In which we gather for the holiday and eat some really good food
Come in! Come in! Take off your coats, and make yourself comfortable by the fire! The table is set and ready for the holiday.
Jim has been brining the turkey since Tuesday, and he's kept it in the well-house wrapped up in a fermentation bucket and a gigantic ziplock bag.
The brine is just stuffed with wonderful ingredients: apple juice (from our own apples!) and oranges and cloves and garlic and bay leaves and ginger.
The chickens got all the oranges and ginger when we took the turkey out. These chickens are opportunistic omnivores. I wonder if the ginger flavor will show up in the eggs, the way garlic supposedly does?
The turkey is dressed in cheesecloth, and covered with traditional herbs
(somebody sing the Simon and Garfunkel song with me!): parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.
The parsley came from the market, but the other herbs grew in the garden right outside the kitchen window.
After an hour of roasting, he basted it every ten minutes or so for another three hours.
Ooooh, look how beautiful!
In addition to the turkey, we have mashed potatoes (Jim's stepmom taught us the trick of mashing a parsnip into the potatoes for a little extra flavor, along with butter and half-and-half), baked fennel with blue cheese and seeds, Willy's special SanJack, a butternut squash, apples and rosemary dish (all ingredients from the garden except the butter and garlic...next year, I will plant garlic but probably not butter!), stuffing with raisins and dried cranberries and a bunch of other lovely things, and green salad (courtesy of my brother).
Wine, and sparkling cider.
Next year we hope to be serving our own wine and cider, but this year we make do with the stuff from the market.
Mom made the pumpkin pie. Willy had never seen whipped cream being whipped before, so we let him lick the beaters!
Jim has been brining the turkey since Tuesday, and he's kept it in the well-house wrapped up in a fermentation bucket and a gigantic ziplock bag.
The brine is just stuffed with wonderful ingredients: apple juice (from our own apples!) and oranges and cloves and garlic and bay leaves and ginger.
The chickens got all the oranges and ginger when we took the turkey out. These chickens are opportunistic omnivores. I wonder if the ginger flavor will show up in the eggs, the way garlic supposedly does?
The turkey is dressed in cheesecloth, and covered with traditional herbs
(somebody sing the Simon and Garfunkel song with me!): parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.
The parsley came from the market, but the other herbs grew in the garden right outside the kitchen window.
After an hour of roasting, he basted it every ten minutes or so for another three hours.
Ooooh, look how beautiful!
In addition to the turkey, we have mashed potatoes (Jim's stepmom taught us the trick of mashing a parsnip into the potatoes for a little extra flavor, along with butter and half-and-half), baked fennel with blue cheese and seeds, Willy's special SanJack, a butternut squash, apples and rosemary dish (all ingredients from the garden except the butter and garlic...next year, I will plant garlic but probably not butter!), stuffing with raisins and dried cranberries and a bunch of other lovely things, and green salad (courtesy of my brother).
Wine, and sparkling cider.
Next year we hope to be serving our own wine and cider, but this year we make do with the stuff from the market.
Mom made the pumpkin pie. Willy had never seen whipped cream being whipped before, so we let him lick the beaters!
I am very full of food, but not too sleepy to walk down to the pasture and share all the carrot and apple peelings with the horses.
Life = Good. I = Thankful.
Lucky chickens! Ours used to eat every table scrap we had.
ReplyDeleteYour dinner sounded fantastic!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanks for sharing your day with us!
ReplyDeletethat is a beautiful turkey! wish i could have tasted turkey this year (sigh).
ReplyDeletethey have ziplock bags big enough for turkeys? crazy!
i keep telling myself that christmas in germany makes up for the lack of thanksgiving, but it was a rough week here for me.
now i drive around and see lights and decorated trees and i can't wait to see the christmas markets!
~lytha
Oh, what a happy looking feast! Did you watch football after eating?
ReplyDeleteNo football for us--the television isn't even plugged into the wall, and we (purposely) don't have cable or any other connection.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the computers are perfectly capable of streaming football. Shhhh.
You know, I could do without TV and not even miss it. (If I can download my Dr. Who and Fringe!) But it's just not a holiday without a ball game going in the background!
ReplyDelete