Saturday, November 29, 2014

The Pony Is The King Of Feasts

I'm not saying I know my way around a kitchen more than enough to heat food in the oven or warm it in the microwave. But once we discovered Wednesday night that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom was going to have to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner, I made a mental menu and headed out for provisions Thanksgiving morning.

Poor Pony. What a life he must have had that led to this scenario. I dished up his food onto a plastic tray the likes of which were once used in school cafeterias back when the cooks actually COOKED the food, and did not slop warmed-up processed items on Styrofoam trays. Let the record show that even though Mrs. Hillbilly Mom has had access to school lunch trays for most of her working life...no school lunch trays were obtained by illicit means. These Hillbilly family trays were bought with the sweat of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's brow, when The Pony was just a gleam in her myopic eye. No fine china for this bunch.

The Pony picked up his tray. "I'm going to take a picture of this!" Such excitement from one so even-keeled.

Let the record show that The Pony sent out this picture with the message: "Can you tell I like stuffing?"

Indeed. Not only is The Pony a Butterton, but he loooooves him some stuffing. Of course it is Stove Top. That's what The Pony prefers. In addition, he had a slab of chicken breast roasted with lemon pepper, a stick a little bit of butter, four rolls, roasted carrots, a bacon/green bean bundle, and hash brown potato casserole. He ate everything except three carrots (shocking, I know), a few cubes of potato, and several errant crumbs of stuffing. He said he was full. In fact, he was SO full that he didn't touch THIS until the next morning:

Let the record show that at such time, The Pony carved up a generous two-Oreo slice to start the day.

2 comments:

Sioux Roslawski said...

What other kind of stuffing is there? And what are these green bean bacon bundles you speak of? Or is it a secret recipe, handed down from generation to generation?

Hillbilly Mom said...

Sioux,
I heard that back in the caveman days, the women baked their own bread over an open fire, let it go stale, crumbled it, and mixed in some pterodactyl giblets, warmed it, and called it stuffing. All hard to do while being dragged around by the hair.

As you can see by the photo, The Pony chose the bundle with the fewest green beans showing. My sister the ex-mayor's wife always makes them, but I tried to recreate the bundles with a little help from allrecipes.com. I think that's the site. Anyway...

All I did was drain a can of green beans, mix some brown sugar and butter into a paste, cut the package of bacon in half, roll five green beans in a half-slice of bacon, secure it with a toothpick, put the bundles on a rack so they don't stew in their own juices, mush a dollop of the brown sugar past on top of each, sprinkle with garlic salt, and bake at 350 for 45 or 50 minutes.

FYI, that garlic salt is crucial. I forgot it on the second batch, and the taste was quite different.