La Rentrée

"Here in France, early September is known as la rentrée, and it’s a Big Deal. It’s when everything picks up again after the two month break that is summer holiday season – and as the French like to holiday en masse in July and August, it makes it well nigh impossible to get anything done until September. So now we’re all getting back to work, the children are going back to school with smart hair cuts, shiny shoes and new satchels..." --The Languedoc Review

La rentrée is not just for the French. La rentrée right here in NYC kicked my butt this fall. I have spent the last two months in back-to-school mode, all the way through midterms and one of the busiest seasons at work. I have no energy to blog or read or think or do anything besides sit on my couch and lazily flip through magazines on my days off from work when I found myself without a school project/paper/reading assignment to do.

And now that it's almost Thanksgiving, which leads to the holiday slide into my birthday, Christmas, and New Year's Eve, before January (another heinously busy time in the publishing world), I think it's about time I re-enter the blogosphere.

Because I freaking love the holidays. And I need to share these things with others.

My parents will be arriving at my teensy-tiny NYC apartment in about 20 minutes, and everything is sparkling clean, the fridge is packed, and the world's naughtiest kitties are currently taking a nap. It's just me and my parents for Thanksgiving this year, but I am so excited! It should be terribly relaxing for once, since I've left our schedules pretty wide open for food, shopping, and napping this weekend.

[the packed fridge - note, most importantly, packed with wine, cheese, turkey, and Snickers icebox pie from Magnolia]

I'm more than ready for a little holiday cheer. Operation Thanksgiving Dinner in the World's Smallest Kitchen 2.0 is a go!

[Hammie can't figure out what these lights are for]

Thanksgiving weekend in pictures.

The fridge all packed with groceries, ready to start making Thanksgiving dinner!

The beautiful turkey all slathered with Martha Stewart's herb butter.

The goat cheese stuffed mushrooms all ready for the oven.

My busy little kitchen! Frying the sausage for the stuffing.

Dad doing his all-important job of keeping the kitties out of the kitchen.

A selection of photos from the Macy's Thanksgiving parade.

Santa!

My beautiful Thanksgiving dinner plate, all the essentials: rosemary roll from Agata & Valentina's, Minnesota wild rice, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole with red peppers, Martha Stewart's simple stuffing, lots of gravy, and our beautiful turkey right in the middle! Oh, and a beautiful cranberry champagne cocktail to start things off right!

The Rockettes @ Radio City Music Hall on Friday.

Brunch @ Bar Boulud: butternut squash soup.

Spinach quiche.

And a raspberry clafoutis to top things off!

Thanksgiving Part 2: The Big Day.

After a good night's sleep and fun morning watching the parade from the window of our hotel room at the New York Athletic Club (pictures to come tomorrow), we arrive back at my apartment around 1 p.m. to put the finishing touches on our Thanksgiving meal.

Thursday, 1 p.m. I lay out the appetizer spread. We have celery and carrots with T. Marzetti's dill dip, water crackers and pita chips with herb-shrimp dip and blue cheese-walnut spread, the goat cheese stuffed mushrooms, and an assortment of marinated olives and dill pickles from Agata & Valentina's. The mushrooms go in the oven for 20 minutes to melty-perfection. They called for red pepper flakes, and I didn't measure the amount... they were a bit spicy, but absolutely delicious! They were one of my favorite dishes of the day. The dips were both really good, too, and I'm excited for those leftovers the next few days.

Thursday, 1:10 p.m. We pop the turkey back in the oven to heat it all the way through and mix the rest of the ingredients for Martha's simple stuffing into a crock pot (borrowed from my aunt Diane). The recipe didn't call for sausage, but I thought that Italian sweet sausage might be a nice addition. The dried bread seemed to be taking up too much space, even with the 3 eggs, 1/2 a cup of wine, and 2 cans of chicken broth, so I'm a bit concerned about this. We can't get all the bread into the pot just yet either. At this point, we also peel and start boiling our 5 pounds of red potatoes (no recipe for this, I make great mashed potatoes on my own!) and start boiling our Minnesotan wild rice with a mix of sauteed mushrooms and onions.

Thursday, 1:50 p.m. The turkey comes out of the oven to rest, and the green beans go in to cook for 45 minutes. The potatoes are done boiling, so I mash them with my $7.99 hand mixer from Target with skim milk, butter, salt, pepper, and 4 ounces of cream cheese.

Thursday, 2 p.m. We mix some of the juices from the turkey in with the dressing, stir vigorously, add the rest of the bread, and pray to God that it will cook more in the final half hour.

Thursday, 2:15 p.m. Mom mixes up the gravy. I've never made gravy before and don't feel like trying it today... maybe next year! Mom also carves the turkey while I'm dishing up everything else into the serving dishes and heating up the rolls. I mix up a special drink in a big pitcher of 1 bottle of champagne, 2 cups of cranberry juice, and 6 ounces of grand Marnier, decorated with cranberries frozen in ice cubes. On the table in wine glasses, the drinks looked really pretty and festive, and they tasted delicious! Also at this point, my dad and uncle pulled out my awesome gate-leg table, flipped up the other side, pulled out the extra chairs and set the table.

Thursday, 2:25 p.m. I realize all the clean silverware is in the dishwasher still, stop the dishwasher mid-wash and pull out burning hot forks and knives for the whole family. No need to panic :-)

Thursday, 2:30 p.m. We sit down to the table, say grace, pass the dishes and dig in! The turkey and stuffing were actually probably my favorites. I don't normally like stuffing, but I really liked this recipe, especially with the extra sausage. Way to go Martha! Mom was worried that the gravy was a little lumpy, but it was delicious so no one else seemed to notice. Of course, I always love Minnesotan wild rice with gravy, but that's a given!

Thursday, 4:30 p.m. After cleaning up a bit, flipping through some of the advertisements for Black Friday, we serve up our apple pie from Agata & Valentina with vanilla ice cream for dessert. The pie was really good, also one of my favorites from the day.

Thursday, 5:30 p.m. My aunt and uncle get on the road back to New Jersey, we clean up a bit more, and then everyone (kitties included) is ready for a nap and some good old fashioned, American television.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Thanksgiving Part 1: The Preparation.

Because it's my first year in New York, and my first year in my own apartment, I had this crazy idea to host my parents, my brother, and my aunt and uncle from New Jersey for Thanksgiving this year. In my tiny apartment. My parents and brother will actually be staying in my apartment, and my aunt and uncle will drive in for the day. Fun!

Unfortunately, my brother, who is the real gourmet chef in the family, was asked to work on Friday and won't be able to come up now until Friday evening after work. So I'm all alone with my Martha Stewart recipes for the big meal! My mom is a decent cook, but she's not one for following directions. I think the phrase we heard a lot in her kitchen growing up was, "Good enough!" This will be an adventure.

To make things even more exciting, I have some sort of cold/flu that hit me over the weekend, bad enough to make me miss work on Monday. So I lost some valuable prep time this weekend.

Here's how it went:

Sunday, 10 a.m. Loads and loads of grocery shopping. Luckily, my crappy little market had everything I needed. I'm still shocked that one tiny little bottle of vanilla extract cost $6.99 in Manhattan, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised by anything anymore. I didn't have time to check other stores, so I just carted everything home in my old-lady-shopping-cart. And then I practically cried when I had to carry everything up to my fourth-floor walk-up.

Monday, 2 p.m. Drag myself off deathbed to move the 8.5 and 7.5 pound turkey breasts to the fridge to thaw. I decided to do turkey breasts because they're smaller and will cooker a little faster. Besides, I don't like dark meat anyway... For the five of us for dinner tomorrow, we really only need one, but I'm going to make a second while we're at, freeze the meat, and use it for soups, etc. this winter. Plus, I feel safer making a turkey breast "on my own" when my mom will be here to supervise.

Wednesday, 8:30 a.m. Drag myself out of bed to frantically clean my apartment before my parents arrive at 10:30. Play loud Christmas music to annoy the old hag that lives below me. Feed the naughty kitties. More cleaning.

Wednesday, 9:38 a.m. Take a break. Cleaning is hard!

Wednesday, 10:15 a.m. Not quite done cleaning... AND my parents arrive! Hugging ensues and the kitties snuggle their grandparents tentatively.

Wednesday, 10:30 a.m. My mom wants to get down to business. We're chopping and sautéing the vegetables for the dressing, the green bean casserole, and the wild rice. We mix up a shrimp-herb dip, a blue cheese-walnut spread, and prepare the filling for the goat cheese stuffed mushrooms for our appetizers. Dad's job is to keep the darling, curious kitties out of the kitchen. They've been known to jump up on a cutting board in the past and knock chef knives crashing to the floor... nearly missing my feet... so Dad made sure to keep them busy with a laser pointer while we were cooking away!

Wednesday, around noon. I completely botch the sauce for the green bean casserole, and we have to throw it away. I'm not too sure of my ability to make the roux for the sauce correctly, so we scratch that idea, and just mix some cream of mushroom soup in with beans and call it a day. We store the green bean dish wrapped in foil in the fridge, ready to bake in the oven on Thursday.

Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. We create Martha Stewart's herb butter, rub down the turkeys, prepare the pans with quartered carrots, celery, and onions, and pop our first turkey breast in the oven - only one will fit in my tiny oven at a time! We have about 3 hours to kill until it's done. We're doing one today and one tomorrow.

Wednesday, 2:00 p.m. Everyone's tired and ready for lunch. We head to Agata & Valentina's on 79th and 1st Ave. to pick up lunch and our apple pie and bread for tomorrow. The supermarket is a complete mess. There's a line all the way around the entire store à la Trader Joe's Union Square at rush hour.

Wednesday, 5:30 p.m. Turkey's all done, perfectly golden brown on the outside and smells delicious. We pop it in the fresh covered in foil and are all done for the evening.

We head off to the New York Athletic Club, where we rented a room just for Wednesday night/Thursday morning to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Everyone's tired after a full day of prep work and running errands!

Countdown to Thanksgiving.

My family is coming for Thanksgiving in 36 hours, and I have the flu.

I have all the shopping done except for a few things I need to pick up Wednesday, and I didn't pick up the wine/beer yet because, let's face it, that stuff is heavy, so I was going to wait until my brother's here to help me carry everything. I have a cooking agenda which is supposed to kick off tomorrow night after work, but now that also includes all the cleaning I didn't get done over the weekend because I was laying in bed.

On the other hand, I'm super excited for the parade and cooking with the fam on Thursday, dinner at Peasant on Friday night, brunch at Bar Boulud and the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular on Saturday. It should be a fantastic weekend with my family if I can rally from this little flu I have going on!