Boy are My Arms Tired

This is going to have to be a short post because I'm completely exhausted. We were supposed to arrive home around midnight last night but there were delays. Unfortunate long delays. We finally got into the airport at at nearly 1:30 am and home around 2:30. I have to read a little before I go to bed so that meant lights out at 3:30 and back on at 6:30. Ouch. Unlike Wessel,  I am far from a morning person.

It took me hours and hours to catch up on the goings-on around the blogosphere so here I am finally with my little update.

I think I'll save the really good parts for other posts. Instead here's a little menu to tide y'all over:

Thanksgiving Dinner Menu

Hors D'oevres

• Lovely triple cream brie with whole grain triscuits
• Strange appetizers consisting of bacon-wrapped water chestnuts, soaked in soy sauce.

First Course

• Butternut squash bisque with rubber fat free sour cream garnish. Don't bother roasting the squash, just throw it in a pot. Who wants all that nice concentrated flavor? Everyone will be so surprised when they find out the soup garnish is actually edible. It looks so plasticy!

Main Course

• Incredibly dry turkey because 'no one brines a turkey'
• Stuffing from a mix (I kid you not) with a few things added, cooked in the bird but not to a safe temperature.
• Hark, what is that strange after-taste? More splenda on the table than you can possibly imagine. In the cranberries that might have been good, in the pumpkin pie, who knows where else.
• Flavorless green beans.
• Strange tasting cranberries that could use some citrus or something besides, well, cranberries and splenda.
• Frozen, sliced strange bread. This used to be the MIL's specialty. She made incredible rolls from scratch. Now, she serves sliced, frozen multi-grain bread. The freezer burn adds a certain je ne sais quois.
• Sweet Potatoes. Yup, you read that right. She made sweet potatoes. Want her recipe? I'm pretty sure I figured it out. Cook a couple of sweet potatoes. Mash them. Top with walnut halves. Bake until nuts are burnt. (Do not desecrate potatoes with anything remotely resembling spice or flavor. No butter, eggs, vanilla, brown sugar, cinnamon, pecans. Maybe the stupid cow from the south will be appeased and fooled into thinking these are her sweet potatoes. She'll never know the difference).

Dessert Course

• Amazing Sour Cream Apple Pie. Thank goodness the friends of the family came through with this because it was yummmmmmy. Real apples. Real butter. Real sugar. Real sour cream. Delish.
• Worst Pumpkin Pie ever. Splenda? Lack of flavorings? Gummy pie crust? There are oh-so-many possibilities for why this pie tasted as bad as it did.
• Both accompanied by fat free cool whip--still frozen and in the plastic tub! Who wants to use all that nice china and stuff when you've got handy, colorful plastic tubs you can take right to the table?

Actual good part of the meal:
Champagne...well, sparkling wine from one of Millie's favorite vineyards in Sonoma County
Sauvingon Blanc from somewhere. Ice optional.
Some red wine from France (who cares what it is...just keep pouring).

Tip to the hostess: When one of your guests has been TEACHING Thanksgiving cooking classes for several weeks perhaps you should take her up on any offers of help. Otherwise, prepare to have a lot of leftovers and hear a lot of "no thanks, I guess I'm just not very hungry after all"s.

I must say there is one civilized person among my in-laws. He's my very favorite one of the bunch. I think I'll just call him the Epicurean.  He wasn't at our meal because he was cooking for 25 at his family of origin. I did, however, get to see his menu. It was more of a packet: nice menu, recipes, brining instructions. All themed. All wonderful. Even a signature cocktail. Maybe I can get his family to adopt the rest of us?

On the Next Episode of Out, Damned Egg: When the evil inlaws become too much, see if Millie takes the high ground or if she stoops to their level. How low can she go? Will revenge be sweeter than even Splenda?

Comments

[thalia]

Sounds dire. I hope that the alcohol got you through and am looking forward to hearing about revenge!

[Emily]

Ugh! It's bad enough to have to be in their company at all -- but bad food on top of it? No, that's just asking too much!

I'm much too much of a food snob to tolerate that. I'd have brought my own little snack pack.

What's with all the splenda?

[chris]

Hahaha! Splenda!? How awful.

I'm from Polish-German descent: Do not, I repeat, do not mess with our dairy. We can handle hords of Russians and French soldiers stealing our food, farms and women, but leave the cow out of this.

Fake sour cream and cool whip? A travesty.

Hope you get some rest today.

[T]

Splenda? Ew.

[Pamplemousse]

Glad you survived and hopefully triumphant?

[Susan / holdingpattern]

Oh dear, I served stuffing from a mix. Does that make me a bad person?

[fisher queen]

Was the evil MIL trying to impress you, what with triple cream brie and a bisque? Why can't she just do the gracious thing and acknowledge the better cook, even if it's only to let you make the sweet potatoes? She's missing a good bonding opportunity in my opinion. But of course that isn't what she's going for.

I've always thought that a person's character is evident in how they run their kitchen. She sounds territorial at best. My MIL fell asleep sometime in 1963 and never woke up. I first knew this when she cooked for me. Her contribution to Thanksgiving this year (EVERY YEAR) was GREEN BEAN CASSEROLE. I kid you not. Complete with MSG, mushroom soup, and those strange fried crunchy things on top. Shiver.

[Red Headed Momma]

Don't call yourself stupid cow from the south! Even if you're pretending to be evil MIL. It still made me sad!

I'm disturbingly intrigued by your descriptions of the food. I want to taste it all, to see how bad it really was.

And damn, I will never complain about my mil's cooking again. We had turkey (not brined, but it was fairly tasty), mashed sweet potatoes with real butter and some sort of spice, I'm sure(!), oatmeal bread, broccoli, and pumpkin soup. The only thing that was weird was the pumpkin soup. It was made with lactaid! Ewww.