After Thanksgiving Memories...

Well, how did your Turkey Day go??

Ours was spectacular, truly wonderful. We cooked most of everything Wednesday.. Mary Joan chopped and stirred and gave a rousing moral support effort. When iI thought I was too tired to do the final item on our list, (splaying the turkey) she cheered me on and said "if you do it now all will be done then we can go to dinner at Don Pepe's and someone can serve you and when you get home we can watch a movie". That was all I needed so we attacked the turkey. Splayed, then rubbed with lemon juice and olive oil and covered in lemon zest, lots of fresh thyme ( from my garden), salt and pepper then wrapped tight and off to bed in the fridge.

Thursday morning we watched Macy's Parade and relaxed, walked the dogs and delivered pumpkin bread to the neighbors. All that was left was to reheat the potatoes, sweet and mashed, steam the broccoli, make the cranberry sauce, with apples and orange zest. And of course cook the turkey and make the stuffing and gravy. Well, the stuffing we did early, since it wasn't going into the bird, therefore we could wrap in foil and keep warm, the gravy takes time but, since I had made the stock the day before all I had to do was saute the oyster mushrooms and then go at making the gravy with, wondra, 1/2 & 1/2, salt pepper and a dash of chervil.

NOW THE FUN PART! The 18lb turkey was huge and looked even more so since it was splayed. So I cut off the legs and put them in a grill basket, and placed on the grill. The breast, and it was the biggest, plumpest, turkey breast I have ever seen, I just placed on the grill bone side down. Daddy was manning the grill (yeah Dad!) the first side was perfect. 15 minutes and gorgeous.. So, Daddy flipped the legs and I came out to help and flipped the breast, lid on grill.

And we came back in the house.. a couple minutes later I looked outside and the webber kettle was smoking like crazy. "DAAAAAAADDDDDY we have a fire", I called out.. He rushes out takes the lid on and yep... FIRE. Then he takes the legs off and I run out with 2 forks and stab the breasts and lift off and it is a ball of fire! We are all standing around blowing, swearing and waving and praying that too much damages hasn't been done.. So right into the house we go.. I wipe off the charcoal residue and it wasn't too bad.. actually it was all the fresh thyme stems burning and not the actual bird, so we places legs and breast on a deep baking pan and into the oven at 325.

well 90 minutes later.. we pulled out the best looking and definitely the best tasting Turkey I have ever made. I was moist and had a wonderful grill/smoked flavor. truly great.

Other than the Turkey adventure the rest of the meal was smooth sailing and easy and turned out just like I wanted..

Hope yours did too..

I attempted to take some photos of the food just before everyone "dug" in.. At least you get the ideas of what it looked like before we took our plates to my beautiful table...

Remember: IF YOU WANT RECIPES, WRITE TO ME! you can do it on comments.. Love, Tracey