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Photos from Thanksgiving

December 3, 2009 By

I was supposed to post these yesterday, but yesterday seemed to come and go before I got a chance!  On Thanksgiving day itself, my Dad, Stepmom, and my Dad’s Stepmom stopped by for a quick visit, then Chris and the kids and I had our dinner. We had turkey, homemade mashed potatoes, canned yams cooked with butter and brown sugar, stuffing, gravy, and green beans. We purposely made extra food so that the next day, Friday, we could pack up the leftovers and take them over to Chris’ Grandparents’ house and have a second Thanksgiving meal with them. These photos are from those two days:

Top row left to right:
1. Chris wearing the IZEA turkey hat 2. Nathan, Ryan, my Dad, my StepGrandma 3. Chris’ Grandpa Edwards

Middle row left to right:
1. Chris’ Grandma Edwards and Kaitlyn 2. The kids at Grandpa and Grandma Edwards’ house 3. Nathan devouring the drumstick

Bottom row left to right:
1. My Springpad t-shirt with “Thanksgiving” and “Holidays” right in the middle 2. Thanksgiving dinner

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The Turkey is Brining…

November 25, 2009 By

I did this sort of product review for Kikkoman two weeks ago. They sent me a bunch of soy sauce and a gift card towards the purchase of turkey and other groceries for a practice Thanksgiving turkey dinner. I had NO idea you could brine turkey in soy sauce, in fact, I had never even tried to brine a turkey.  After getting the Brine recipe, we realized that our biggest obstacle was what the heck to put the turkey IN so it could soak in the brine overnight. I had bought an 8.5 pound turkey breast, so my clever husband looked around the house and came up with this styrofoam cooler that some frozen food samples had come in. The turkey fit perfectly!

Turkey1

Chris came up with the great idea to take out the bottom drawer of our fridge and set the cooler right down on the bottom of the fridge.  I mixed up half a batch of the brine recipe and it filled the cooler to the top.

Turkey3

The next day, Ryan carried the cooler to the sink for me, I drained the brine and then rinsed the turkey with water, put it in a roasting pan, and put it in the oven. Turkey should cook for about 15 minutes per pound, so it was done a few minutes past two hours. I didn’t have all the side dishes ready yet, so I covered it with foil, turned off the oven, and that turkey sat in the cooling-down oven for another hour.

It. Was. PERFECT.

Turkey4

That turkey was so juicy inside that we could cut our slices with just our forks. The five of us devoured so much of that turkey that we barely had leftovers for the next day!

So, it was so successful, we decided to brine the turkey for tomorrow as well. Only, this time we have a 20 pound turkey given to Chris by his company.  Once again Chris came up with the perfect solution for something deep enough to hold the turkey plus the two gallons of brining solution-the refrigerator bin!  Thumbs up to Frigidaire for designing a plastic bin strong enough to hold that much weight.  It’s not quite deep enough, so the turkey is upside down so that the brine soaks mostly into the breast meat, we don’t care much if the bottom of the turkey isn’t brined.  Can you believe this is in our refrigerator?!?

TurkeyBrining

I know I”m posting this kind of late for those of you who might want to try this for yourselves, sorry about that. If you have soy sauce in the house and a container that’s big enough (or an empty refrigerator bin!), and you read this post early enough, get your turkey brining for as long as you can.  It really does improve the juiciness and flavor!

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What’s the rush, Thanksgiving?

September 12, 2008 By

Kaitlyn and I did some shopping yesterday, and while I wasn’t surprised to see magazines at Target with carved pumpkins on the covers, and Halloween costumes and decorations, what did surprise me was that Target also has Thanksgiving decorations out. Because apparently, we are now supposed to completely decorate our houses inside and out for Thanksgiving, just like for Christmas.

Maybe I’m just a cynical grump, but I have a hard enough time keeping my tabletops cleared off enough to accomodate my Christmas decorations for a few weeks let alone have to find places for Autumn Leaf Wreaths and scarecrow bells for heaven’s sakes! I will admit though, I am thinking about sending Thanksgiving gift baskets to my Grandma and Chris’ Grandparents this year, because I think we’re staying home for the holidays this year. It was just too completely stressful and exhausting last year, and I seem to remember Chris and I discussing how nice it would be to just not have to GO anywhere for once.

So yeah, sending a nice basket of fruit and cookies would assuage my guilt about depriving our Grandparents of the joys of our company on Thanksgiving :) What about you? Have you started making Thanksgiving plans yet? Will you be decorating your house and buying flower or gift baskets? It’s not too soon to start thinking about it, at least not according to Target!

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