Turkey, turkey, turkey…

As promised, here’s a recap of the Thanksgiving meal Wife and I made. Everything turned out pretty well. Juggling burners in our tiny kitchen was a bit of a challenge, but everything ended up coming out together and it was all really good.

We had a pretty aggressive menu planned for the amount of space we had to prepare it in:

Turkey
Dressing
Mashed potatoes
Gravy
Corn
Green beans with butter and almonds
Candied sweet potatoes
Jello salad
Rolls
Pumpkin pie

The turkey was done with the tried and true AB method. Blast it at high heat to brown it and then bake at a lower temp until the breast meat hits 161. Dressing was my grandma’s recipe that I’ve made for the family the last few holidays. It came out really well, possibly some of the best I’ve ever made.

For the mashed potatoes I tried something different. According to a couple websites and a cookbook on our shelf the best mashed potatoes are made by using a two part cooking process. The first cooking is at around 160 degrees for 30 minutes followed by a cool down period. After cooling down the potatoes are cooked again at 180-190 for another 30 minutes. This cooking process is supposed to keep the starches from breaking out of the cells and making the potatoes gummy. It seemed like it worked for that, but I don’t have a potato ricer or food mill so the effect was somewhat lost due to the lumps.

I couldn’t have been happier with the gravy. The only thing that was missing was more of it! Everything else was fine. Wife made it all possible with a ton of help throughout the day and by making the rolls and pie the day before. The rolls were from a recipe that her great-grandmother made, and the pie was extremely tasty, especially with the real whipped cream we made with it.

Mmmm….I might need to pull some leftovers out of the freezer for dinner.

Now that's a nice looking bird.















Gravy doesn't photograph well, but it sure is tasty!



















The table all set and waiting for us to dive in.

Cheers,
Frog