So when Mr. and I first got married, we decided to split the holidays and see one family at Christmas and one at Thanksgiving, alternating each year.
This lasted one year.
Due to tons of drama which I don’t need to get into here, Mr. and I ended up spending Thanksgiving 2008 in our home, by ourselves. Having never made Thanksgiving dinner, I researched how to make the perfect turkey and came up with buying a fresh one and brining. Ummm sounded good…. So when I went to open said fresh turkey the night before Thanksgiving, the smell it gave off was so repulsive, I almost passed out. I screamed for Mr. and made him take the bags of body parts out of the turkey while we both came close to puking. I then submerged this bird in the brine which turned out to do nothing. We did have a nice Thanksgiving just the two of us but as some of us (me) were used to big family events on Thanksgiving, I felt we needed some more people.
So we recruited Bro S the next year.
Bro S happily joined out Thanksgiving celebration as we were promising lots of good food including homemade cinnamon rolls. Yum! Last year, I bought a frozen turkey. I wanted no parts of the bags of guts and asked Mr. and my bro to clean out the bird before I stuffed it. Hours later, the bird was supposedly to temperature but when I pulled out the stuffing, it was all bloody. Lovely I know. So we cut those parts out of the stuffing mix and threw the bird back in the oven. It would not cook. Blood was everywhere. I used a baster thing to try to suck out the blood. It was gross. In the end, we decided to carve and throw the slices back in the oven to cook them. On doing this, we discovered that someone (Mr.) had failed to remove the body parts from the neck cavity so we cooked a plastic bag full of guts with our turkey which most likely resulted in the blood bath. We thought the rest day would be uneventful until someone (still unknown probably me) knocked those twine pins into the garbage disposal causing a major jam and further causing at 7PM after dinner, the entire garbage disposal to be disassembled. Just the thing you want to do after a big Thanksgiving feast. From start to finish, the whole process took an hour and a half. Debacle. People were not pleased. We thought Bro S would never return.
We were wrong. Not only did he return but he recruited Sis R and BIL J to come for this year’s celebration. So now we are up to five.
I had a long debate with myself on what kind of turkey to buy this year given that we did not do well with either the fresh or the frozen. I debated on getting a turkey from Target on Saturday but, call me a snob, I couldn’t stand the thought of saying my Thanksgiving bird came from Target. I finally bought a frozen one from Whole Foods. We thought about getting a fresh one from the meat store but we went there this weekend and there was nothing information wise about getting a bird for Thanksgiving so we nixed it.
I bought Williams-Sonoma dry brine this year since the wet brine wasn’t good and my plan is to start thawing the turkey on Saturday. The Butterball turkey website says it will take 3 days and 18 hours to thaw. On top of the fact, I want a day or so for it to brine and, after some internet searching, it seems that I want it thawed for this. We have to make sure this year to get all the guts out before cooking. I hope this goes OK. If not, we will be ordering from Boston Market.
Turkey plans in place, I am now on to side dishes. Mr. is in charge of green beans and sweet potatoes. I am in charge of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and rolls. Sis R says she is bringing cookies. I am making a pumpkin pie. We should also have some festive desserts left over from BIL J’s birthday celebration on Wednesday. I am also making homemade cinnamon rolls.
I have taken Wednesday off of work to cook. Yeah! The biggest question I have now since I want to try to make rolls from scratch is to make them this weekend and freeze or try to do them Wednesday and hope they are OK rising overnight and just sitting in the fridge? Also, the frozen cooking time is significantly higher than the fresh cooking time. The main problem is that I don’t have a double oven so I am not sure how to cook everything and have it be warm in the end. I did read in a magazine recently that a 200 degree oven acts as a warming drawer so I may in fact have to use this tip. Or just buy some Du Jours….
Stayed tuned for how all of this turns out and for tablescape pictures if my vision comes to life of new tablecloths and napkins, Turkey Day decor, wedding china and crystal. At least the table will look good if the food stinks…
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