Thanksgiving in Daly City

The scent of fried lumpia filled my kitchen. We hosted our first Thanksgiving meal in Daly City.

Our buddy Scott smoked a turkey for us.


He woke up at 1 am to start the smoking operation. I was impressed that somebody else was up working while I worked on my news show. His smoked turkey tasted so juicy. The skin had a fantastic smoky and meaty flavor. The smoking operation didn’t produce turkey juices for gravy. So we went the store-bought route with that. I’m looking forward to making turkey stock and turkey soup with all the leftovers.

I started making lumpia on Monday. I made traditional ones with ground beef, carrots and celery. I also made a holiday batch with ground turkey, shiitake mushrooms, watercress chestnuts and onions. I froze the lumpia rolls. My hubby thawed them out on Thanksgiving morning, while I was working. I fried them up before our guests arrived. The lumpia rolls stayed nice and compact during the freezing process. I liked the crispy, juicy and meaty flavors after they come out my wok.

My co-workers took care of dessert. More or less, we were on the same crazy newsroom schedule. Producer Kristen and I login before midnight, write our butts off, juggle live crews and flaming chainsaws so that our viewers can watch live TV starting at 4:30 AM. Morning reporter Cate pounced on an easy pumpkin pie recipe online and served it for T-Day.

My broadcast news professors at Medill warned us about working on holidays. I remember they told us to get used to it or risk becoming very bitter about the job. They were honest about how newsroom life challenged family life. Some couldn’t stop traveling for photog/field producing assignments. At least one of them got a divorce.

I’ve been working on holidays since my grad school residency in London. (Have you ever tried shopping for a turkey in central London? We couldn’t find a whole bird. We ended up with stuffing and turkey slices.)

Even though we were far from family, we have been lucky to share holiday meals with our friends and co-workers.

This year – Thanksgiving could have been another work day. Thanks to my friends and colleagues, it wasn’t.

We carved out time between work and sleep. We sat down for too much food and good conversation. We gossiped. Some tried bumping fists. We laughed at my dog who was trying to barter for turkey with her dirty cow toy.

I was grateful for this experience on Thanksgiving.

Finally…some video of lumpia from last year’s T-Day.
http://youtu.be/2j4OgPXuwfA?hd=1