Thanksgiving

We started the day with the Turkey Trot.

The 8K race is a Charlotte Thanksgiving tradition and we figured it was a good way to work up an appetite for the day ahead. I was worried since I’ve had no training; I’d only run once, for 30 huffy minutes, in over a month.

OK maybe we did train a little. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we dashed from store to store and closed them all down. We closed the farmers’ market at 7pm, William-Sonoma at 8, Crate & Barrel at 8:30, Belk at 9, Sur La Table at 9:30, a quick dinner then Harris Teeter at 11. This is in addition to running through the aisles of Lowe’s and Home Depot three times a week.

I finished the race in 50 ½ minutes and came in at 3,180 out of 4,831 (Scott did much better). It was really my strategy, ahem, to stay near the back of the pack. For one, I could see everyone’s costumes. There were lots of stuffed turkey hats. There were two shirtless men with Indian headdresses pushing strollers. In San Francisco they would have stepped it up and been naked. Then there was a woman with a green polyester skintight bodysuit that for the life of me I couldn’t figure out who she was supposed to be. I made a mental note to 1) never wear a green polyester skintight bodysuit and 2) if I were to ever wear a green polyester skintight bodysuit people better know what I’m supposed to be.

With 3,179 people ahead of me, I was also able to do an unofficial diversity census. There were 15 African Americans, 11 Asians including myself, 3 Latinos, and 4 additional people with indeterminable origin.

The night before Thanksgiving we stayed up to get a head start on our meal. I finished chopping onions and making cranberry sauce by 1:30am, and Scott roasted a 25lb pumpkin and didn’t crawl into bed until 4:30am.

He was determined to make a pumpkin pie from scratch. It was a labor of love. Besides staying up until 4:30am, Scott pureed the roasted pumpkin by hand in small batches with a borrowed immersion blender from Cat Whisperer Dave. Half of the pumpkin was enough to make four pies, even after accounting for the unrecoverable splatter on the walls during the puree process, during which I kept my head down and chopped carrots at a safe distance while trying not to wonder out loud why we didn’t buy the $3.99 version from Harris Teeters. Thankfully, the pies turned out beautifully. Using only organic agave nectar as sweetener and non-fat milk, they were better for you, which was the only excuse for having two people eat four pies.

Scott was so proud of his creation that he brought a piece to Baker Wendy who has a stand at the farmers’ market. He and Wendy have become quite friendly and he goes by twice a week to chat with her for easily half an hour about ovens, natural sweeteners, and granola. We have devised a signal for when I want to leave while they're still talking. Since it didn’t work last time to simply stay silent and give gentle nudges, next time I get impatient to leave I’m supposed to yank at his arm with force. This is going to be a useful signal moving forward.

For the other half of the pumpkin, 3/4 were cut into chunks and roasted with onions, rosemary and dried cranberries. The other 1/4 is sitting at the bottom of our refrigerator waiting to be blended into soup, or for next Thanksgiving, whichever comes first.

As for the rest of the Thanksgiving meal, we made a 15-pound turkey, yams, butternut squash, brussel sprouts and stuffing with sausage, knowing full well that the leftovers may stick around long enough to see 2012.

All of this would have been difficult without the new set of Shun knives that we splurged on. Scott was skeptical at first that the new knives made a difference. I challenged him to cut the pumpkin with the old knife, which slipped off the surface as if it were a plastic spoon. He is now a believer.

Aside from being our first Thanksgiving in Charlotte, it was a special occasion as all the kitchen equipment was now fully installed, six weeks after our move.

Alas, that spells the end of the Panini Grill era, and we’re both a little sad to see it pass.