November 25, 2006

Thanks

There he is, all 22 pounds of golden brown beauty: the bird. Happy Thanksgiving, a few days belated. Wednesday we shopped for many groceries, and Craig made his pumpkin pies in the afternoon. And Thursday morning, a very gray, thick Thursday morning, we packed ourselves up with armloads of plastic bags filled with Thanksgiving-related miscellaneous and hailed a cab to head to Long Island City. Our company has a corporate apartment there, which is occupied only during the week when head guys fly in for a few days at a time. One of the office staffers decided it would be great if those of us not going to our families' for the Holiday met up and had dinner. They were talking vaguely about turkey breast or something and I intervened with a firm, No way, Craig and I will do the whole bird - everyone else pitch in for sides and just show up. Therefore, Craig and I arrived at the apartment the earliest, around 8:45, to prep the large hunk of poultry which awaited us there in the fridge (another co-worker involved in the event had dropped it off the night before). Stubborn, and because Craig and I attempted our first Thanksgiving together years ago in Connecticut, when he lived in Hartford, and our gravy turned out a runny tasteless mess, I decided to go for the gold and try homemade stock for then homemade gravy, with fine cooking magazine's printed out "tips" as my guiding light. Yum, tossing a turkey neck and various unidentifiable parts into a pot with some water, parsley and a basil leaf. Seriously, I was pretty disgusted but expected it to yield positive results. The neck and whatever other organs simmered for about an hour and a half (since fine cooking instructed me to "throw out the liver, which makes stock bitter", I threw out a couple of slippery chunks of turkey innards, unsure precisely which one might be the liver and borrowing Craig's expertise, which wasn't delivered as expertly as I hoped as he spoke the following phrase while pointing at a curved maroon part: "That looks liverish.") By the time all was said and done, I had stock, for crying out loud. I was happy as could be. The next mission impossible would be making a roux later, once the bird was closer to done. Anyway, everyone arrived - Josh and Kate, Andy and Autumn and their kids Meghan and Matthew, then Sadaf and her sister who had flown in from Detroit that morning. The boys went to town building four more stools for the table - we were all uncertain as to whether the corporates intended to send the extra stools back, because they were in boxes unbuilt and leaned against one wall, but majority rules, and it was concluded that Oh well, either way. Upon building the stools incorrectly and having to re-do them, we were finally outfitted for a very nice, very amateur but nice nonetheless Thanksgiving dinner. Autumn, a stay-at-home-Mom who happens to frequent the Food Network channel, helped me with the roux, only the gravy, mixed with the stock and turkey drippings, wasn't thickening as we hoped, so she wound up throwing in too much flour, and somewhere between the stove, serving dish and table, the gravy turned into a consistency not much different from congealed milk. She mixed it up again quickly with a fork and we ate it and it actually tasted really good - which I contribute directly to the turkey's neck. And not to blame her, like Autumn put in too much flour, because she was an excellent sous chef. Her roux was far and away more successful than mine would have been solo sans her help. I think there were even a few non-believers, those doubting Thomases of my gravy abilities, who liked the end result. The meat was good - our carving (Craig's carving) was a slight bit inexperienced, so we'll improve upon that in years to come. The sides brought by others were good, too. It was an overall successful meal (only, kind of cold, Craig noted, muttering under his breath that Thanksgiving food is always cold, but it is because of the inevitable inability to time absolutely every single detail to a perfect T and there you go, stuff is going to get cold. Just keep eating anyway, is my advice!)*Friday we spent nearly the entire day watching movies: You, Me and Dupree (entertaining), The Squid and the Whale (good, but bizarre), and The Lake House (laughable and predictable plot but mindless entertainment nonetheless). We went to dinner around 7 at Merrion Square which is north of us, then went to Biddy's for beer and music on the jukebox (mind you, it is the year 2006 and when I say jukebox, I mean a wall-mounted digitally-operated gadget which has a touch screen), and then we came home, fairly tipsy, both of us, and played a game called loosely something like, "Let's play each other our Top 10 Favorite Songs Ever, Ever Recorded" from the iPod. It didn't last much past 4 songs total because Craig decided halfway through a song that a drunk nap was in order. Needless to say, today we slept in (which only really means we slept until 9:30). Then we went to the Whitney! It was our first collective Whitney Museum experience. At the top floor of the Whitney right now they're exhibiting Edward Hopper's paintings with sketch studies he did prior to the paintings themselves. Nighthawks was of course in the first main room, with probably ten different sketches, framed separately from one another, of details in the painting. It was neat (it presented Hopper as quite the organized artist, which is, from my past experience, somewhat of a rarity). Craig liked that Hopper kept ledger books of all of his paintings after they were completed and sold with full information, like materials he used, size, and to whom he sold each work and the dollar amount. The floor below the Hopper exhibit was Picasso and American Art, a fairly massive exhibit of many original Picassos next to American paintings he influenced. The floors below that left a little to be desired, but it didn't matter - we got to see two really amazing exhibits. After the Whitney, we made a return trip to Barnes and Noble (the first time we went, before the Whitney, I was intent on finding some book called Rabbit, Run written by John Irving - hang on for further explanation as to why I was shopping for a book by a male author, which I rarely, if ever do...and it hit me when we left the store that I was looking for the wrong John - I needed Updike. Hopefully neither of the two Johns would be offended at my innocent error). Why was I shopping for a male authored book? Because I was invited to a new New York book club by a new friend in my writing class - exciting!*And this afternoon we watched Thank You for Smoking. I liked it very much. This perfectly calm Saturday night finds us at home, relaxing. Craig is watching an important game and I'm pretty much just rambling endlessly here, but next I am going to begin the epic adventure of compiling New York slide shows (photographic record of our first six months living in the City and working in Queens) that we will present to our families during the Holidays next month. We are flying to Chicago to stay for a few days at his parents', where his Mom steers a heroic Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and then we're climbing aboard an Amtrak to head to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to be retrieved by my parents and to spend a couple of days with them. It's our first Amtrak experience, at least, my first, and I wonder if I will meanly compare it to the Metro North or L.I.R.R. in my head. I love the Metro North and L.I.R.R. They're godsends here in New York. I also wonder what it will feel like to be in the Midwest again - although we were just there recently for Craig's party, and we will be going in two weeks for our friend Gordo's Vegas-style Cleveland-based 30th birthday party, spending more than just a weekend there might feel, secretly, really good. I have a gigantic, enormous and neverending soft spot in my heart for anything Midwest - specifics don't matter. I gloat on and on to myself about being an East Coast resident, a New Yorker - and I love all of that. But the Midwest will forever, eternally be home. So we will go, home for the holidays.*

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