that's a 3 lbs dungeness crab right there!

i was told that if you bite your lower lip, you look hard. not quite sure it worked. 

Phew. It's 330am, and I just wrapped up some preparatory work for tomorrow's Thanksturkey feast. Since the oven would be in high demand tomorrow, I decided to do as many of the preparatory dishes today.

The full menu (all made from scratch!):

• Arugula salad with caramelized grapes, pears, and roasted shallot vinaigrette
• Candied sweet potatoes
• Scalloped yukon gold potatoes and yams
• Roasted turkey (duh) with gravy and stuffing
  
• Stir-fried baby carrots and snow peas
  
• Homemade cranberry sauce
• And at the last minute, I realized I had all the ingredients to make delicious homemade chocolate cookies (wow, I can't believe I finally have a fully-stocked kitchen!)

Tonight, I worked on the salad - had to use the oven to caramelize the grapes and roast the shallots. While doing that, I made the cranberry sauce (finding cranberries was hard - had to call around to 3 different places!) and the candied sweet potatoes. I'm letting the sweet potatoes (which are only partially steamed) soak in the candied sauce overnight before baking them.

The secret to great chocolate chip cookies is also making the dough the night before and letting the flavors sink into the dough - so that's getting ready, too.

The plan for tomorrow is to kick off the turkey at around noon. I'll do the stepped temperature down (start at 400, move down to 350, etc. etc.) - this will give me about half an hour after I put the turkey in to prep the stuffing (put the bread out today so it stales up by tomorrow, for you don't want mushy stuffing!) and be able to get the stuffing in there at 350. Hopefully I can also squeeze in both the potato dishes when I'm cooking the turkey at 350...

And as we eat dinner, I'll pop in the chocolate chip cookies for dessert!

I'm a bit nervous about this meal - this is the first one I've tried to do completely solo, and boy, is it a lot of work! But I'm having a great time, and I HOPE the meal comes out delicious for everybody tomorrow...

Pictures tomorrow :) Have a great night, and a wonderful Thanksturkey day!

Chicken and dumplings - recipe said it'd take an hour. Took me two hours, and then half an hour to clean-up (I'm getting better at cutting a whole chicken). Totally worth it (such a comfort food!)

Some changes I'll make next time: FAR less dumplings, and roll them out thinner. I could probably use about half the ingredients for the dumplings and still be alright. Also, far more vegetables. I threw in only a quarter of an onion and one celery stalk and carrot. More onions (full will work), and probably double the carrots and celery.

And I need to watch the chicken too - it was slightly overcooked. I brought it to boil and simmered it for 40 minutes - I could probably get away with simmering it for about 30 minutes.

. . .

//when darkness turns to light, it ends tonight.

Dinner tonight: fajitas with homemade salsa and guacamole. The ingredients for guac:

The completed meal:

Assembled:

I was a bit skeptical about this meal, but boy, did it turn out GREAT! The meat (which was marinated overnight) was flavored fantastically, and the guac/salsa gave the whole meal a nice freshness!

. . .

Ever since I got my guitar on Thursday, I've been playing close to an hour a day. My left fingers are so raw right now - I can't wait until they get calloused enough so I can play longer.

I finally followed through on my commitment to start cooking real meals at home. (I had been making spaghetti most of the week, which clearly doesn't count).

Tonight's meal was halibut meunière served with a side of red cabbage salad (dressing from scratch - dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, and lingonberry preserve):

The salad was not so good (too much oil), but the fish was decent:

I realize the photos look like ass, but after shopping for two hours and cooking (I skipped lunch), I was hungry and I wasn't really interested in taking photos. I'll do better next time, I promise!

I will say this again - cooking for yourself is NOT cheap, although it's definitely more fun and fulfilling. 

So day one: over! (I've a long ways to go to cooking good food)

Tomorrow: fajitas (you would not believe how much trouble I had in trying to find skirt steak - and I had no frickin' clue it was so pricey! ($12/lbs!)