{"id":1590,"date":"2007-11-24T16:46:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-24T23:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/24\/on-thanksgiving-2\/"},"modified":"2011-05-09T15:22:21","modified_gmt":"2011-05-09T21:22:21","slug":"on-thanksgiving-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/on-thanksgiving-2\/","title":{"rendered":"On Thanksgiving…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally published at Kickin’ the new Kuh-nowledge<\/a>. You can comment here or there<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I convinced my boss that I didn’t have to drive up to Chicago this week… meaning that I could work from home all week instead of doing my normal weekly commute.\u00a0 Saves gas.\u00a0 Saves time.\u00a0 Saves my sanity.<\/p>\n

Liz had arranged for us to buy a turkey from a local farm<\/a>.\u00a0 One of the nice things about living out here in the middle of the farm belt is that…\u00a0 well… uhm…\u00a0 you can go to a farm and buy shit.\u00a0 Seriously, you can buy just about anything.\u00a0 Meat, veggies, fruits.\u00a0 It’s all available locally (at least during the summer).<\/p>\n

Anyway, we picked up our bird (14.8 pounds) that had just been killed the day before and made our way home.\u00a0 They don’t clean the gizzard for you on the farm so that was a neat experience.\u00a0 I had no idea that turkeys (and I assume other birds) use small rocks in their gizzards to basically grind up their food.\u00a0 The sack that holds these rocks needs to be removed before you can use the gizzard for cooking (and yes, I do use the gizzard for cooking).<\/p>\n

There are two ways to cut this sack out.\u00a0 The easy way or the hard way.\u00a0 I easy way makes a mess and then you must clean the gizzard thoroughly before using it.\u00a0 The hard way require precision.\u00a0 I chose the hard way, and as the poet said… that has made all the difference.\u00a0 ;) <\/p>\n

Once the gizzard operation was complete and the giblets were cleaned, we proceeded with our turkey cooking extravaganza…<\/p>\n

First… the giblets and wing tips go in some water to make turkey broth.\u00a0 Turkey broth is important because you’ll need it for both the stuffing and the gravy.\u00a0 If you don’t have enough… no worries.\u00a0 You can always substitute chicken broth.<\/p>\n

Second…\u00a0 make the injection concoction.\u00a0 I use butter and dry sherry.\u00a0 You can use whatever you like, but you can’t go wrong with butter and sherry.\u00a0 Inject this concoction liberally throughout the breast area and anywhere else you want to add it.\u00a0 If you prefer brining, to injecting, that works too.\u00a0 The idea here is to end up with a moist bird.\u00a0 Either method will work.\u00a0 The method that will NOT work is basting.\u00a0 Basting is a waste of time.<\/p>\n

Finally…\u00a0 the stuffing.\u00a0 For me, the best stuffing in the world is oyster stuffing made with cornbread.\u00a0 This year, though, because some of our guests don’t like seafood, we opted for two different stuffings.\u00a0 One was a chestnut, sausage and mushroom dressing Liz found.\u00a0 The other was just a standard old school nothing special stuffing.\u00a0 Keep in mind that the bird doesn’t necessarily need to be stuffed.\u00a0 If you like the idea of stuffing the bird, add some cooking time to cover for it.\u00a0 I normally stuff the bird, but I think in the future I’m not going to bother.\u00a0 I’ll just make the stuffing separately to save some time.<\/p>\n

The dinner itself was fun.\u00a0 We had four guests.\u00a0 They thoroughly enjoyed the food (bird, cranberry chutney, green bean casserole, parsnip and celery root and sweet potato au gratin, mashed potatoes, broccoli, stuffing, salad,\u00a0 pumpkin pie, strawberry-rhubarb pie).\u00a0 We thoroughly enjoyed their company.
\nAs for what I’m thankful for…\u00a0 there is too much to name.\u00a0 I’m most thankful for Liz…\u00a0 the rest follows from there.<\/p>\n

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.\u00a0 I\u00a0 know I did.<\/p>\n

–sam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published at Kickin’ the new Kuh-nowledge. You can comment here or there. I convinced my boss that I didn’t have to drive up to Chicago this week… meaning that I could work from home all week instead of doing my normal weekly commute.\u00a0 Saves gas.\u00a0 Saves time.\u00a0 Saves my sanity. Liz had arranged for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1590"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1887,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590\/revisions\/1887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}