Thanksgiving in Boone

Well… this is kind of a crossover post between the cooking blog and the regular blog… but it’ll land here, since food was kind of the main event.

Given the nature and scope of cooking for Thanksgiving meals… the below descriptions will be a rough overview… If you want to know any one part more in detail… just drop us a line, give us a call, or leave us a comment… we’ll fill you in on the specifics.

Last Friday, Nov 5th, we had our annual Thanksgiving in Boone. We always try to do a Thanksgiving here before heading home to have Thanksgiving with the family. This year, we had some special guests as well… our exchange student Gaby came over… Josh came over…. and Martha flew in all of the way from Minnesota just to come to our Thanksgiving…. well… ok … Martha was really in the area to go to a wedding… but she did drive several hours from the airport to come to Thanksgiving, and then several hours back to the wedding… so she still gets extra bonus points…

So… lets talk menu. To shake things up a bit… we actually got the bulk of our Thanksgiving recipes from our Cooking Light magazines that Nat and Erin subscribed us to as a wedding present. Let me take a minute to say another thing… EVERYTHING that was served this Thanksgiving was made possible by Virginia’s small hands… I stood back and she took control of the whole thing… the menu.. the shopping… the preparing… everything… She really did an outstanding job… everything was hot at the same time…. everything was ready to hit the table at the same time… and everything was delicious…. so.. any time I say “We” … it’s purely out of convenience… just convert “We” to “Virginia” as you read.

First… the Turkey:

We decided to do a brined turkey this year…. in the past, we’ve done a crockpot turkey … a turkey breast in the oven… and a few turkey legs on the grill (well… the legs weren’t for Thankgiving… but… really… how many times do you cook any part of a Turkey??)

So.. the brine consisted of 8 cups apple cider… 8 cups water… salt / pepper … some Jalapenos… and perhaps a few other various spices… You mix up the brine.. and drop the bird in… then, put it in the fridge for 24 hours or so….

While our turkey was taking a bath in the fridge… Virginia got working on some side dishes…. first up was fresh cranberry sauce:

Fresh cranberries… some orange zest… and some Lindemans Framboise Lambic beer…. it’s a fruity / raspberry type beer… so it added a bit of sweetness…and a bit of sugar… then, everything cooks down and gets all happy… at which point, it’s ready to come out of the pot and into the fridge….

Virginia also used this time to make some cheese chive challa bread… that stuff was awesome… unfortunately… I got a bit slack with pictures as there was a lot going on.. and it was hard to keep up…

So… fast forward a bit… the turkey has been thoroughly enjoying its bath… now it’s time to get under its skin…. quite literally in fact.. so… Virginia used a mixture of secret spices… and rubbed them under the skin of the bird… she started at the neck… and worked her way back… until she had the turkey completely spiced up from the inside…

Yeah… she got elbow deep into this bird.

Next, it was time for some additions in and around the bird… this would consist of some poblano peppers and some fuji apples…

Let’s cover something really quick like… if you’re cutting peppers… and then apples… some of the spice might be transferred from the peppers to the apples through the knife….

Virginia temporarily forgot that….

After chopping the peppers and apples into manageable sized slices… you want to cram a bunch inside of the turkey…

Whatever doesn’t fit inside of the bird will go around the outside of the bird in the roasting pan…

Then, top things off with a good handful of fresh cilantro… because of course.. cilantro makes everything better…

 

So… other dishes included:

stuffing / dressing (I call it stuffing.. but apparently if it’ not inside the bird… it doesn’t count as stuffing… it’s dressing then…) but.. the stuffing Virginia made was a sourdough stuffing with sausage…

the cranberries from above…

crockpot macaroni and cheese

green bean casserole…

the bread from above…

mashed sweet potatoes….

and for dessert…. a pumpkin cheesecake with gingerbread cookie crust…. I’ m sure I’ve forgotten something… so if you read this tonight… it may very well change by tomorrow morning….

really really really fast forward……

 

Left to right: Martha, Virginia, Josh, Gaby

and here’s a closeup of the wreckage…

It all was outstanding… the turkey was moist and crazy juicy… the stuffing was perfect… and the macaroni and cheese was out of this world… I’m trying to get Virginia to make another batch of the macaroni and cheese… so hopefully there will be another blog update on that soon… if not… send Virginia multiple e-mails and call her hourly until she agrees to make it again and share the recipe with the world…

 

Until next time…..