Friday, November 26, 2010

Thanksgiving Recap

Hi Geeezers!
How was your Thanksgiving?  I hope a day filled of fun with family and friends and food but most of all giving thanks and feeling appreciation for all the blessings in your life and hope that the not so great stuff doesn't follow you into 2011.

First let me say a big Thank You to everyone who encouraged me to brine my turkey this year.  It was yummy.  As you all know from blogging my culinary adventures I have taken on a challenge to cook more creatively lately.  This has produced some wonderful food and some epic failures.  So this was the year to try the brine.
Turken Being Brined
We called it the Thanksgiving Turken this year because it was the smallest turkey we have ever seen.  It looked like a large chicken thus Turkey + Chicken = Turken.  Either my sister or myself got it last holiday (yeah I know a whole year ago) from one of our employers as bonus poultry and it how somehow made a bigger impression in our brains than existed in real life.  So, when I picked it up from my parent's house where it had vacationed the last year, it was much smaller than we remembered.  This set off an intense fear of running out of holiday meat for the table.  On a side note:  My sister and I share this phobia about setting a skimpy table of food so there is always too much.  Always.

Anyhow.... We went out and got some pork loin so we could be assured of having too much food and once home I brined the turkey.  It was small enough to fit in my soup pot!  We had a good laugh over that. I amputated the wings and roasted them along with the organ meat and simple mirepoix  (google it ignoramus') which would have produced a wonderful stock with which to create a wonderful gravy had I not fallen asleep and let it burn to a crisp.  Another epic failure.

My youngest niece, Rebecca, created her Famous Turkey Chocolate Cake which was uuummmmm full of chocolate.  Forget those fruit and vegetables masquerading as pies and cheesecakes:  give me chocolate every time!

Becca and Her Famous Turkey Cake

I will not bore you further with tales of the family gathering except to say that I did not get a good picture of my sweet potato dish with which to report to Grandma J as evidence of serving the classic Sweet Potato dish with so many marshmellows on top that they were barely hanging on there and were beautifully toasted to perfection and was therefore so sweet it just about could put you into a diabetic coma-- as they should be.  I know this because one of my recent epic failures was a savory sweet potato fiasco.  Do not try that at home.  Trust me. 
So to summarize:
Brine- Good
Turkey- Small
Sweet Potatoes- Sweet
Chocolate= heaven
Good & Blessed Holiday Over All!


Hope you all enjoyed the same!

1 comment:

JC said...

That cake looks good !!!

We made our spagetti and had pumpkin pie later. Oh, and the mixed roasted veggies. Lots of wine and well, lots of fun was had at our place.

A bit of turkey from the deli for my son ... he loves it ... but, me cooking a turkey ... not happening in this lifetime.