Thanksgiving Dinner

Before and after shots...

Smoked turkey thigh, corn on the cob, mashed sweet potato with honey and butter, tossed salad with italian dressing, asparagus with cheese sauce, assorted garnishes, and wine and a Cavebear Sling (1.5 oz gin, 1 oz of lemon juice, fill up glass with ginger ale over ice)...

 After...

Good holiday meal for oneself...  A bit late posting, but I enjoyed the meal. 

Thanksgiving Day 2014

I'm thankful for a lot of stuff, but I mention those things as they happen.  Today was TURKEY DAY!  I often don't bother cooking a turkey, for several reasons:

1.  I assume a standing invitation to visit my sister for Thanksgiving day.  Sometimes I visit, but 2 hours driving each way is a lot for me (I hate driving at all) and I especially hate holiday traffic on crowded interstate highways like we have here. 

2.  I used to cook Thanksgiving Dinner for all my single friends, but over the years, they have gotten married, left the area, or gradually faded away.  It was a habit from when I had apartment roommates for whom a TV dinner was a challenge.

3.  The smallest whole turkey is about 10-11 lbs and that's too much for 1 person (even with 3 cats)

4.  A turkey breast is smaller, but white meat is not my favorite.

5.  I prefer the dark meat, but turkey thighs cost $5 a pound this year and chicken thighs (my most regular meat) is only $1.29  and turkey isn't much different from chicken.

But I decided to go for a turkey this year.  Partly, I wanted to hickory-smoke a whole turkey, just because I hadn't for years, and partly just to fully participate in a holiday for a change.  So I had the frozen turkey all thawed in the fridge for 4 days, brined it overnight; and injected it with a mixture of apple juice, cinnamon and spices. 

Most of the smoke gets in meat during the first couple hours so I did 2 hours and then let the briquets die down til it was 200F in the smoker and transferred the turkey to the pre-heated 250F oven.  It was slow...  But I wasn't on a schedule, so "whenever done, its done". 

I did it a bit fancy for just me after that.  Baked brussel sprouts with grated nutmeg, asparagus with grated cheese and melted butter, small potatoes, a nice tossed salad, gravy, and a can of "sweet potatoes in syrup".  Zinfandel wine.

Well, one bite of the canned sweet potatoes in syrup and that went straight to the compost bin.  YUCK!  The rest was good.  Well, the packaged gravy was salty.  I had it sitting around for years so decided to use it.  I make it better myself.  The brussels sprouts were good, the new potatoes (home-grown) were good, and I always love a tossed salad with italian dressing.

The turkey was PERFECT!  Probably the best I've done.  The smokiness was just right, the brine kept even the breast meat moist, and the injected flavors were just right.  I am convinced that 2-3 hours of smoking outdoors and finishing up in the oven at 250 is the way to go.  And I do that thing of cooking it breast side up half way and turning it breast down the remaining half.  It makes a difference.  "Breast side down" the last half of cooking keeps the breast moistened by thigh meat fats dripping down the sides.

To be fair, the 450F oven cooking for 30 minutes and then lowering the temp to 350 works pretty good too and I've usually done that for faster cooking (and more reliable timing), but the slow-cooking is best.

I don't set out a whole table display (its just me), so there isn't much to show, but the turkey had a beautiful mahogany skin, so I have a picture of that. 

I hope all of you who went the turkey path today had great dinners too.

Winter Solstice

Darn, I missed it!  Well, I did notice it a couple of times during the day, but only when I was busy doing something else.  I suppose that doesn't matter.  It's not like I need to do anything that day, I just like it.  But I didn't get around to posting...

It means the days will be getting longer.  And even though it means it will be getting colder for 3 months, it means that gardening season starts again in a couple weeks.  Not the planting, but the seed ordering.  And even then, it will only be 4 weeks before I can plant the first seeds in flats under lights in the basement!  After that, it's not too long to transplanting the sprouts to individual cells and then outside.

I plan to plant a lot more flowers this year.  I spent 10 years focussing on perennials for the convenience of not replanting every year, but quite frankly, most of them aren't worth having.  So many perennials bloom for a week or two and then they're done for the year.  Some bloom most of the season (coneflowers, black-eyed susans, reblooming daylilies) and I'm keeping those.  Some make quite an impact with just a few plants (oriental lilies, stokes aster).  Some are for the foliage anyway (hostas).

So I've been growing more annuals the past few years.  The season-long blooming of 30 square feet of bright zinnias is worth the hour it takes to plant them outside.

Two such patches of different color zinnias,  one of marigolds, and one of vivid salvia will go a long way and cost less than one hosta.

But back to Winter Solstice.  I like the more natural holidays, the ones that occur for uncomplicated real reasons.  New Years Day,  Summer Solstice, Thankgiving, Winter Solstice...  Near Year's Day is as artificial as can be (because calendars are completely artificial), but I like it because that's the first day of the current calendar, and you might as well celebrate a new year starting.  Summer Solstice is OK as a natural event, but somehow the longest day of the year doesn't have the same meaning as the shortest day.  At Summer Solstice, I'm not noticing the change in day-length all that much.

Thanksgiving is close to the best holiday.  Coming from a long line of farmers and having a strong sense of agriculture through history, I appreciate the importance and relief of a good Fall harvest.  Especially those crops that don't keep well (it's eat it or lose it)!  Even with year-round fresh food in these modern times, a Winter grocery store tomato is NOT the same as an August tomato from the back yard.

But I personal like Winter Solstice for the historical agricultural reasons above.  Maybe (as an ancestor) the Fall Harvest was not what you hoped it would be, but the Winter Solstice is the promise and hope of a better year ahead.  Promise and hope can keep you going in April when you are down to your last moldy or shriveled potatoes, carrots, and apples.  And lucky to have those.

(site said the image was "free")

I suppose I should mention Ground Hog Day.  It's not an accident that it is halfway between the 1st day of Winter and the 1st day of Spring.  In olden days, it meant "we've made it halfway, we can get through the other half".   And there is even a reason for that celebration.  From what I've read (disclaimer clause), Winter weather warms up earlier in Europe, sometimes starting in early February.  For pre-calendar farmers there, the emergence of hibernating burrowing mammals (hedgehogs, marmots) was a good sign that it was the time to plant the earliest Spring crops.  However, if shadows were seen (meaning clear bright days, meaning still-cold weather) it was best to wait a couple of weeks.  When those Europeans arrived in NE North America (where the climate stayed colder longer being on the eastern side of a continent), they had to adjust the timing.  And they had to adjust the animal.

So instead of small hedgehogs who HAD to emerge earlier because they had smaller fat reserves (and who don't exist in NA), they went by the larger groundhogs (2 foot tall marmots like land-based beavers without a tail, for my European friends) who could afford to check outside conditions and retreat for more hibernation if required.

So, I'll add Groundhog Day to my list of "natural" holidays even though I don't think it was a very good guide for planting (sunny days occur rather randomly in NA Winters).  A good measure of Groundhog Day sense in NA is that nobody sends Groundhog Day cards to friends.  LOL!

And lastly?  I like these holidays because there isn't much theology involved in them.  Natural and calendar events just "are" and you don't have to worry about them.  I DO like that...  :)

Turkeyless Thanksgiving Day, Sorta...

I bought a turkey today...

Dad and I were invited to have Thanksgiving Dinner at my sister's.  I don't usually make a big deal out of holidays.  Having lived alone for many years, I find they start to seem a bit pointless.  But I do usually visit my sister on Thanksgiving every few years.  In fact I probably like Thanksgiving most of all the holidays.  When I was a younger adult, I enjoyed making a holiday dinner for my bachelor friends.  New Year and Fourth of July are good ones for me, too.

So when my sister invited Dad and me this year, I thought it would be a good idea.  I don't LIKE driving, especially on holidays, but Dad seemed interested and my sister thought it would be nice for the younger generation to see Dad (since he had been down in FL for 4 years).

But Dad's decisions are always temporary.  A few days beforehand, I mentioned the trip again.  That's usually the best way to keep him "on board".  The trip suddenly seemed like a LOT to him.  He asked what state she was in and what day we would have to leave.  I explained it was only a 2 hour drive there and 2 hours back.  He decided that was too much car time and decided not to go.

He may have been concerned about the "car time", which can be annoying in holiday traffic.  He may have been concerned about a busy house with lots of noise and commotion.  He may just have not wanted to leave the house (he hardly walks even a step outside much anymore).

So I expressed our regrets to my sister (his daughter of course, but that sounds oddly circular).

But it also meant no turkey on Thanksgiving Day.  I would have needed to find a fresh turkey the day before Thanksgiving and I've gone grocery shopping that day before and try to avoid it.  Fortunately, I had some Filet Mignon in the freezer, asparagus, and corn on the cob, so we did have a relatively "fancy" meal. 

Which also leads to being happy to go grocery shopping today.  I always figure that the day after Thanksgiving HAS to be about the slowest grocery store day of the year.  And it was at the regular store.  I never saw so many shopping carts available before, LOL! 

I also bought a turkey.  88 cents per pound!  Can anything be less in demand the day after Thanksgiving?  Well, maybe champagne on Jan 2nd...  But the turkey is frozen, so it will be a few days to thaw out.  I'll do the basics.  Mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing...  Dad doesn't eat much at a time these days, so I can't go "whole hog" on it.  But he will probably remember it as "Thanksgiving Dinner" for a few weeks.

The sad part is that after we had our steak dinner Thanksgiving Day evening, after we watched the parades on TV, after we watched a traditional football game, Dad asked me when Thanksgiving Day was going to be.  I froze for a few seconds trying to think of what to say.  I finally said "In just a few days, and I'll make your favorite stuff". 

So, that's why I bought a turkey today...