The Lost Thanksgiving

*Bring bring* off goes my cellphone at 7:30 in the morning. Luckily we'd been up since 7 due to a dog who loves food and then going back to sleep but it has to be in the living room with one of us around.

It was my mom, "Are you coming home for Thanksgiving?"

"Uh, yeah. That was pretty well established. We were going to leave in an hour or so."

"Well we're all sick here so it's up to you."

Hm, a stomach churning flu for a week or a bit of turkey and fixin's for a meal? Tough call but gonna go with the staying in our house where we're generally healthy. I must say this was a bit of a surprise of fate.

This year it's managed to ruin every holiday generally through the weather, an illness is an interesting change.

My husband and I get dressed quickly, with the dog looking very confused as to why her warm pillows got up. Thanks god for 24 hour grocery stores still open on Thanksgiving because we'd spent the past three days clearing out the fridge of just about every and all leftovers and staples.

A bit of a mad dash through the store grabbing anything we could find we had a bit of a menu, a mushroom stuffing with pre-bought stale bread crumbs and pork sausage, green bean casserole with fresh beans, cranberries made from whole, and the wings and drumsticks of a turkey (we got the rare two winged three legged bird).

The store was full of bored employees and a few other people getting last minute bits for their sumptuous feasts. Then there was us two idiots trying to scramble together a Thanksgiving meal in 2 hours.

First thing we did once we got home was made a fast brine. Four cups of stock boiling to which I added 1/4 cup of salt and other various spices (remembering that we were all out of poultry seasoning, of course). Once that was saturated into the bag it went along with the turkey bits to soak for an hour and a half.

My husband chopped celery and mushrooms for the stuffing while I browned the sausage:

About half way through I remembered I'd used up the last of the butter on the week and forgot to get more. So a 1/2 cup of margarine was used to cook up the shrooms and celery and other spices I could dig out of our pot along with the pork.

Dumped that mixture along with some brother over the bread crumbs and in it went into the oven for an hour:

I put my husband back on chopping duty, this time prepping the green beans for which I pretty much followed the recipe on the back of the onion can.

It was as the beans were boiling away in the water I remember, oh crap we don't have any milk either! It was tossed around using evaporated milk but we found a bit of heavy whipping cream and I cut that in half to add to the canned soup mix and green beans were a go.

The cranberries are the easiest of the lot, just a cup of water and a cup of sugar brought to solution then in go the berries for about 10 minutes:

In that went to the fridge to cool down.

Both of the casserole dishes got done at the same time, I put the smaller in the microwave to keep warm and covered the larger in tin foil on the stove. Now it was time for the turkey bits.

Washing them off and giving a quick pat down in they went to the roaster after I cranked the oven temp to 375. Here I said a Tom Turkey thanks prayer for my meat thermometer without which I'd be guessing when the turkey bits would be done.

They only took about a half hour, plenty of time to get the dinner rolls from Pillsbury started.

We managed without any food in the house, almost no prep time, in two hours to come up with this Thanksgiving spread:

Sadly no pumpkin, cherry or apple pie. But we got some thanksgiving themed cupcakes instead.

Happy Lost Thanksgiving everyone!