Turkey Redux

Since I actually had a little bit of money earlier this week before giving it all away to the stack of envelopes on my desk, I went grocery shopping, erm, repeatedly. In one of those trips I picked up six turkeys on deep clearance. I already had a HUGE free turkey that one of my brother's work places gave him and he didn't want (they don't usually eat meat, my brother and sister-in-law) and I did want it, so I got it. Chris said, "Are you sure these are going to FIT in our freezer?" as he dutifully helped schlep them from the truck to the house. I said something noncommittal and sure enough, all but one fit in the freezer. What to do? Well, duh, eat it! So I stuck it in the downstairs fridge and decided this morning, four days later, that it was probably thawed now and I should do something with it.

Now, last year I went the brine-the-turkey route and that was tasty, but time consuming. This year I wasn't serving anyone but the family and all I wanted was it to be done, so I pulled out Betty circa 1983 and SHE said to stick it in the oven with maybe some salt on the inside, some oil on the outside, no water in the pan, and that was it.

That's it?

Betty circa 1983 swore that was it.

So I rinsed off my turkey, salted the inside, plopped it in the roasting pan and preheated the oven.

The turkey whimpered. I took pity on it. I took the skins off a couple of small onions and stuck those inside the turkey and sprinkled some dried, diced garlic in there. Then I oiled the top of the turkey with pumpkin oil, sprinkled some garlic salt on it, liberally dusted it with ground basil, and stuck it in the oven.

The Holy Ghost, or my schizophrenia, hard to say which, said, "do NOT leave it in that dry oven while you go to Max's piano lesson for two hours." I apologized to Betty circa 1983 and dumped in 4 cups of water and a pint of raspberry cider to the bottom of the roasting pan. I crammed the meat thermometer in the thigh, and leaving the turkey uncovered, I closed the oven and went my way.

Returning 3 hours later, I opened the oven to find that it had that "Yo, get everything else together because I'm almost done!" look. The meat thermometer agreed. Shizzle. I told it that no matter what, it was cooking for another hour because I wasn't ready for it yet. It sighed. I reminded it that it was just shy of 14 lbs and it needed to cook longer. It sighed again.

I planned, since this is, after all, only Friday night's dinner and not even Sunday night's dinner, much less Thanksgiving, to make the stuffing that I thought I was going to make for Thanksgiving months ago. I'd been collecting the butts of all of my weekly homemade bread, chopping them into large, vaguely crouton shaped chunks, baking them in the oven for 20 minutes or so to dry them out, and then freezing them. At one point I'd made 8 loaves of cranberry-orange bread and it was darker, thicker, and more adult-bread-like than my usual loaves, so I had a lot of that left over. I'd say that 2/3 of the 6 quarts of dried bread chunks were cranberry-orange whole wheat bread. The rest were ordinary homemade white or wheat or a mix of the two.

Betty couldn't tell me how to make stuffing. She knew how to make stuffing using fresh bread -- it involved no liquid beyond a vat of butter. I knew that wasn't going to cut it, but I borrowed her list of herbs for my recipe. I guessed on the liquid. I used a quart of chicken broth, heated that up, tossed in two cups of dried, chopped apples, the spices/herbs, and another pint of raspberry cider. I had a lot of left over cider from jelly/jam making. I added 1/3 cup of butter to that (half of what Betty wanted me to use, and Betty was using half as much bread as I was). I sauted some thinly sliced celery (if it's too chunky, Chris notices it, and then he won't eat it) and red and white chopped onions in some fake butter substitute, then mixed that in with the bread. I poured the liquid/rehydrated apples over the bread crumbs, mixed it well, and dumped it all in a huge greased casserole dish.

I liberated the turkey from the oven. It was looking beautiful and I needed the oven space. The dogs at this point had come to lay themselves prostrate on the floor. By golly, if they had to trip me to get some of that turkey, they would. I turned up the heat, covered the stuffing in foil, and put it in the oven for a half hour. I pulled the rack that supported the turkey out of the roasting pan and dumped the contents of the roasting pan into my dutch oven (through a strainer to get out the gook). I don't have a fat separator. That would make a good Christmas present. I stood there for ten minutes trying to spoon it off the top. Shyah. But I got some of it. [While we're on the subject, isn't this a nice salad spinner? and can't you see me using this?] I have a terrible time getting my gravy to not be lumpy, so I blended some of the raspberry cider/turkey drippings with the whole wheat pastry flour in the blender and then poured it all into the boiling cider/drippings and POOF -- gravy. Ohmigosh, it tasted heavenly. Still some lumps but not nearly as lumpy as my gravy usually is. What can I say? We all have flaws.

Okay, turkey: check; stuffing: check; gravy: check -- need a vegetable. I rinsed off the green beans, cut off the ends and cut the beans in half because my weird family is strangely suspicious of green beans that aren't the same size as those in cans. I put those in boiling water -- somewhere in here I put dog food in the dog bowls, spooned some of the gravy over the dog food (oh, c'mon, you don't do that?) threw the neck in one bowl and gizzards in the other and let the dogs know, as only I know how, that I love them dearly. They burped and let me know they love me, too.

Then, poof! It was all done! Milo was crying hysterically at this point because he was going to D-I-E if he didn't get to eat turkey N-O-W!! So I sent him down to spread the good word to Dad that dinner was ready. He and Ben raced down together to do that. I carved the turkey, served everyone, and we sat down to eat a meal far less ordinary than our usual Friday night dinner. Gosh it was good and there were lots of leftovers although Chris had to be physically removed from the kitchen to keep from O.D.ing on tryptophan (at his request -- he had a lot of work to do and couldn't afford to pass out like he did last Thursday).

And just because some days are like this, as I was working on carving the left over turkey to go into the fridge, the phone rang. Brian wanted us to know that Santa was coming to Pine Grove Mills to light the little Christmas tree between the two tiny, old churches in downtown PGM and they were going to be serving a couple of metric tons of cookies. Did we want to go? Well, of course, it would save me a trip to the North Pole! (See post below.) So we dressed the boys (better late than never) and bundled up and headed to the old churches. It. was. so. cold. And freakishly windy. Between the incredible darkness and cold and wind, it was really something out of a scary movie, but we were warmed by thoughts of Santa and persevered.

Milo was in heaven. Here he is, having placed himself as close to Santa as anyone dares.


And later, he was third kid on Santa's lap.


Ben ate a few cookies and then took his turn.


And then the rest was cake cookies.


So up next on the agenda was Christmas carols, but I was tiiiired by this time, so Max stayed for that with Brian and his Mom and I took the twins and headed home. By now, it was Siberia outside.

We made it two blocks home -- and folks, I shoulda driven the three blocks with the twinkies. With the wind it was just toooo cold.

AccuWeather Quick Look

Currently at 9:36 PM Temperature: 23 degrees F (-5 C) RealFeel: 9 degrees F (-13 C)

But what are you going to do? So you keep swimming and then suddenly who should come around the corner in his little white bread Fred truck? Superman! He pulled over and we piled in to the tiny passenger seat (Dude, it was coooold, we MADE it work.) and drove the rest of that long walk up the hill home in his toasty warm truck.

Yay, Dad!

That's it. With all that excitement everyone hopped into pjs early and Chris is the only one planning to stay up tonight. G'night.