2nd Annual OUWAFC Thanksgiving Extravaganza!!

Despite being on crutches nursing a 2 week old broken ankle, last year I thought it'd be a good idea to attempt a Thanksgiving Dinner for the entire football team (Blues and Furies). All in all it turned out really well, so well in fact that I was asked if I would be holding another dinner this year. That was enough for me to agree and so, here we have the OUWAFC Thanksgiving Feast Mark II.

Expecting anywhere between 18 and 20 people, I used the trusty Butterball.com (because I couldn't call the Butterball hotline) to estimate how much turkey I would need. While they told me that I would need over 30 pounds of turkey, I figured 24 would be enough and so I got 2 5kg birds (for a total of about 24 pounds) with enough time to defrost before needed to be cooked.

Short segue here: last year, Brian was in charge of providing the turkeys for the Marshall Scholars Thanksgiving dinner. They needed a lot of turkeys but Brian didn't realize that the turkeys he bought on base would be frozen. So, on the day of the dinner, what did he do? Well, he put the turkeys (8 in all) in my BATHTUB to attempt to quickly defrost them. This goes against everything that any cook will ever tell you about defrosting meat but it worked out and everyone who ate the dinner is still alive today so it was ok. However, this was a lesson to all involved (mainly Brian and Ben and me by proxy) to make sure that your birds are defrosted come Thanksgiving Day.

Anyways, back to this year. Turkey day arrived and, because we would be missing both football training and circuits that evening and cannot possibly go a day without a workout, Bonnie and I went to the gym in the morning to get a workout in before I had to start cooking and cleaning (and before we ate ourselves silly at dinner time). After a great TRX workout (thank you Matt for introducing me to that lovely apparatus), I headed home to start prepping. First job on the docket was cleaning the kitchen. My kitchen was kind of a mess with lots of random stuff lying around so I needed to clean it before I starting prepping a massive bird and before people came over. It was amazing what was on my kitchen table. My favorite find was a box of 24 cans of Bud and Strongbow leftover from the US-England game for the World Cup. They had been outside for gameday and had been left out there for quite a while afterwards. If you want to know what happens to beer and cider thats been left out in alternating hot and cold weather....well, lets just say it tastes disgusting!! I finally got the kitchen cleaned, just in time to get the first bird prepped and in the oven.

I got all the innards out of the first turkey (not really my favorite part) and seasoned it with just a little salt and pepper. I don't cook turkeys with stuffing inside so just to get a bit of flavor I put some celery, carrots, and onions inside the turkey before putting it in the oven. Considering each turkey takes about 3 hours and I had 2 to do, I needed to get them in the oven early so that we wouldn't be waiting on them that evening.

Turkey #1 in the oven

One turkey #1 was in the oven it was time to start cleaning the rest of the house. I vacuumed the hallway and living room (I really dislike vacuuming) and got all the junk that has been on my living room table for a while put away. Its amazing how much cleaner the place looked with all the clutter removed! When Bonnie came into my house she didn't even recognize it! I wish I had photographed it because otherwise people won't believe me that it was actually! Once I finished cleaning it was time to prep the second bird and get it in the oven as well. The cleaning took way less time than I imagined it would so once the second turkey was done and cooking, I wound up having nothing more to do to prep!

Turkey #2 ready to go

While I was afraid I'd just have to actually do some engineering work while I was waiting, it turned out that I was saved by the fact that Sky Sports plays NFL football on Thanksgiving!! I was glad because its not really Thanksgiving if there's no American football, so I watched the Patriots-Lions game for a while until/as people arrived.

Once everyone had arrived and all the foot was ready we could eat. Our Thanksgiving feast consisted of salad, green beans, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, corn, rolls, and obviously turkey! Before everyone went after the food and were lost to a turkey oblivion, I said a few words about what Thanksgiving is all about (giving thanks and being with friends and loved ones), said grace, and then we all dug in! Its amazing how SILENT it gets once food goes around...

Our feast all laid out and ready to be eaten

The turkey pan, post my attempts at carving. I think I got most of the meat. If not, its not like we were short at all...
The only time this group is ever quiet: when they're eating!

NFL football (and Air Force flag) in the background. Very American.

No Thanksgiving meal is complete without pumpkin pies!! Now, when I say that, I usually mean a pie or two so that everyone can get their fill and isn't stuck wanting more pie. However, when you give Elizabeth Betterbed a task, she will not only complete it, but complete it with gusto. So, when she agreed to bring pumpkin pie, she apparently thought that meant bringing, no kidding, 12 pumpkin pies! 12!!! Below is just a fraction of the pies that she brought. With the addition of the 2 pies brought by the other person responsible for pie (Katia), we had a total of 14 pumpkin pies. For 18 people. Yeah..... I have about 6 full pies left if anyone wants some!

Despite the massive amount of them, the pies were in fact delicious and everyone ate their fill of pie, ice cream, and whipped cream. And then ate some more because I made them. All in all, a great meal shared with great friends and only a minor turkey/food coma to contend with afterwards.

After dinner, at the request of Juice, we played Apples to Apples, a game I brought from home that apparently is a big hit with my teammates.
The most contentious moment in the evening came when a brawl almost broke out over the use of a card concerning Winston Churchill. I won't name names here but a certain German teammate decided that Winston Churchill should be used as an example of "undesirable" and when her partner, a certain American military officer (not me, just to be clear) found out she freaked out and started yelling about the way that he was a hero who saved helped save freedom as we know it and by calling him undesirable, said German teammate was going against the entirety of Western civilization. It was a bit strained for a while there, I'm just glad I didn't have to break up any fights!


All in all I think that the 2nd Annual (if it happens more than once its allowed to be called annual) OUWAFC Thanksgiving meal was a success and (if I'm still here ala Ian Helms) next Thanksgiving I will probably do it all over again!!