Let's Talk Turkey

Okay, so I hope you're all snug in your beds, having thoroughly stuffed your turkeys and yourselves. I hope you're snug in your beds because I'm up before sunrise. The trash man went through the RV park banging dumpsters on his trash compactor at around 2:00 a.m., and then again at around 4:30 a.m. Apparently he left a straw wrapper behind the first time around, and the second time, he banged that dumpster half a dozen times before moving on. The night was over at that point. But, no matter. We went to bed early, and so I was ready enough to be up.

We had a nice Thanksgiving. I'll tell you about the food in a minute, but the best part was talking with Matthew by phone. He was on his way to Las Vegas to have dinner with some friends he knew there. The other best part was having a Facetime chat with Erik and Mae. They showed us their Thanksgiving preparations, which included deep frying their turkey. They've been picking up the CSA veggies since we've been gone, and those were well-represented. Later they sent us pictures of all of it, and it looked so yummy.

As for us, we set up the sewing machine early yesterday, and I had a sewing day. I'm even wearing the t-shirt!

There's an RV Quilters sewing group on Facebook, and there's merchandise to be had. You can have a coffee mug if you like. The only other thing I have is the sticker for the RV window. Those are so we can find one another when we're traveling. I'm not very good at looking for them, but so far, I haven't seen another RV Quilter. There are over 14,000 members, so hey...could happen!

Of course, my sewing helpers were hard at work.

Later they decided to do a short demonstration. Here, Smitty is using my sewing machine case to demonstrate an age old idiom:

If I fits, I s--...wait a minute, something is wrong here.

No, Smitty. You're not doing it right. First, you have to put the bag in its full upright position. Now, watch: If I fits, I sits. See? Now it's working purrfectly.

Okay...let me try. If I fits, I sits. Hey! Yeah. That works! Thanks, Sadie!

Whoa...it's really quite a rush, isn't it? Kind of like catnip without all the green stuff on your nose.

So, you're probably wondering what I was sewing. Or not. I don't want to be bossy, so if you don't want to see, then just scroll on by.

Okay, if you're still here, you might remember that I was working on those 16 nine-patch blocks for the Hocuspocusville quilt. I was sewing the corners on, square-in-a-square fashion, and I had eight finished with eight more to do. Here are the final eight.

And there they all are...16 nine-patch, square-in-a-square blocks.

I'm guessing I'll get at least one more sewing day while we're here in Wilmington, and so next I'll be adding alternating black squares and setting triangles to set these on point and make the center panel for the finished quilt. Here's how it will look when it's finished.

I've gone back and forth about adding the jumbo black rick rack after I have it sewn together. My hesitation comes from knowing it will all curl up once it's washed. But then, I started thinking I'd stitch the edges down, and that will keep it from curling up. I kind of like the look of it. With that in mind, I have a trip to Jo-Ann in my future, and I'll see if I can score some jumbo rick rack.

By then, it was getting to be time to make dinner. Our tiny RV oven dinner turned out great. At first I was bummed about not having turkey because I'm kind of a traditionalist that way. But once I got over the hump and decided to do Cornish game hens, it got to be more fun. So here's our RV Thanksgiving.

On the left is a Roasted Cornish Hen with Cherry-Port Glaze. It's made using port wine and cherry preserves, and it happens to be a Cooking Light recipe...so on our diet! Not that we were dieting for this meal, but just the same.... Since I only needed half a cup of port wine, I didn't want to buy a whole bottle. Instead, we used one of the dessert wines we picked up from our Montana Harvest Host. I've made this many times at home, and it's super easy. Ordinarily I would butterfly the hens, but in this case, I left them whole to save space in the oven. You can find the recipe right here.

On top and to the right is a Roasted Sweet Potato with Hot Honey Butter. The recipe for that came out in the NY Times at the beginning of our trip. I've been saving it to try for our RV Thanksgiving, and wow...that was really good. There was room in the oven to roast those and the Cornish hens at the same time, and so it was a good choice. You can find that recipe right here.

Then at about the five o'clock position on my plate is Stove Top stuffing. It was surprisingly good. I used to make it all the time when I was working, and you know, when you get right down to it, what is stuffing anyway? It's dried bread cubes, seasoning, and moisture...which is exactly what this was, and it tasted just fine. Of course, I prefer my stuffing made at home from scratch, but this was a good stand-in for a scaled down meal.

In yesterday's post, I linked to my cranberry recipe, and showed you our dessert...which tasted mighty fine, let me tell you. So that's done. Cooking in an RV is challenging, but fun, and this turned out all right. I hope your dinners were as good.

Without seeing what the day holds in weather, I'm not sure what we're going to do today. For sure we want to get over to the beach before we leave, and we want to go see the battleship North Carolina. Either those two things or another day of sewing are in store for me. We definitely will NOT be shopping today. However you plan to spend this Friday, I hope you have a good day.