Holiday! Celebrate!

In the words of Madonna-
If we took a holiday, took some time to celebrate
Just one day out of life- It would be, it would be so nice
Everybody spread the word
We're gonna have a celebration
All across the world in every nation
It's time for the good times
Forget about the bad times, oh yeah
One day to come together
To release the pressure. We need a holiday.

Keeping this in mind Mike and I hosted a Holiday party. It was also a party, sadly, to say good bye to Joe as he starts his new life in Boulder, CO. To plan such an event, I thought long and hard about the food. Now everyone knows that good food at a party is critical. I had asked everyone to bring one dish or item and that I would cook the main dish-turkey with the trimmings (corn, cranberry sauce and a veggie dish). But I have NEVER cooked a turkey before. Certainly I have seen turkeys cooked and so I took the lessons from my mother and decided to cook a turkey with bacon. She does an awesome job with bacon and butter as the main moisturizing ingredients. I found a similar recipe involving bacon (2.5 lbs. of thick organic happy bacon), butter, fresh sage and thyme, onions, two heads of garlic and bread crumbs. The recipe called to puree the bacon. Let me tell you. This results in one of the grossest things I have ever seen. But once you add it to the sauteed onions and add the bread crumbs and herbs, it smells soooo good. Happy pigs makes a happy Hyunmi.

Also, I bought an organic kosher turkey from the butcher up the block. It's so nice to walk out your door and order a fresh turkey and pick it up a week later. It was so well cleaned and, well, fresh. No thawing. So I defiled this kosher turkey with bacon and lots of it. I put my bacon mix all under the skin and rubbed almost an entire stick of butter allll over the turkey. (The sea salt I had rubbed on it earlier was now causing stinging pains as the coarse salt made micro tears all over my hands. All for the love of butter and bacon.) But, hey, the turkey came out AWESOME. I have to say that there was not a single dry piece of meat. I bought a fancy meat thermometer. I love it! I was also able to use it to determine how off my oven is from the set temp. and the actual temp.

So that being my biggest cooking accomplishment of the season, I will quickly list the other comestibles present.
Me: molten chocolate babycakes with Kahlua/dark chocolate sauce and raspberries; shortbread cookies (I used the cookie gun!); asparagus with a butter garlic lemon Parmesan sauce
Joe: red onion feta goodness
Bena: spinach quiche. There was no meat in the quiche.
Vijay: Pumpkin and apple pies; dinner rolls; banana nut bread
Katie: garlic/sour cream/yummy mashed potatoes
Alison: Sweet potatoes with brown sugar and walnut topping
Dan: gold coins! Champagne (from Lithuania)
Ekin: Fire water (Hot Damn!)

Am I forgetting anything? Everything was sooooo good. Thanks everyone!

After dinner, dessert and drinks most of us headed out to Verlaine. I had called ahead to ensure a table would be reserved. Otherwise it can be hard for a group to sit. They were great about it. We hit The SKINnY up next. I hadn't been here before...actually, Dan and I think we might have been here before it was this place, but who knows. I really like the place and will go again, but more importantly I loved the music. Come on! 80's pop/rock and indie rock?! What can beat that? It made Mike very happy to hear Add it up and we were all on our way out when we heard Billy Jean, and well, everyone stopped to dance (actually, Vimal and Joe stopped to play Ms. PacMan). From here we went to get fries at the best frite place in the world. I couldn't let Joe leave NYC until he had consumed these. I think they changed his view of French fries forever.

We cabbed it back at 4am and knocked out. Vijay was drunk. It was humorous to say the least. This morning we said bye to Joe after brunch at 107W (the Albuquerque Melt is excellent). It was a great night out. Hopefully we can all do it again soon. Maybe in Boulder.

Enjoy the pics on Mike's page.