Happy Holidays

I'm entering this Thanksgiving in my Book of Great Surprises, subtitled Ridiculous Successes. And, oh my god, it was a ridiculous success.

Ben and I

I started planning for Thanksgiving in oh, September, and as I started to get more and more neurotic over who was cooking what, it started to snowball into a giant messy planning ball that couldn't be untangled. At one point two people were making mashed potatoes, two people were making stuffing, two people were making yams, and two people were making cranberry sauce. The only thing we'd figured out was that the turkey wouldn't be cooked in our oven, but at a friend's parents' house, and brought down to our house just before dinner. And then the turkey wasn't being cooked there anymore. It was being cooked in our tiny, dirty, old, and horribly inefficient oven. And it needed 8 hours to cook.

 

And then we didn't have baking pans, or enough plates for 10 people, or enough wine glasses, or any matching forks, or serving utensils, or oven space because of the eight hour turkey.

 

And then we didn't have enough couch space to house three people's families for a night.

Or enough chairs.


 

Or a long enough table.

 

 

But then, in that miraculous way that is only present during the holidays: everything came together. Someone picked up three extra chairs from work. We found an extra table (and washed the fall leaves and spiders off of it). I bought some extra wine glasses and someone got a set of 10 red plates. And we sat down together and made place cards, and put on our skirts and dresses. And Ben's tie was miraculously where it should be in the closet.

 

On top of it all, the turkey was done on time, freeing up the oven for the other dishes, which also were done on time, everything was hot and fresh and we ate at 4:00 p.m. on the dot. Everyone was agast (though their expressions that looked like awe, may have been hunger).

But enough gushing and on to the wine: We started our dinner off with a toast. Not being the greatest fan of champagne (especially cheap champagne), I decided to go the route of sparkling Italian white: Prosecco. I bought two Zardetto Prosecco Bruts from the Metropolitan Market ($13.99). The wine was light, crisp, and fresh, in a nice preparation for a very savory and hearty meal. It helped me cleanse my pallatte from the mid-morning mimosas and cheese nibblings we'd had to celebrate the Thanksgiving festivities. I'd thoroughly recommend this as an excellent alternative to champagne, and it's definitely much prettier in the glass. It added a lightness to the meal and the wine selection that would have been otherwise lacking.

The rest of the dinner wine was a wash of Pinot Noir, from Sonoma county through to the Willamette Valley. I can't remember many of the specific bottles or wines as the evening was too hectic and enjoyable for me to pull out a tasting notebook and sit off to the side with a water cracker and my senses heigtened. We finished the evening off with a paired orange muscat dessert wine that was tangy and deliciously different and lots of pie.

After three hours of mixed-family charades and about 10 empty bottles of wine, we called it a night. And I'm confident in saying that it was quite possibly the best orchestrated college house (my housemates are finishing their undergrad) Thanksgiving... ever.

What are you drinking for the holidays?

This year will mark my fifth Thanksgiving away from home, my second with Ben's family, and my first Thanksgiving (ever) cooking. This year has been a monumental one, of great and small changes, and it seems only fitting that I'll be starting my own Thanksgiving traditions for it. I started 2011 as a senior in college. In this past year, I graduated from college, attended a graduate program in Denver, was both unemployed and then got a temporary job back at my alma mater. And despite the brief bouts of unemployed panic, and crazy summer budgeting, I'm going to end 2012 employed, with a brand new apartment, and a cat, and enough money saved up to actually pay a few student loan payments before they reposses all of my work clothing as collateral.

 

I expect that 2012 will bring with it even greater changes, but that's a month away and for now, I'm focusing on the holidays. I'm not necessarily a big Thanksgiving person, possibly because I don't eat turkey, don't like green bean casserole, hate yams, and don't care for cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and pecan pie... but it marks the onset of my absolute favorite season, holiday, and event of the year: Christmas. So I usually fill my plate with mashed potatoes and stuffing and get ready to dive headfirst into Christmas.

 

 

 

This year, I was unable to restrain myself until the day after Thanksgiving, and so I've already started my decorating and Christmas present shopping. It might be that I have too much free time on the weekends when Ben is studying... but the house looks lovely, cozy and warm and everyone seems to be curling up in the living room more. The house is done up in white lights, wrapped around the french door frame and the curtain rod at the front window. My mantlepiece is covered in vases of different sizes and shapes full of glittery pinecones and Christmas balls. I've already created a centerpiece for the dining room table that will be lovely for Thanskgiving as well - it's a copper wire Christmas tree with little white pearls weaved into the wire intersections, surrounded by gold flecked, antique tea lights. I promise that my Christmas music albums have been left untouched and will only be broken out as soon as I am done with dinner. I can hear Charlie Brown's Christmas in my head, already.

To complete the holiday scene, I've started looking for and buying my Thanksgiving wines. There will be 10 people at our dinner on Thursday afternoon and everyone is bringing a wine to the table which should offer some interesting, if not delicious, picks. Relinquishing control of the wine purchases has been difficult, but I'm trying to let people bring what they like to drink and hope for the best. Safeway currently has an amazing sale on Joel Gott 815 Cabernet Sauvignon (I wrote about it here) marked down from $20 to $13.99. They have all bottles over $20 marked off 30% at our Safeway making everything I usually want to drink for special occassions, very reasonably priced. I bought two bottles of the Joel Gott for the table, as it's one of the best Cabernets I've ever had and is neither too hearty or heavy so as to ruin the palatte for dinner or dessert. I know that cabernets are not often on the Thanksgiving wine list, but I think the cabernet is delicate enough to pair with some of the heartier stuffings and yams on the table. Ben's mom will be bringing up a Pinot Noir from Oregon as well as a local Eugene Riesling (Sweet Cheeks Riesling) for his brother who isn't big into alcohol of any sort unless it tastes like candy. I am going to look for a Prosecco to start the dinner off with (a toasting wine) as I'm not a big fan of champagne. Prosecco is an Italian dry or extra dry sparkling white wine that serves as a great alternative to champagne (especially in quality to price comparisons).

 

What are you drinking for the holidays?