Roasting Teddy Kennedy and other long weekend delights

Thanksgiving weekend may, in fact, be the best weekend of the year.  The reasons?
First: it is a four day weekend for anyone in a government-related job--like me.  Nice to be paid for two days you don't have to work, and the short work week beforehand is definitely a low-effort work zone.
Second: the quality and quantity of good company increases immensely.  I spent 75% of my weekend knitting and chatting with Adrienne, and Sam got to spend plenty of time with both Root Beer and Tesla, including two long visits to the dog park.  I spoke on the phone with Mom, Dad, Colleen, Grandma, BJ, and Aunt Ginny, which was nice.  The Upstairs Crowd maintained an open-door policy all weekend, so much watching of old movies (Flash!  Ah-aaaaaahh!  He'll save every one of us!) and playing of the Xbox (Soul Calibur IV) commenced.  Wino Scrabble has long been a favorite of mine, and I observed (and kibitzed) a single game.  (I didn't feel like playing without Mike around to periodically scream "That's not a real word!" at me while inventing hilarious new obscenities that make my mom laugh until tears run down her cheeks.  Somehow playing a six letter word parallel to another six letter word and grabbing two triple word scores loses its charm without watching my kid brother writhe in agony over the veracity of all the two-letter words formed.)
Third: the food.  Oh the food.  For Thanksgiving Day I brined our 20 pound turkey in a mixture of apple cider, sea salt, sugar, peppercorns, star anise, and water.  I threw in a little bit of hard apple cider that was sitting in the fridge.  We dubbed the bird Teddy Kennedy as it was quite robust and clearly working for social change.  (Actually they were both rather fat and dead, and it sure beat the other possibility--Goebbels.  We thought a [dead racist bastard] Nazi name was not auspicious.)
Anyway, after overnight brining Teddy Kennedy received a rubdown with a stick of unsalted butter, a third cup of very green and fruity olive oil, applewood smoked salt, fresh ground pepper from a four peppercorn blend, the zest of two large oranges, and about 2 bulbs of garlic, which I blended together with my amazing hand blender's food processor attachment.  I stuffed him with an onion and the two oranges, he roasted in the oven for about 5 hours, and then he fell apart when I tried to carve him.  Everyone liked the taste and there are few leftovers.  (I saved the carcass for tortilla soup, which will happen at some point this week.)
I also made potatoes au gratin with cave-aged gruyere, which was a big hit.  Other food on the table included mashed parsnips & carrots (yes, they are in fact better than mashed potatoes), two types of stuffing (savory sage and fruit & nut), roasted brussel sprouts, mustard greens, apple & butternut squash soup, cranberry orange relish (the be-all and end-all of cranberry sauces: raw and fresh tasting), and tomato pudding (weird as all hell--like a soupy ketchup bread pudding).
I enjoyed my minibreak immensely and am refreshed and ready to get back to real life.

Spaghetti night

Today I made spaghetti with tomato-based meat sauce for dinner, and the pot was big enough for leftovers for days and days to come.  Roommate Cassie had a huge portion as well, yet I still have pasta and meat enough to feed a couple of teenage boys.

Holy crap lunches for days!

The funny thing is, I don't like spaghetti with tomato-based meat sauce.  When I was a kid, we had spaghetti night rather often.  My mom always made the sauce from scratch using chunky canned tomatoes, tomato paste, onions, and ground beef.  She'd add a bay leaf and oregano and let it simmer for about 20 minutes, then serve with Kraft parmesan cheese in a can.  (We did not know of real Parmigiano-Reggiano's powers until I was in my twenties.)  This was the recipe she grew up with, and it was called "spaghetti" all by itself--as if there were no other way to prepare the noodles known as such.  No doubt it was delicious--my mom is a great cook--but I hated it.  I picked out the onions and chunks of tomatoes entirely and scraped most of the meat bits and remaining sauce off of the noodles, adding as much cheese as I was allowed before eating as little as possible.  Yum-o!

One of the joys of adulthood is that I don't have to eat foods I don't like.  "Screw you, fresh tomatoes!  Die green beans!"  No one can make me sit at the table until I've eaten enough of a food I don't like and no one can force me to try something new.  (I can hear my mom now: "Just one bite! Try it--you don't have to eat it all, just try it."  She still can't believe the things my brother and I will eat now.  We were terrible children.)  I have spent my adult life actively avoiding spaghetti with tomato-based meat sauce.  I usually keep a single jar of tomato sauce (something on sale that has a lot of garlic or minimal chunks of tomatoes) and a box of spaghetti in the cupboard "in case of emergency"--though what emergency requires marinara I don't want to know.  I suspect the real reason I keep spaghetti fixings on hand is guilt over not liking my mom's spaghetti and making spaghetti night a battleground over the dinner table.

I acquired some inexpensive organic ground beef from Costco last week, I had a few veggies on hand that needed to be used, and I had a single can of plain tomato sauce in the cupboard.  So I thought I'd give "spaghetti" a whirl once again.  For tonight's sauce, I roasted an onion and a whole head of garlic, as well as a green bell pepper and a red bell pepper.

My sous-chef

I pureed all those together and mixed in a can each of organic tomato sauce from TJ's and tomato paste, a cup of leftover shiraz, salt and pepper.  I browned a pound of organic ground beef in my 4.5 quart Le Crueset pot, crumbling the meat as much as possible, then added in the sauce mixture, dried oregano and dried basil.  I forgot the bay leaf.  It simmered for an hour and a half.  I tossed the sauce with a whole box of cooked spaghetti, then served with fresh grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Thar be dragons here--in my spaghetti.

And do you know what?  I didn't like it.  Maybe I should have skipped the ground beef entirely and just let the veggie flavors shine.  Maybe I should have added a few red pepper flakes like I do with all of my other pastas.  Maybe I should have remembered the bay leaf.

But I'm still happy with my spaghetti night, even if I have a giant pot of leftovers I don't want to eat.  Because the real reason I made spaghetti tonight?  I miss my mom.

Only 12 days to go on the Texas countdown...