Bad, Bad Blogger & Thanksgiving Disasters

I’m not even sure if anyone actually reads this thing, but if you do, I sincerely apologize for being such an awful blogger (it’s a good thing this isn’t my job)! Truth be told, the reason I AM such a terrible blogger lately is due to my job. I have been so insanely busy this last month and a half, I have barely even had time to think, much less write new blog posts. I hate that because I feel like I have so so much to share with everyone! Sadly, I never even got around to making a Thanksgiving post, so I think I’ll start with that!

I’ll start off by telling you a little bit about last year’s Thanksgiving Extravaganza! We were in New York for about a month and a half, it was my first holiday that I had ever celebrated without my family (well, besides my birthday), 🙂 and I was missing them a lot. So I decided to make my very first Thanksgiving dinner all by myself to try and make it feel a little more like home! I made turkey, dressing, macaroni & cheese, cheesecake, pumpkin pie and probably a lot of other really healthy stuff! haha. It started off great, with me leaving the bag (of turkey giblets?) inside the turkey the entire time I cooked it. My mom couldn’t stop laughing when I called her – what can I say? I’m usually the one bringing green bean casserole that takes 5 minutes in the microwave! At the end of the day, it was edible, and we enjoyed our first Thanksgiving meal (on our own) together. I’m pretty sure I swore to never take on the task of cooking an entire meal like that again….

Which leads me to Thanksgiving 2013. If you’ve read anything on this blog, you have probably gathered that I eat Paleo about 90% of the time (yes, this percentage has dropped since I first began Paleo). Naturally, I was bound and determined to make my very first PALEO Thanksgiving dinner this year. I knew it was a bad idea to begin with, but I kept finding more and more recipes that I wanted to try. I mean, they all LOOKED amazing! So here’s the rundown of everything I made:

• Paleo Sweet Potato Casserole
• Buttery Thyme Parsnip and Turnip Puree
• Stir Fried Kale and Bacon
• Pumpkin Cheesecake
• Eggnog Pumpkin Pie with Gingerbread Crust (this sounds amazing, right?)
• Deviled Eggs (no link, used my mom’s recipe…or so I thought)
• Apple Stuffed Turkey (or something like that, I can’t remember the link)
• Gluten Free Dressing, following my grandmother’s recipe (her dressing was the best EVER, although my mom has pretty much perfected it as well)

So, what went wrong you might ask? It all began around 10 am when we went to put the turkey in the oven. We had like a 20 lb turkey (seriously the smallest we could find, a bit ironic in New York) we got from Costco, and apparently it was too big/heavy for the aluminum pan we put it in. When we put it in the oven, somehow the pan managed to get a hole in the bottom of it, and all of the juices (apple juice, maple syrup, etc) that the recipe called for leaked onto the bottom of the oven causing it to burn and smoke up the entire apartment. I left Josh to clean up the mess (hehe), and off I went to find a new pan – we were NOT letting this turkey go to waste! New pan and all, we popped the turkey back into the oven and let ‘er cook!

I made everything else (aside from the desserts, which I made the night before) while the turkey was cooking, which took freaking forever! Cooking this meal literally took over my entire day, so you can imagine my disappointment when it was all absolutely disgusting, and not even edible like last year’s meal. Why, you might wonder, was it inedible? Well, we forgot to wrap the turkey in aluminum foil, so needless to say it was burnt to a crisp. We both died laughing when Josh went to cut it and it kind of “flaked” off the bone! Hahaha! I think I put too much coconut milk in the sweet potato casserole – that’s what happens when you’re halving a recipe but forget that you’re doing so – it was gross. On to the parsnip and turnip puree. Ok, when I made this and saw the finished product, it looked so much like mashed potatoes I couldn’t wait to try it! Not sure what went wrong on this one. The texture? Perfect! The flavor? Weird. The kale and bacon dish was okay, but not very Thanksgiving-y. Next were the deviled eggs. I really don’t know how I messed these up, but they were really dry and too mustard-y…at this point, I was just getting depressed. The gluten free dressing wasn’t terrible. I think it would have been really good if the cornbread didn’t (almost) go bad before I put it in the dressing. Seriously, y’all, I don’t think it could have gone any worse than it did. For the desserts, I honestly don’t know what “normal” pumpkin pie tastes like, so I can’t really say for certain if this was good or bad. I made it for Josh…and he didn’t even try it. Can’t really blame him after the fiasco of all the other things I messed up! BUT, the cheesecake (of all things) actually tasted pretty dang good! I was not expecting this – the filling for this “cheesecake” is made out of cashews, so I was expecting it to be the worst thing. Cheesecake is my all-time favorite non-paleo dessert, so having something that compared to it was amazing! And there you have it, my Thanksgiving disaster in a nutshell! Here are some pictures of this awesomely terrible meal:

 

 

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I told you everything LOOKED really good. Eating it was another story. I’ve never gone to bed hungry after a Thanksgiving meal, guess there’s a first time for everything! Maybe next year I’ll just go with the real thing. I know Josh would be thrilled!

Here’s to being glad that Christmas will be spent with family that can cook (even if it isn’t Paleo-friendly)! I think I’ll just stick to the green been casserole this time 😉

This post turned out a bit long, as I thought it might, so more updates on what I’ve been doing for the past month coming soon! Stay tuned for more!

Q: Do you have any cooking horror stories?

Q: What’s your favorite thing to make during the holidays?

Xoxo,

kMc