Tales of Thanksgiving woes

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! By now, I’m sure you’re all sick of turkey…turkey sandwiches, turkey soup, turkey casseroles…

I personally have been on turkey overload because the holiday party season has kicked off and between the parties that have the deli trays out with turkey meat (avoid avoid goes the flashing red sign in my head!) and the leftovers, I need a great big green salad!

I got home from work today and it occurred to me to share a personal Thanksgiving story and throw it out there to see if I wasn’t alone in my experiences.

Let me give you a brief background: I enjoy cooking and while I’m by no means professionally trained, my mother did her part to make sure that I left the next able to cook more than just stuff that comes out of a box. So when Thanksgiving rolled around and I offered to contribute to the meal, I thought I would try to be fancy. Well, that was just a poor idea.

KK, who also works at the winery, had made this absolutely delish pumpkin-shrimp bisque one day last year so I figured I would wow everyone at my Thanksgiving table with it.

Fast-forward to Thanksgiving morning. I had to be at my meal house around 1pm to help with the cooking, therefore the bisque had to be ready to go by then. So you can imagine my panic when I woke up, only to find that I had overslept! Not an awesome way to start Thanksgiving! I flew out of bed, and began scurrying about, thinking I only had two hours to shower and cook. Realized that I still had to peel and de-vein the shrimp, I began to panic. I don’t know if any of you have ever had to peel and de-vein shrimp, but it isn’t exactly easy and of course, I had put it off til that morning, since I had an event to attend Wednesday night. So you can understand why I was sweating bullets. I mean, I had really talked up this soup to my friends. The other people at my Thanksgiving celebration had heard how delicious it was. I had to deliver.

I called KK in a panic and she (who has always been honest with me) said, “I don’t know about the time frame…it doesn’t look good.”

I didn’t know what to do.

So I did what any panicked chef might do. I opened the refrigerator and cracked open one of the Sutter Home Sauvignon Blanc 187ml single serves I had. Seriously. Then, I took my glass of wine and googled “easy pumpkin bisque” recipes and quickly made the adjustment and veto-ed the shrimp.

Shrimp? Who needs shrimp!?!

I made my soup, got cleaned up while it simmered and it was a hit. And the best part is that I totally played the lack of shrimp off on the fact that one of the guests was allergic and I was just looking out for him.

If they only knew…

So I would hate to think that I’m alone in my Thanksgiving malfunction. Anyone have any good stories? Leave me a comment so I don’t feel so bad about holiday blunders…

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