The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 22 trips to carry that many people.
It usually starts before turkey day, the impending doom that cooks goes through, It seems that in order to earn your star you must cook the perfect turkey. The traditional thanksgiving dinner features the roasted turkey as the main attraction. Something as simple as roasting a bird turns into a make or break test that your foodie group will take note of. (well maybe not If you serve enough wine).
Amid the media blitz of thousands of ways to cook a turkey, or even omit it for a more eclectic dinner, it’s you and the turkey, so this year it’s the same but different. Turkey relaxation techniques come to mind. Be cool and clear the kitchen of distractions and negativity such as any low or fat free, or over processed food items ! So this is how it goes.
The butterball was the bird acquired and meat stuffing was the filling to be. I baked some bread previously and oven dried it to use for the stuffing and a combination of ground beef and and uncased sausage was sautéed thanksgiving eve with some vegetable stock and seasoned, stored in the fridge.
Dawn…. Keep breakfast in mind as the cook (and the cooks helper) needs the proper nourishment while in the kitchen along side the wine, coffee, and food tasting, and don’t rely only on food tasting along the way for balance. Possible a bagel an egg with cheese with a crisp bacon shard and fresh grapes will suffice, sounds good and tasty.
I left the fresh bird out of the fridge for a couple of hours to get it towards room temperature. The bird unwrapped, was placed in the roaster on the rack, remove the neck and the giblets to the stock pot. Next to the turkey as far as importance, I like to make the stock, for the gravy and other uses.
Carrots, celery, and saved in the fridge scraps from vegetable peelings go in the stock pot with added boiling water, and seasoned as the cook sees fit, goes on the back burner, covered, to simmer and to provide aromatic support and some humidity to the kitchen.
The stuffing slightly warmed to room temperature to break it up after being refrigerated, was tossed with the dried, hand torn bread. Now lightly stuff both cavities of the bird and truss, this bird was prepared by the purveyor as such so the legs were tucked under the ring of skin and I just skewered the neck cavity to close. Loosen the skin covering the breast and for flavor place uncooked bacon and thyme under the skin. Off to the oven at about 325 Fahrenheit. I’ll probably have to check it at least couple of hundreds of times while it’s cooking ! :-p. Really, I’ll baste it even though it’s a butter ball, the bacon and stuffing drippings are flavor full.
Checks at the one and two hours marks, the bird was beginning to brown evenly so a aluminum foil heat shield was added to the top. Also fiddling with the thermostat more towards 350 and then backed off at various times is part of the roasting procedure. An analog bi- metal coil type oven thermometer give a indication of the change in oven temp. The large thermometer inserted in the front of the bird provided another metric for reference. And just to be anal use a quick read tmometer . Surprisingly there wasn’t much dripping as expected and I don’t add any water to the drip pan.
Started early enough so the turkey would be done before the scheduled sit down time which is also an approximation,depending on if your fellow diners are a strict schedule (or like to impose on on the cook!) ,experience gained from single oven meal preparation, dictates that a suitable sized cooler, or more aptly termed a insulated container is ready to accept the foil wrapped bird when it reaches close to desired maximum temperature. Now the oven is ready to accept the side dishes for cooking. With the turkey removed from the oven, a sigh of relief!!!!!!!!!!! The rest as they say is history.
for more pictures see http://pmetro.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/pre-game/
back yard
Peabody Drive
One of my favorite email newsletters
http://www.rockauto.com/Newsletter/index.html
driveway, renee's truck
driving around the neighborhood
front of the house
topaz
back yard
After tying some of my twitpics graphics to the Metroblog ,I found out they disappear, apparently the URL changes resulting in blanks on the Metroblog where the pictures are supposed to be. Now corrected, Uploaded graphics to WordPress and updated postings that were effected.
pete…….
breakfast yesterday, scrambled eggs, with green onions,tomatoes and chili peppers, hot !
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