The Hungry and the Fed

Rock Band aside, Thanksgiving the Feast, was a huge success. Dawn’s meticulous planning of the event and ample preparation paid off. How many people do you know who have their feast inputted and organized in Excel? We’re those kinds of people. A quick rundown of what was on the table: a ham, a turkey, scalloped corn, mash potatoes (pure and uncut), chipotle mashed sweet potato, roasted fennel, corn bread stuffing, port cranberry sauce, gravy for the turkey, a dipping sauce for the ham, bourbon pecan pie, pumpkin tiramisu, chocolate cranberry tart (minus the chocolate crust), wassail, red wine, port, and of course, water. It was a feast indeed. We ate all we could and after completely gorging ourselves we hardly made a dent in the offering.

One of the (many) things I found enjoyable about the holiday is getting the chance to actually do some cooking. Grad school has reduced that amount of recreational cooking I’ve been able to do. Truth be told, I was a bit tired of cooking towards the end of the Thanksgiving proper, but I quickly recovered. With ample leftovers there wasn’t much need for cooking the following couple of days… however Saturday morning breakfast stands out vividly in my memory.

It started with a bait and switch. I had made promises of meat-muffin French toast to our guest….but due to a shortage of eggs I was unable to deliver. The egg shortage is an interesting digression in its own right. It’s not that we didn’t plan for the dish and failed to buy the appropriate number of eggs. Our planning was impeccable. Our crime was exactly planning out the number of eggs that we would need…down to the egg. What we had not foreseen is my development of superhuman eggs cracking strength on Thanksgiving Day. For some unknown reason on Thanksgiving I would go to crack an egg on the counter……and smash the egg on the counter instead. Shells everywhere, palm covered in exploded yolk, smashed. Up until Thanksgiving Day I’ve never done this before in my life. I did it multiple times that day.

So on Saturday morning we were down to just two eggs. Not enough for meat-muffin French toast. I made an offer of grits, sausage, and a fried egg (one for Dawn and one for our guest) in its place. This is where I got to see Dawn magnificent brain leap into action. I’ve long suspected what Dawn spends her idle time thinking about….suspicious confirmed. Dawn immediately responded “Can I have a fried egg on top of my grits with sausage poking out?” I asked “what, like Stonehenge?” Her face lights up. “YES.”

So I go about making a new breakfast concoction, Grits and Sausage Stonehenge. In the next room I hear some discussion on whether the egg is a sacrifice in the center of the ring of sausage or whether it is an altar. Because the breakfast sounded a bit too healthy after our previous days of gorging I offered to level up the grits to cheesy grits. This offer was enthusiastically accepted. In the end my creation didn’t look much like Stonehenge. Due to number of sausages used and the slope of the sides of the bowl it looked more like a sausage hand reaching skyward. It was speculated that a sausage man had drowned in a pile of “quick-grits.” Still it was warmly received and consequently devoured.