Saturday, November 29, 2008

Gobble, Gobble, Gobble...and the case of the bad gravy

This year, I, along with my other half, opted to spend the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays in Boston--primarily due to the horrendous cost of flying, but also partly due to my procrastination in looking at ticket prices.

At the urging of B, we'd agreed to run the Gobble, Gobble, Gobble, a 4-mile road race starting and ending in Davis Square, only a five-minute walk from our humble abode. As luck would have it, yet another running pal, Kate, was also running the race.

We wandered over to Davis to pick up our numbers around 7:45 a.m., and in a happy quirk, ran into B on the way--we planned to meet her at the local water hole in a few minutes pre-race. (Note: We never did see Brenda again, though--there were over 2,000 runners, and it apparently was not meant to be.)

After picking up our race numbers, along with a snazzy maroon long-sleeve T-shirt, we realized we had 40 minutes to kill until race time, and we needed somewhere warm to spend it--where else but Starbucks? At 10 minutes to racetime, Kate walked in the door, noting, "I had a feeling I'd find you two here..." Too true.

The race started as a bit of a mess, with people clustering about the start line in a mad melee to begin the bolting course, which had no official start that was apparent--no gun, no shouted "Go!", no pad for the supposed "chip time" start. The first half was primarily uphill, and starting late in the pack, the three of us lost some time warming up and dodging around turkey-suited, feathered runners, climbing the hills to a passable 20:35(ish) at 2 miles. By 2.5, we'd each loosened up, and were coasting down long hills, climbing the few short ones left, and stretching warm limbs in a more than respectable pace, finishing the course in a mad dash around 37 minutes.

After Jared and I managed to seduce Kate back to the apartment for a cup of coffee, we went out to do our day-of Thanksgiving meal shopping. Six hours of cooking and a collective four Tom & Jerry's (wheee!) later, we sat down to enjoy our first Thanksgiving meal together, just the two of us, with a delicious, crispy-skinned turkey, some tasty potatoes lightly flavored with paprika, stuffing replete with celery and bits of more turkey, noodle "stewp" (a saucy, brothy noodle concoction created by Jared), and a thick, viscous substance that could have, in another life, become gravy. But I have no one to blame but myself for that last one...

Post-dinner, in the mood for pie, but short the pack of gelatin needed to make the pumpkin cheesecake we'd planned on, we headed for the open road--and found ourselves enjoying something only the city of Boston has to offer--a shared cappuccino and chocolate-chip canoli in the North End on Thanksgiving.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The first time your mom made mashed tators and gravy we scooped the gravy onto our plates and poured the potatoes over it:

Anonymous said...

The said fact is that my gravy hasn't improved much since then. But I finally found the "Best Turkey Gravy Ever" recipe on the Cooks Illustrated website. I'll report back on December 26....

Jill said...

That cappuccino and chocolate-chip canoli look like something we experienced when we were in Boston! Is that from Jared's favorite shop that moved to a new location?

Anonymous said...

Dammit! I knew I'd forgotten something when you two dropped me off!! Sorry about the gelatin situation - you should stop by sometime in the coming weeks and I promise to give it to you then - the cheesecake was fabulous!!