For the past four years that I’ve lived in New England, I’ve gone somewhere or dome something for Thanksgiving. It’s either been to Beth and Paul’s house or making the trek to my parents’ house in western PA. And every year, I seem to miss the parade on TV. I try to watch it at my parents’ house, but my mom is forever asking me to help her with something. And I don’t mind helping her out since she’s having the whole family over for a feast about 2 PM. It just means I don’t get to see the parade.

This year, I intentionally didn’t make plans. I want to stay at home and watch the parade. From my own couch. On my own TV.

Somewhere along the way, I decided I was going to cook Thanksgiving dinner. I may be cooking for one, but I really don’t know. I sent an e-mail to the chorus e-mail list this morning, offering dinner to anybody who needs a place to go. I may have guests. Then again, I might be eating alone. Either way is perfectly acceptable.

So tonight I went to the grocery store with the goal of buying a turkey breast. They’re not cheap. I ended up getting a better deal on a whole turkey. That’s right, I bought a whole bird, fourteen pounds, potentially for one person.  That’s plenty of leftovers, right?

I’m also going to roast some sweet potatoes, make some cranberries, and make another attempt at the chocolate toffee wedges. I’m not a fan of pumpkin pie. I never have been.

Beth has given me some pointers on how to prepare this bird, and I’ll be brining it overnight, and then covering it with bacon to keep it moist. As Iron Chef Michael Symon says, everything is better with the pig. I’ll also be stuffing the inside with herbs, garlic, and lemon. Although I may skip the garlic and replace the lemons with apples. 

Why do I have the feeling that this has the potential to be a grand adventure?

This almost isn’t worth blogging because it’s so freaking easy. It’s also a staple in my cooking because it’s so easy, scales well to large quantities, and frankly, is pretty inexpensive. A couple of people have asked about this in the comments, so here we go.

When I roast potatoes, I like to use white potatoes, although Yukon Gold work well, as to baby red. Your choice of spud is just that, your choice. Likewise, the herbs are also your choice. I ALWAYS use rosemary and almost always use thyme. In this case, I also used dill and chives. But you could also use parsley, cilantro, taragon, sage, or any other green herb you like. I might stay away from basil because the flavor is just so strong.

The first thing I do is chop the herbs. There is no need for fancy knife skills, just a good rough chop. I might stay away from the food processor, though. You want to chop the herbs, not puree them. For thyme and rosemary, remember to pull the leaves off the stems. Then I cut the potatoes into chunks, trying to keep them a reasonably consistent size. You can go big or small. Smaller chunks cook faster than larger chunks.  Then I throw the potatoes into the largest mixing bowl I have, which is quite enormous. I put on a few glugs of olive oil (again, using the inexpensive stuff), salt, and pepper. This is a time where you go heavy on the salt and light on the pepper, and toss everything together. Remember that these are root vegetables and they will suck up the salt. My rule is that when you think you’ve added too much salt, add a little more. You can use kosher salt here, but I prefer to use sea salt. Just stay away from the iodized salt.

Before transferring these to a sheet pan, I spray the sheet pan with cooking spray. You can use something like Pam, but I use pure canola oil cooking spray. And I spray the hell out of it. The last thing I want is to have to scrub potato off of a sheet pan. The liberal coating of oil will also help the potatoes brown/crisp.

These go into a 425 degree oven for about an hour. I pull them about every 20 minutes or so and mix them up with a spatula. This allows multiple surfaces to be exposed. This is also why it’s important to liberally oil the baking sheet.

There is no real science to determining when these are done, other than when they start to turn a crunchy golden brown. If you like them less crunchy, cook them less. If you like them more crunchy, cook them more. If you like them slightly caramelized, cook them even more.

These are great right out of the oven (after slightly cooling) but they’re also good at room temperature. That’s why they scale so well for large quantities. You can put two baking sheets in the oven at once and cook somewhere close to 15 pounds of potatoes.

This is how I do it. I first saw Ina do it on the Food Network, but my friend Beth has also taught me a lot. She taught me that if you can see more white than green, you need more herbs.

One last hint… when they come out of the oven and are still piping hot, hit them with a light sprinkling of Parmesan cheese, the real stuff, not from a can.

I had a great weekend. (this entry could stop with that one sentence)

Scott came up Friday night. We had dinner at the Salem Beer Works, and I allowed myself to have a beer. One.

Saturday, we ran a few errands, including a trip to Shubies. But all we really did was spend some time together, and it was enjoyable. I made Chocolate Toffee Wedges that were absolutely amazing.

For dinner last night, I did ham and cheese sandwiches with tomato soup. It was with good ingredients and roasted tomatoes. It was pretty awesome.

This morning, I made french toast with bacon. I’ve written about that before. My french toast kicks ass.

This evening was our chorus Thanksgiving dinner. Imagine hosting a dinner for 120 people. That’s just not practical. So we break it up into smaller dinner parties of about 10 people per house. I went to the house of Christopher, my chorus buddy, dropping Scott off at the T on my way there.

Christopher served ham instead of turkey, which was brilliant. By the end of the week, we’re going to be tired of turkey anyway. I made some herb-roasted potatoes, which came out awesome. I had about 7 pounds of potatoes (for 10 people) and I think my big mixing bowl had about two cups of chopped herbs in it. These taters had plenty of green on them, including dill, rosemary, thyme, and chives.  As we sat down to eat, the first thing I heard was someone complimenting my potatoes. At a table full of gay men who had all brought food, that made me feel good.

After all of the dinner parties, the whole group met up at a restaurant in the south end for dessert.  That was fun, but I didn’t stick around too long. I love hanging out with my chorus boys, but I’ve had a long weekend, and I just wanted to come home and chill for a while.

After being on steroids for two weeks, my body is freaking out a bit. I haven’t had acne this bad since I was 17. Seriously. Every time I look in the mirror, there is a new pimple. I actually had to buy acne control facial scrub. I’ve been off those meds since Wednesday, so hopefully the acne will settle down quickly. It’s incredibly frustrating for a gay men to have pimples.

For the past three weeks, I’ve been dealing with an MS relapse. This has sucked. But I think it’s just about over. Most of my serious symptoms have passed, and I’m just now dealing with the side effects of being on heavy steroids. My emotions have balanced out, the acne is still raging, and I now have a new 20 pounds to lose. Actually, I only gained about five pounds, but it looks like I’m carrying it all in my face. That can be lost quickly.

Honestly, the worst part of this has been emotional. Now I know that being on steroids can mess with your emotions, but at one point I was convinced this was the end. I’ve always said that we caught my MS early and that my rate of progression has been slow. What I don’t tell most people is that I recognize my rate of progression can kick into high gear at any time. Obviously, my preference is that this not happen. But it could.

I still need to take it easy for a little while, but I think the worst part is over.

US auto makers are in Washington begging for a handout. I hate to say this, but they need to be allowed to fail. If we bail out the auto industry, is Coca Cola next? Who is too big to fail? What about American Airlines? What about IBM? What about General Electric?

The problem with the auto industry, similar to airlines, is an enormous legacy cost of pensions and healthcare. What upsets me is that nobody is talking about this. The industry needs to do three things:
1) Force future workers to move to 401K programs instead of entitlement-based pensions.
2) Require all workers and retirees to pay for part of their healthcare, just like the rest of the country. 
3) Wrestle control of their own companies back from the unions.

I was doing a little research this morning, and the three big auto makers pay more than $70 per employee hour while companies like Toyota and Honda are paying less than $50 per employee hour. This doesn’t seem sustainable to me. Why are they asking to spend my tax money on companies destined to fail?

I know that a lot of jobs are on the line, and allowing a company the size of GM to fail will be pure carnage. I just hope that the people making the decisions are smarter than me.

I totally planned on having a low-key weekend. Really, that was the plan.

I got up Saturday morning and threw a chicken in the oven. That was for the chicken and biscuits I’d be making for dinner. Chicken stock simmered on the stove ALL DAY Saturday. It was glorious. My friend Seth came up for dinner Saturday night. The chicken and biscuits were awesome. Ina’s biscuit recipe is one to put in the arsenal. The brownies were great, but I didn’t cook them long enough. The flavor was fantastic, though.

I tried upgrading Sam’s blog over the weekend and blew up the templates. I have no idea what I did and need to get Paul to fix it, I think. It looks like it should be easy enough to fix. I hope.

Saturday night, I think I was in bed by 9:30.

Yesterday, I did some minor cooking, including some carrot broccoli soup that came out amazing. And I had brunch with the boys who live upstairs. And at some point over the course of the weekend, I got an amazing massage from my upstairs neighbor who is in massage therapy school.

Scott was away all weekend, and we were bouncing messages last night while he was on the train back from New Hampshire. He came up to watch Desperate Housewives. He got to sample some more of my cooking, and Reggie got some cuddle time.

This was my first weekend on call at work. We’re just starting to do this. It wasn’t bad until my phone rang shortly before 6:00 this morning. I’d not been on call in close to seven years when I was at Weirton. This morning, I had a password reset. I’ll take that over the mail system being down any day of the week.

Electronic communication through our little devices is a glorious thing. It allows us to have contact with people in a very rapid fashion. It also doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for mistakes. One can point out my story about sending pictures of my neighbor’s underwear to my old boss.

Last night, I was sending messages back and forth with Scott, and I mentioned something he’d done that made me giggle. About 30 minutes later, I got a call from my sister telling me that the message had gone to her. Oops. So now my sister knows what Scott did to make me giggle.

My luck with this kind of stuff really isn’t that good. I should be more careful.

Incidentally, my niece called me this morning to brag about last night’s dinner. My mom had made meatloaf. I told her that I was making chicken and biscuits for dinner tonight. Uncle Mike won that battle. And by the way, it WAS good. I made Ina’s chive biscuits and the root beer brownies.  It was an impressive dinner. My friend Seth came up for the afternoon, so I was in good company, too.

It’s hard to believe, but I’m getting my third family visit in less than a year.

My sister Darcie, Dave, her fiance, and Sarah are coming up for the BGMC concert on December 14. I’m very excited about this. This time, they won’t be staying at my house. Dave claims to like Reggie, but the fact is that Reggie makes Dave sick. He’s got some heavy duty allergies. 

I’m not sure Sarah knows she’s coming yet. This is going to be exciting, though. My sister is buying her a new dress for the event (hopefully red) and I want to make sure we get some really good pictures of Sarah and I.

Healthwise, the past week has been rough. After my appointment with the neurologist, she put me on the steroid therapy. That hasn’t been fun. But I thought I was managing.

It’s funny what stress can do to you when you have MS, especially when you’re in a relapse. I’ve had stress impact me, but not like this.

I mentioned that some of my former coworkers from Shawmut have lost their job. It hit me hard. It was like a member of my family being hurt. When I found out that someone who had been a mentor to me lost her job, the right side of my face went numb. Being a very passionate/emotional person, I deal with my emotions, but calming them isn’t easy for me. Instead, I have to work through them. I spent a bit of time on my chiropractor’s table this week, and that certainly helped a lot. But it was really rough.

Finally today, I was starting to feel better. I got up this morning with a bit of a sore throat. After the past week, having a physical ailment that wasn’t MS-related was very welcome. Knowing that I wasn’t at a hundred percent, I thought I’d put in a half day and get some stuff done. Somehow, I managed to get through the whole day and then leave about 3:30 to head into the city to attend the gathering for the former coworkers who had been let go.

I allowed myself to step off the wagon tonight to have a beer. Singular. One. It wasn’t difficult. With all of the meds I’m on right now, a lot of alcohol would be a very bad thing.

Realizing that I’m still dealing with an MS relapse, coming down with a cold, and the other stresses of my life, one would think that I’d know better than to push myself too far. Still, I was just socializing and catching up with old friends. When I left the bar, my legs felt like jello. That should have been my sign to go home and go to bed, right? Nope. I went to the grocery store and picked up the stuff I need for tomorrow’s cooking. Let me be the first to say it. That was dumb.

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that when my legs feel like jello, it’s really time to stop. After the jaunt to the grocery store, I came home and very quickly put stuff away. Reggie and I walked to the post office to get some NetFlix movies in the mail, and now I’m done. I’m going to let my body rest as long as it wants tomorrow. If that means sleeping until noon, Reggie permitting, that’s what we’re going to do. I’m wiped.

The past week has been rough and I need to get through this.

I got a message from a blog reader asking for some advice on how I do my roasted broccoli. I thought my response might be worth sharing.

Cut the florets into manageable pieces. Since you’re making large quantities, I’d keep the pieces a little larger. It’ll take slightly longer to cook, but it’ll also prevent them from getting mushy. You’re going for a a crunchy texture. The idea is to have them cooked without being overcooked.  I use the stalks, too. Just keep them slightly smaller than the florets because they take longer to cook.

Here are a few tidbits…
* Toss it in a very large bowl. It’s easier than doing it on the sheet pan.
* Use olive oil, not extra virgin olive oil. This is not the time to use expensive oil.
* Don’t even think about using iodized salt. Forget the blue box. Go for the red box of kosher salt or even sea salt.
* Grind your pepper fresh, but I wouldn’t stand over a large bowl with a pepper mill. Put whole peppercorns in a spice mill, coffee grinder, or Magic Bullet. Yes, I use my magic bullet for this. It works great.
* Just when you think you’ve added too much salt, throw on a little more. Remember that the two worst things you can do to any piece of food is underseason or overcook it.

I wouldn’t use the broiler.  I roast my broccoli at 400 or 425 for 10 to fifteen minutes on a sheet pan. You want it to just show signs of charring without burning. I tend to put foil down on the sheet pan to make cleanup easier. Regardless, spray the sheet pan with some canola oil to minimize sticking. In the summer, you can totally do this on the grill, too.