To set the scene: we’re close with our in-laws, Mrs Mosca’s sister and family. We live a couple miles from each other, their son and our daughter are close in age, we do holidays together, etc.
Christmas has always been Eve at their house, Day at ours. Their back yard goes into the church parking lot, so we eat around 4, walk through the grove to mass, then come back to their house and have dessert, coffee, some wine, play games, watch football, until around midnight. Then on Christmas Day, we have our relaxed Christmas morning, and around 11AM I start prepping dinner. The roast goes in the oven around 1PM, I make a big mixed salad, prep and mash some taters, make some veggies, and the roast is done between 4 and 5 depending. And we eat, sit around, watch a Christmas movie, have some wine, beer, coffee, etc. It’s good. They’re good folks. Family.
So yesterday at about 1:30, just about when I was going to trim and salt the beef for today, Karen calls Mrs M. And we hear (our daughter is here for the holiday), “Oh no. You’re kidding! What happened?” And we can tell it isn’t tragic, because of the tone, but it isn’t good! And Mrs Mosca looks at me and says, “Their power went out! PP&L is estimating 6 hours!” It’s 4° out. Their furnace is working, but the fan that circulates the heat is off, and the lights, etc…
Well, I was going to salt the roast right then anyhow. And there was a little back and forth about what to do, and then we just figured, the best thing would be swap days!
So the roast didn’t brine, but that’s the way it goes; remember, people didn’t brine roast for years, and they always came out pretty good. Our daughter had just finished baking the rum cake, so the oven was already warm. I lowered the temp from 325° to 250°, I prepped the roast (MMD for the win), popped it in the oven with that fancy TempSpike that I like, and went about chopping bits for the salad! We set a time for 5:30; plenty of time to eat, chat, relax, go to mass at 7, and be back home for Steelers/Raiders!
Mrs Mosca started pulling out the fancy dishes and silverware, our Mosquette set the table and started on the hors d’ouvres, opened the wine to aerate, made sure we had ice, etc.; hey, we’re a team. A finely tuned Christmas machine! We can do this, no sweat!
I like that TempSpike. I like not having wires. I like having a rechargeable battery, and I like having the phone display, even if I don’t trust Bluetooth. The interface isn’t all that intuitive, but I can figure it out. One thing I did have trouble figuring was setting temp vs setting ambient temp. I accidentally set the ambient for 125° instead of the cook temp. But I figured it out.
I make a good salad, people say. It’s kitchen sink style, refrigerator dump style, whatever you want to call it, with lots of chopping: carrots to grate, red and green peppers, bacon, chopped eggs, three different lettuces, a couple different cheeses… it’s involved. But I take my time, I like doing it, it keeps my knife skills sharp. It takes a while, but hey; I got 4 hours. Plenty of time. But I’m checking the temp on the roast, and it’s only up to like 53°. No big deal, the hotter it gets, the faster it goes. It accelerates.
And then: 3:30PM or so: the alarm goes off! The phone is blaring! The Spike relay is flashing and beeping! But wait, it couldn’t have gone from 53° to 125° in the last half hour, could it? I checked; nope, the roast is at… wait, what? 56°? And it wasn’t the food alarm going off, it was the ambient temperature, it had dropped to 125°! And when the oven temp dropped to 125°, the alarm went off. Of course it did.
Oh, man.
Here’s what happened. The temp was at 325°. The rum cake was on the counter. I set the temp to 250°… and pushed the button, and turned off the oven.
Well, stuff happens. Shrug. Here we are.
I pumped the oven up to 500°, then when it hit 500° I lowered it to 325°. I finished the salad, I made to potatoes, I made some sautéed mushrooms. And I kept checking the meat temp. And, no way this dinner was going on the table at 5:30… who knows when? I sure didn’t.
But it’s Christmas. Who cares. We’ve done enough of these, Mosquette, Mrs M and I, there’s no stress. Plan C. We ain’t making it to church Christmas Eve. But on the other hand, we don’t need to cook anything on Christmas Day, either!
The in-laws arrived at 5:15. We told them the news, and, who cares? We laugh and talk before dinner, after dinner, it’s the same.
The roast hit the table at 6:30, a little rare but them’s the breaks. Everything was great. Everyone was happy. We missed church, but everyone made it this morning at 11. The Steelers/Raiders game was a close defensive battle (or battle of incompetents, depending on your perspective), but we’re Steelers fans so that worked out.
Merry Christmas!
Oh: the part everyone asks about.
Christmas has always been Eve at their house, Day at ours. Their back yard goes into the church parking lot, so we eat around 4, walk through the grove to mass, then come back to their house and have dessert, coffee, some wine, play games, watch football, until around midnight. Then on Christmas Day, we have our relaxed Christmas morning, and around 11AM I start prepping dinner. The roast goes in the oven around 1PM, I make a big mixed salad, prep and mash some taters, make some veggies, and the roast is done between 4 and 5 depending. And we eat, sit around, watch a Christmas movie, have some wine, beer, coffee, etc. It’s good. They’re good folks. Family.
So yesterday at about 1:30, just about when I was going to trim and salt the beef for today, Karen calls Mrs M. And we hear (our daughter is here for the holiday), “Oh no. You’re kidding! What happened?” And we can tell it isn’t tragic, because of the tone, but it isn’t good! And Mrs Mosca looks at me and says, “Their power went out! PP&L is estimating 6 hours!” It’s 4° out. Their furnace is working, but the fan that circulates the heat is off, and the lights, etc…
Well, I was going to salt the roast right then anyhow. And there was a little back and forth about what to do, and then we just figured, the best thing would be swap days!
So the roast didn’t brine, but that’s the way it goes; remember, people didn’t brine roast for years, and they always came out pretty good. Our daughter had just finished baking the rum cake, so the oven was already warm. I lowered the temp from 325° to 250°, I prepped the roast (MMD for the win), popped it in the oven with that fancy TempSpike that I like, and went about chopping bits for the salad! We set a time for 5:30; plenty of time to eat, chat, relax, go to mass at 7, and be back home for Steelers/Raiders!
Mrs Mosca started pulling out the fancy dishes and silverware, our Mosquette set the table and started on the hors d’ouvres, opened the wine to aerate, made sure we had ice, etc.; hey, we’re a team. A finely tuned Christmas machine! We can do this, no sweat!
I like that TempSpike. I like not having wires. I like having a rechargeable battery, and I like having the phone display, even if I don’t trust Bluetooth. The interface isn’t all that intuitive, but I can figure it out. One thing I did have trouble figuring was setting temp vs setting ambient temp. I accidentally set the ambient for 125° instead of the cook temp. But I figured it out.
I make a good salad, people say. It’s kitchen sink style, refrigerator dump style, whatever you want to call it, with lots of chopping: carrots to grate, red and green peppers, bacon, chopped eggs, three different lettuces, a couple different cheeses… it’s involved. But I take my time, I like doing it, it keeps my knife skills sharp. It takes a while, but hey; I got 4 hours. Plenty of time. But I’m checking the temp on the roast, and it’s only up to like 53°. No big deal, the hotter it gets, the faster it goes. It accelerates.
And then: 3:30PM or so: the alarm goes off! The phone is blaring! The Spike relay is flashing and beeping! But wait, it couldn’t have gone from 53° to 125° in the last half hour, could it? I checked; nope, the roast is at… wait, what? 56°? And it wasn’t the food alarm going off, it was the ambient temperature, it had dropped to 125°! And when the oven temp dropped to 125°, the alarm went off. Of course it did.
Oh, man.
Here’s what happened. The temp was at 325°. The rum cake was on the counter. I set the temp to 250°… and pushed the button, and turned off the oven.
Well, stuff happens. Shrug. Here we are.
I pumped the oven up to 500°, then when it hit 500° I lowered it to 325°. I finished the salad, I made to potatoes, I made some sautéed mushrooms. And I kept checking the meat temp. And, no way this dinner was going on the table at 5:30… who knows when? I sure didn’t.
But it’s Christmas. Who cares. We’ve done enough of these, Mosquette, Mrs M and I, there’s no stress. Plan C. We ain’t making it to church Christmas Eve. But on the other hand, we don’t need to cook anything on Christmas Day, either!
The in-laws arrived at 5:15. We told them the news, and, who cares? We laugh and talk before dinner, after dinner, it’s the same.
The roast hit the table at 6:30, a little rare but them’s the breaks. Everything was great. Everyone was happy. We missed church, but everyone made it this morning at 11. The Steelers/Raiders game was a close defensive battle (or battle of incompetents, depending on your perspective), but we’re Steelers fans so that worked out.
Merry Christmas!
Oh: the part everyone asks about.
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