duck-shaped pain

How mine has gone so far�

I decided to roast two chickens this year instead of turkey, because I'm not a huge turkey fan. No complaints about this, thankfully. This also means I have two chicken carcasses available to make broth with sometime this weekend.

Side dishes were pretty simple: mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls, dressing. The dressing came from a mix, which seems to be the favorite around here, so I decided to concentrate my from-scratch powers on another side dish: acorn squash and sage risotto.

Which turned out pretty good, even though I seemed to be the only one really into it. Part of the problem is that it turned out kind of sweet. I used a local Riesling as my wine, one which in the past has been fairly dry. This was my first time using a bottle of the 2000 vintage, though, and it was much, much sweeter than I expected. This is not a bad thing, since it still tasted pretty good. But roasted acorn squash is also pretty sweet, so the two in combination � well, it takes a lot of sage to turn such a dish in the savory direction. And I wasn't willing to use that much sage -- a mouth full o' fun camphor flavor is not a treat. So it was a little sweeter than I had planned, but I thought it was still good. To look on the bright side, though, for once I have enough left over to make risotto fritters sometime this weekend.

Dinner was small: me, my dad, and my grandmother. My grandmother was upset that dinner was scheduled for the same time as her favorite soap opera (something I really didn't think about, not having ever viewed a soap opera in its entirety). So she insisted that she be able to watch it during dinner. Since she can't hear too well, the volume was up very high, making it impossible to say anything or make out what anyone else attempted to say. Loud TV makes me kind of nervous and skittish. When the program being watched is all skanky blonde women yelling "You're not my mother!" at each other, the results are amplified. It was very unpleasant.

There were a lot of leftovers. My grandmother refused them. She complains that I spend too much time cooking, and then she complains that nothing I make is very good. I'd rather not cook for her, but the family that I'd like to cook for (my dad exempted) is far away today. So I put a lot of effort into something that was largely ignored. Good thing I have most of that bottle of wine left�

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