THAT MOST GLUTTONOUS OF HOLIDAYS

Thanksgiving, that most gluttonous of holidays, is finally here. 

I am not cooking the turkey nor the trimming this year.  However, I am baking pumpkin bread and making some pumpkin butter (if all goes well).  Let me be somewhat honest here: I do know how to bake from scratch.  Now let me be completely honest here: If it tastes great from a box, why go through all the trouble?  I'll do this with cake mixes (Duncan Hines totally rules) and pudding (instant sugar-free chocolate is the bomb).  I will also do this usually for brownies, too.  I'm not sure my kids can even remember the last time I made brownies from scratch, which involves a double-boiler and a lot of patience, only one of which I have and it's in a cabinet next to the sink.

Some things are not nearly as good when created using pre-made mixes or refrigerator dough.  Chocolate chip cookies are a fine example.  Sure you can tolerate them, but Toll House cookies are all about savoring not tolerating.  If I'm in a pinch to make cookies for a crowd, I usually throw in the pre-made dough at 350.  But if I'm trying to impress my audience and intend to eat most of the cookies myself, then I'll religiously follow the recipe on the back of the Nestles semi-sweet chocolate bits package.  Pies are another thing better homemade than store-bought.  Even if it's baked at a farm stand or specialty shop, it's never, ever as good as homemade.

There are some things that the store does better than packaged mixes or hand-crafted delights from the dark recesses of the kitchen.  Two items that come to mind immediately are corn bread and roasted chicken.  The chickens that are cooked on the spits are delicious.  They cost about $5 for a whole chicken or $7 for breast/white meat only.  I am addicted to those chickens and buy one just about every week when I go grocery shopping.  I also tend to buy the mini corn bread the in-store bakery makes - it's moist and golden and heats up in seconds in the nuke.  Awesome with some salted butter melted onto it.

But, like I said before, I am not doing the major cooking this year.  Someone else is doing the turkey and the stuffing and the veggies and the desserts. (I am in withdrawal not making my famous apple pie, so I will make one for Christmas, instead.  Actually, the people hosting this year are outstanding cooks and bakers, so my pie would have been redundant.)  I must admit when people mentioned that they were hitting the grocery stores Wednesday afternoon, I got goose bumps and not in a good way.  That's major insanity. 

Plus, there's no point in buying the roast chicken if you're just having turkey the next day.  That would just be gluttonous.