John's First Turkey

John was too young last year for turkey. This was his first turkey. He enjoyed the turkey and the mashed potatoes, found the Brussels sprouts to be acceptable, and thought that cranberry sauce was some kind of crewel joke. He thought the dressing had too much flavor, and shunned it for mashed potatoes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

so, the "flash" cooked turkey, that was supposed to take 2 hours took 3.5 hours. It came out at 8pm and we ate at 9! At least it came out well. Here is what we had:

Brined Good Eats Roast Turkey (11 lbs): Brined in Veg stock I stay up the night before making, along with salt and spices and sugar. Flash roasted at 500 degrees for 30 min to brown, then covered in foil and roasted at 350 until breast meat was 161 degrees (measured with my probe thermometer). Came out well browned, with intense turkey flavor, moist. I roasted on a v-rack covered in foil, that was supposed to keep the nasty wire lines from getting on the underside of the turkey. Instead, kept bottom skin from browning. Won't be doing that again. Did not affect meat.
I think I should have spiced the skin better, other than just salt and pepper. Maybe removed the breast shield in the last 30 minutes or so.
Used large disposable tin roaster. This thing sucked and was hard to brown gravy. Wednesday night we tried to put the brined turkey (sealed in a ultra-thick trash compactor bag) to rest in this and the wire handles tore the bag and spilled my hard-made brine all over the floor! We quickly plugged the hole and put the turkey and brine in a new bag. Totally need a real roasting pan.

Good Eats Gravy: made with roast drippings and wine, reduced then thickened w/ roux I made 2 hours before. Came out pretty good, not salty at all. If anything, a little brown. My first gravy!

Mashed Potatoes: Boiled Yukons mashed and dried out a little over the stove before adding butter and (a little) whipping cream. Came out really well, and I don't even like mashed potatoes! My first mashed potatoes.

Stuffing from a box of seasoned breadcrumbs: mixed with sauteed celery and onion and mushrooms and browned butter and chicken broth from a can. Baked after turkey was out and resting. Good and flavorful. I always make this.

Canned biscuits and canned jelly cranberry with is my favorite kind anyway.

roasted 1 yam in the oven and it exploded and glued onto the oven door. My mom insisted there be a roast yam, but it never got eaten, what with the fresh mashed potatoes and the stuffing around!

Braised Brussels Sprouts: Seamed them for 10 minutes, refrigerated them. Then browned them in butter and garlic in the cast iron. Came out caramelized and good.

Sweet potato pie: Pealed and cut up 3 large yams, cut them into chunks and steamed them for 20 minutes. Mashed them and added them to the stand mixer with 5 egg yolks, yogurt, sugar and spices. baked along with stuffing while turkey rested. Came out pretty well, but the cheap frozen crust fell apart. Now its sweet potato pudding! Its not too sweet, and has a strange yogurt tang. which is good, I guess.

OK, I think that's it! I wrote that mostly so I know what I did and what I can do different next time.

new teeth

John is breaking in all four canine teeth this week. The tips of the bottom right canine is now visible. He is also cutting the back molars. This is making him irritated. This is making us irritated. But John continues in mostly good spirits. I made an excellent tamale pie on Monday, and we all enjoyed it for several days. Then we spent the next few days on cup of noodle in anticipation of Thanksgiving. John has learned some new dance moves, doing a version of the Twist along to his baby TV shows. He also does the "I'm happy because I'm doing something bad" dance and clap. We re-arranged the furniture in the living room and bedroom over the past week.
Charles' work had a pot luck on Wednesday and we brought John. He wasn't interested in eating anything, only running around messing with computers and dry erase markers. I had to kill an hour or so when Charles was finishing work, so I took John out to the courtyard there. There is a large wisteria vine out there that has dropped all its seeds. They looked like large dry beans. John and I picked them up and put them in a Slurpee container we found (and I washed). That kept John busy for a long time. Then we came home and dropped off John with Nana and went to work. It was very busy in Berkeley. People buying puzzles and party games to bring to the family.
Then, we hurried back home so I could brine the turkey, which took me way too long. I had to make my own vegetable stock for it first, which I should have done on Tuesday, but that became relax and nap day. Oh well, I went to bed at 3 am and got up at noon! So, no Thanksgiving dinner until 8pm for us!

Monday, Monday

Wow, last night was one of the first in a long time when we had to get up in the middle of the night to comfort John. He woke up at about 5:00 this morning and cried and cried. Finally mama and I went downstars and he was inconsolable, even when we picked him up and gave him a bottle. Usually he's pretty good about quieting down when he gets what he wants, so when he kept crying we figured that something was up. After a few minues he started to calm down a little bit, but he didn't want to be left alone at all. In fact, he wanted to be held by mama only! After about a half hour or so we decided that he either had bad gas or a sore tooth. He wouldn't let us touch his mouth, so we gave him some ibuprofen and cuddled him for a while. Finally we brought him upstairs with us and gave him a bottle. He drank it and went to sleep between mama and me. The cats woke us up at about 7:00 AM and mama took John down to his crib when she went down to feed the cats. John let mama sleep late, but papa was a tired puppy all day!