Posts tagged thanksgiving

Things I’m thankful for:

-My wife:

-My family
-The best job in the world
-Penny Lane and Elenor Rigby

-The Avett Brothers
-Okkervil River
-The Beatles
-The Mountain Goats
-TV On The Radio
-David Bazan
-CD Central
-Sunday Valley

-Comic books
-Local comic book stores
-Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
-Comic book movies finally getting good
-Casanova

-The Food Network
-Alton Brown
-30 Rock
-Mad Men
-It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia
-Freedom
-My health
-Having enough money to live comfortably and do some things I like
-A great new editing system

-Co-workers that trust me creatively
-sushi
-Lamb
-Pork tacos
-Donald Miller
-Sex
-Mountain Dew
-Dos Equis
-The internet
-Nofilmschool.com
-The affordability of Canon 7Ds
-Adobe products

-Apple products
-Warm running clothes for winter
-Memories of my grandparents
-All my past relationships
-That I’m no longer in those past relationships
-Growing up in a small town
-About a million other things that I’ll think of later and wish I had included

The bird

o I decided I was going to cook Thanksgiving dinner for Sara’s family this year. Actually Sara decided we were both gonna do it, but I’m a control freak, so that meant I did it by myself (and Sara needed the sleep).

The first thing I did was put our bird into a brine, two days before it was to be cooked. The brine was made of water, brown sugar, salt, two oranges, two lemons, and rosemary. I didn’t have a non-reactive container big enough to hold it all, so I used three trash bags, one inside of the other:



Once the big day arrived, I got up around 7:00 am, and started chopping vegetables for the stuffing. The veggies were roasted then combined with some mushrooms, chicken stock (I was gonna make my own stock, but decided to make it easy on myself when the day came), breadcrumbs and spices. Here’s the veggies roasting away, and the bird stuffed full of the eventual mixture:




Besides using the brining process to flavor the bird, I also rubbed some butter under it’s skin. I was told by one person that this was probably redundant in the face of a two day brine, but decided to go for it anyway. When has butter ever been redundant?

Once the turkey was stuffed and buttered, I tied it up and shingled it with bacon strips. Because bacon makes everything better:


The turkey cooked under a tin foil tent for about three hours. I put it in at 450 to sear the bird and then immediately turned the oven down to 325 for a long, slow cook. I basted it every 20 minutes or so. For the last half hour I removed the tin foil tent and the bacon and added some butter to give the bird time to brown.

When it was all done I sliced it up (badly - I’m a terrible carver) and served it on a bed consisting of the bacon I’d wrapped it in, and some sautéed mushrooms.


Along with the bird, I made garlic and thyme mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole, fresh green beens with shallots, sweet potato casserole, and of course the stuffing from inside the bird. Here’s the casseroles:


There was only one casualty. I gave the tip of my thumb for everyone’s culinary enjoyment:


Everybody seemed to enjoy the food and I had a blast cooking it. I’m looking forward to next year already.