Thanksgiving, My Four Day Weekend

My four day weekend is almost over. I love four day weekends, but I do hate it, too. It makes me lazy and not wanting to go to work tomorrow.

Our Thanksgiving was great. We did a co-op with our next door neighbor, Mike and Gina. Gina made candied sweet potatoes, garlic mash potatoes, and roasted vegetables. I made Pennsylvania-Dutch stuffing and cranberry-orange relish. Drew brined the turkey the day before Thanksgiving. We roasted brined turkey before when we were living in KS, and it was so good. The turkey breast had a hint of orange from the brine. This year, we thought we’d try deep frying brined turkey. The turkey turned out good. But not as good as the roasted turkey we had that year. Drew and Becker were in charge of deep frying the turkey. While they were waiting for the turkey, Becker came in and had me make a beer batter for them because they wanted to fry some onion rings. So, we had some onion rings….and deep fried beer-battered apples. Yum…

I don’t really remember what I did Friday and Saturday. Hmmm… Well, today I baked 2 huge loaves of Potato Rosemary bread. I thought we could make turkey sandwiches with them. I haven’t made bread for a long time, a really long time. I think it’s been about 5 years. I’m glad I haven’t forgotten how to make bread, you know…like the dough should be soft and tacky, not sticky, the temperature of the dough should be around 80 degrees, and the dough should pass the windowpane test, etc. And I haven’t forgotten how to roll the dough into a boule! The bread turned out good. Although, it was supposed to be chewy, it turned out to be on the softer side. (I was supposed to use semolina flour, but I was too lazy to go to the store; so, I used regular bread flour instead.)

Why does time seem shorter when you’re a grown up? My nephew just turned 12 last week. I still remember the days when he was a baby, small enough to fall asleep in my arms. Time goes by way too fast! This four day weekend is too short! It’s now 9 pm! (did I use enough exclamation marks?)