Eliza was standing at their crafts table sleep-coloring. She's been into drawing and coloring a lot these days.

Mambo also rose to the occasion, performing a scaled-down, safari sun-downer, hunt-to-kill performance. It was a good fight, but the rat got away. However, he did succeed in dropping a nearly dead baby rat on Kim's foot at breakfast the morning before they left.