Giving thanks for dead birds

We had our feast on Friday as people were driving down I-5 on Thursday. The PDX portion of the family has a retail worker, so J delayed her trip by a day. It gave us a chance to work on homework for the first part of Thursday (including a trip to the office to use the big scanner and snag a couple books). Late Thanksgiving night I put the bird in a brine of pineapple sage, bay leaf, and apple cider. Yesterday morning I got to work as everyone else went to breakfast. The menu:

• The turkey
  which came out great. The first time I stuck the thermometer in, it was at the perfect temperature. Moist and well-salted, the only problem was that the skin didn't get a chance to brown because I left the bird covered the whole 3.5 hours. I put it under the broiler for a few minutes, but that didn't really satisfy.


• Cornbread stuffing
  which was added to the family when my mother, who was a home ec teacher for years, taught in an African-American high school. They told her, apparently in no uncertain terms, that she left several key dishes off of the menu when planning the Thanksgiving feast. Hence, we've been having cornbread stuffing ever since. I made mine with canned green chilis in the cornbread, and added eggs to the stuffing for the first time. They added some nice body to the mix.


• Mashed potatoes
  naturally. We may have gone without, but a special chanterelle gravy was made for the token vegetarian. She shared, and it was awesome. The mushroom juice was leftover from the roasted chanterelles we based a risotto on several weeks ago. The shrooms themselves were gathered by neighbors. The vegetarian raved (and shared too).


• Beet and potato gratin
  with swiss cheese and gleaned rosemary from down the block. No one in Eugene should ever buy a $2 plastic pack of rosemary.


• Glazed carrots
  with just a touch of balsamic vinegar. Not quite sure where I picked this one up.


• Chard and leeks
  a 2 minutes veggie side that we picked up from neighbors of said mushrooms. L has fallen in love with it and requests it every winter.


• Apple salad
  with pomegranate and candied pecans.


• Pumpkin pie
  

All this was served on new china and eaten with Grandma Jablonski's silver, which was mailed just last week. The Christmas tablecloth sort of camouflaged the whole arrangement, so the photos don't really tell the story. But it was a lovely dinner. None of the nieces misbehaved. And we ended the evening much, much later after hours of visiting.