Oh my God oh my God oh my God is all I can say about my Wed before Thanksgiving. I got up at my usual 5 am and armed with the list I made Tuesday night I went to the supermarket. I always go at 5:30 or 6:00 as there are no cars on the road getting there and no other shoppers and the vegetables have been delivered at 4 so things are being unpacked and are the best they can be in a suburban supermarket.
While in the store my phone rang. I was so shocked that for a second I didn't know what to do-in all the years I have been food shopping in the middle of the night and have had a cell phone not once has it rung. My husband was calling to tell me that we woke up with a terrible headache and could I please call the gas company when I got home. You see, each night in the past week or so as we got home there was a terrible smell right by the front door. We thought it was coming from the heating duct because as soon as we opened the door it seemed to go away. He had promised to vacuum the vent as soon as he was off next.
The gas man came quickly, within 20 minutes of when I called. He had no interest in the heating register story or the past few days he just marched himself over to my oven and stuck a probe all over it. All the beeping coming out of the probe was rather unnerving though he assured us it meant nothing but what I know now is that he was LYING!!! 5 minutes after he touched my stove he told us he was shutting off the stove and the gas! "WHAT"?!?!?!, I screamed, I cried, a begged, I cajoled-you can't shut off my gas the day before Thanksgiving when I have 15 people coming! He did not see anything wrong with the situation and just kept repeating something about how we called them about an unsafe condition. I never did-Icalled them about a strange smell and please, I told him with sarcasm, it's smelled like this for a year every time I turned on the oven-it will be fine. On Thursday night you can turn off the oven. He was not moved and he forced me to call a repair man. If I could get a new oven or this one repaired today then we could have the gas back on. I refuse to buy a new oven under these conditions-based on who could deliver and what was available. I cook and entertain a lot and this decision is too important to me to be rushed into. And most important to me is that my 6 burner stove/oven is from 1947 and looks like a cadillac with tail fins!!!!!! I love it too much to have it cavalierly replaced. And will try with all my considerable energies to have it either repaired or rebuilt (so the insides are modern but my gorgeous chassis is vintage).
The appliance store repair man came about 20 minutes later. That fool took one look at my stove and said he had too many jobs to do and would't get involved in my vintage piece. He was ready to leave 3 seconds after he got there but I started crying so he went to the basement to try to turn the gas back on for us but that untrained fool didn't even know where the gas line was. I called the gas company back to ask them but they just kept repeating if he was really a licensed plumber he would know where the line was. So I called my plumber. Do I sound relatively calm now? As it was happening I as screaming and crying at the top of lungs! My husband can't stand when I cry so he ran away to work but was very sweet and came back 20 minutes later saying he couldn't leave me alone with this.
I also called my father asking him what his plans for the day were so that if I needed to go cook at my parent's house, I could. I had to go over there get the key, take it to a hardware store get a copy made and bring it back. Also while waiting for the plumber I called Loewe's and Home Depot none of whom could deliver on Wed but Home Depot had floor models on sale for $295 that we could buy and bring home ourselves for a $20 truck rental fee. Again, I refuse to buya stove under these conditions. The plumber finally came and changed the valve leading from the floor to the stove putting a shut off switch on it. Now the gas company could come back and turn the gas on, giving us heat and hot water but we had to keep the oven off. My husband called them back and made a 5 PM appointment and I measured out my ingredients into various Tupperware, packed them into the car and drove to my parent's house.
I planned on making the almond cake, chocolate cake, mushroom soup, and the previously mentioned gnocchi.
My mother came home how from work and I wailed looking only for sympathy but I got a lecture about the safety thing. Do you know just how annoying that is??? When one wants sympathy that's really all that will do. So we argued all evening about moving Thanksgiving to her house which was REALLY not an option for me. I got all the food done and left just as angry as when I got there.
Making the gnocchi wasn't as difficult or scary as I thought it would be. But making a mound of sweet potatoes, a well, adding an egg and then mixing the mess with your hands is really kind of yucky. And there are a lot of steps-roasting the potatoes, peeling, the ricing and the icky mixing. But they came out quite well.
It was 7 something and still no one from the gas company deigned to show up for our 5 o'clock appointment. At 11 pm that night they called asking if we still wanted them to come back or did we want them in the morning instead. My husband, very wisely told them tonight and I don't care what time. The showed up at 11:20. PM. Then wanted sympathy for how late it was and they were still working. This was one of those moments that I wish with all my heart that I could raise one eyebrow with disdain. I had to be satisfyed with a sneering, sarcastic, "HA, you want MY sympathy? You should have thought of that at 7 AM when you turned off my gas without asking me" I turned my back on him and I stalked off to bed.
My husband and I discussed and decided that I would go back to my parent's house to cook on Thursday but that that evening when I was ready to heat things up I would use what the plumber taught us and secretly turn on the oven. I roasted the duck and the turkey on Thursday, and the broccoli. I sauteed garlic with slivered almonds and smoked paprika to garnish the broccoli, and back at my house I cut up the oranges, the celery root, and the celery for the Moroccan salad and made the lemon/orange garlic dressing for it.
I planned all the bowls, platters, and serving pieces I would use and put them on one of the kitchen counters. I got out all the coffee/dessert things and put them on the dining room server. I changed my clothes. I started putting the hors d'oeuvres and crackers out in their bowls and platters and I gathered the cocktail things...That was a good cocktail I created...I pureed apples in the food processor then added them to the cocktail shaker. Added a splash of apple cider, a larger splash of Maker's Mark (bourbon), ice and shook. I also lined up two small bowls one of cider and one of pecan flour-I dipped the rim of each glass in cider then the pecan flour, strained the drink into the glass and threw a few pecans in as a garnish. The first one I made was perfect! The right balance of Sweet and smoky and the bourbon balanced it out quite nicely. the subsequent ones weren't as good as I was rushing them and they got too much cider, throwing off the balance. I'm looking forward to trying it again.
Overall we had a wonderful time! There was much laughter and buzziness at my table on that evening.
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