Chinese Thanksgiving meal
Busy busy season it is now. I've been thrusted into the middle of layoff roulette. Even with that considered, or perhaps because of that, I have been dutifully playing my role and adding on the pounds. Not exactly a good look for me, but I have taken up the curious exercise of jumping jacks. It's old school, pumps up your heart, and I can do like twenty. Goodness gracious. For Thanksgiving, Steph and I hit up my parents house in the beautiful land of Suburbia and we had ourselves an Asian/Chinese Thanksgiving dinner. All the food was good and none of it was traditional, except the turkey, which my parents bought already cooked. I'll explain.
See, what is stressful about Thanksgiving is two things. One, family coming together and it's lots of people in a space normally not fitting all those people. Two, you're often asked to cook something you normally don't cook. Like an average American family, I like to eat cranberry sauce on every third Thursday of EVERY month. What?! You don't do that? Loser. You also don't eat stuffing all the time or a bird with titties bigger than your head?! How sad your life must be to cram all this into one meal a year, and having to get it right for a large group of people! See, stress. Who needs that? Eat what you want to eat.
So instead of mashed potatoes we got something better. Green bell pepper stuffed with some shrimp, and then cooked in black bean sauce. Mmmmm... shrimp and black bean sauce. This is a winning combo.
Oh but there's the turkey. Yes, it was cooked at the time of purchase because the turkey was smoked. I think it came from some store that does hams. Either way, the turkey was fine and agreeable, and a perfectly adequate delivery vehicle for sauce, though not gravy. We even had lox as part of dinner. Boo yah.
Regular blogging will resume tomorrow when I talk about some pizza.
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I concur. Don't understand why slave over a meal when it's almost impossible to eat everything. I also had a Chinese dinner. Nothing fancy. Just homecooked meal. That's da best.
Hmm...your table is missing some desserts. :)
kim
November 29, 2011 8:14 pm
@kim,
haha yea desserts weren't on the table. we had some homemade mochi after dinner though. that was pretty fresh!
Danny
November 30, 2011 12:15 am
I love Thanksgiving and make the whole meal by myself. Turkey, ham, sides, and dessert. It doesn't stress me out at all. Makes me happy. Though, I will admit that I cook very often and have been in charge of the Thanksgiving meal for years now.
Also, ever thought about Chinese-fying your turkey? You can give a raw turkey to a Chinese restaurant and they will cook it for you. For a fee of course. Ginger scallion turkey? Soy sauce turkey? Minced garlic turkey? I don't know if they do Peking turkey.
hungry
December 1, 2011 12:40 pm
@hungry,
Ginger scallion turkey does sound really interesting... I think maybe just left over meat + some ginger scallion sauce would be pretty delicious...
Danny
December 2, 2011 11:08 am