Thanksgiving
Well.. it was interesting. we had a small party this year. Me, my wife, my parents, the little one, and my nephew. 
I took the Wednesday before off to prep as much as I could. I messed up the turkey is as many ways as possible. I guess the "read the recipe, then read it again" should have been put to better use. I brined the turkey Wednesday afternoon, but I forgot to flip it during the night. So.. very little of the brine actually worked its way into the breast meat. I roasted the spices and ground them like I was supposed to, but, I missed the part in the recipe where it sits for 6 hours with the spice rub on it. In the end, the skin was excellent, but the flavors for the brine were only in the lower half of the turkey (dark meat) and the spice rub was under represented. The house smelled AMAZING, but the flavors were not how I wanted them. My oven also tried to sabotage me. It has a kitchen timer and a cook timer. The cook timer TURNS OFF THE OVEN. I normally use the microwave timer, but I was using that. So I used the wrong one. I kept checking the probe thermometers, and I noticed that the thigh meat had gone down in temperature. Well, the oven had been off for 10 to 15 minutes - lucidly it is convection, so the temperature is a little higher then standard ovens when the fans kick off. but we lost over 45 degrees in the oven temp. I think this affected the moistness of the unbrined turkey breast.
Everything else went well. I made buttermilk yeast rolls early in the day - they came out perfect. The day before I made cranberry sauce and a cranberry chutney, two soups, and prepped for the big day.
My previous post covers the pumpkin cheesecake. I decided to alter my menu a little. I took my pomegranate sauce and added it to the gravy before I added the flour. This added a very nice shallot taste to the gravy and just a hint of fruitiness. I had a few nice coincidences too. When I poured the soup into the bowls it practically plated itself. The creamy texture of the savory butternut squash soup shone like a crescent moon to the peanut soup. I garnished the soup with a few pomegranate seeds. It came out prettier then I had expected.
Everything else went well. I made buttermilk yeast rolls early in the day - they came out perfect. The day before I made cranberry sauce and a cranberry chutney, two soups, and prepped for the big day.My previous post covers the pumpkin cheesecake. I decided to alter my menu a little. I took my pomegranate sauce and added it to the gravy before I added the flour. This added a very nice shallot taste to the gravy and just a hint of fruitiness. I had a few nice coincidences too. When I poured the soup into the bowls it practically plated itself. The creamy texture of the savory butternut squash soup shone like a crescent moon to the peanut soup. I garnished the soup with a few pomegranate seeds. It came out prettier then I had expected.
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