Dreaming of lime gerbils in a cheese sauce

Yesterday's feast went off with a lot of hitches but it still went off well. The 22 guests (plus me) all seemed to have enough to eat despite my worrying, The pork roast didn't happen (a recipe I'm developing, I didn't give enough time in my estimate from scaling up from 1.5lbs of roast to 5lbs of roast) so will be served at tonight's leftovers potluck.

Just about everyone who came decided to bring a dish. This lead to the largest spread (not surprising, since 23 people is also the largest group) I've ever done. I had to press more folding tables into service just to put all the food out - and we still forgot one cranberry relish (sorry). We had tradition (turkey, stuffing, etc) and more "radical" dishes like a pork-sausage-in-red-sauce. Among other fantastic dishes we had 2 soups, an "accidentally vegan" squash soup and a wild chantrel soup with a hint (hit?) of red pepper. The dessert table was equally well provisioned. We had crepes, pumpkin custard (served out of pumpkins) tiermesu, an espresso chocolate cheesecake, and a pumpkin cheesecake with bourbon.

The biggest problem, IMHO, was the temperature probe I used in the turkey. I'll be replacing it at first opportunity. It read 154 in the breast (the temperature I wanted to pull the bird so carryover cooking would have time to do its magic without ruining the bird) but when I did spot checks with my insta-read the breast was reading closer to 170 and the thigh a terrifying 191. No amount of brining is going to protect from that kind of overcooking. The bird was tasty but distressingly (to me, anyway) dry. I would throw myself on my chef's knife but then who'd clean up the kitchen? The other note I need to make for myself is not to push to make so many dishes, no matter how many people are coming. I just couldn't stay organized enough to get it all done right.

I have wonderful friends and the party was a huge success because so many of them came! Lets do it again next year, same time!