Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

đŸŽ¶ Those boots were made for mockin’ đŸŽ”

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

This really is a full service blog.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

No Justins, No Peace

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Republicans in disarray!

You are here: Home / Food & Recipes / Food / Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving Dinner

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So the frills on the frilly apron have drooped in all the heat from the oven and the tiara is tarnished with all the sweat, but Thanksgiving Dinner came out perfect!

First up the pictures.

One spatchcocked turkey preparing to rest for 30 minutes:

resting_turkey

40 minutes later – 30 for the resting and ten for the slicing – and we are ready!

sliced_turkey

The meat was tender, flavorful, and juicy and the skin was crisp!

And now for some sides. Cornbread stuffing and roasted root vegetables – red and purple heritage potatoes, celery, and carrots.

sides

And for desert: double chocolate pie:

double_chocolate_pie

double_chocolate_pie_slice

Here’s the recipes for those that want.

Turkey:

1 14 to 15 lbs turkey

Kosher salt to taste

Freshly cracked black pepper to taste

Rubbed sage to taste

Poultry seasoning to taste

Directions:

Remove the turkey from the wrapping, remove the neck and giblets and set them aside, and pat dry. Then spatchcock the turkey/remove the backbone and set the backbone aside. turn the turkey breast side up and place firm pressure on each turkey breast to break the breast bone. Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper. Mix the salt, black pepper, rubbed sage, and poultry seasoning together to make a dry rub (dry brine). Place the turkey inside up on the baking sheet and coat the inside with 1/2 the dry rub. Turn the turkey over and coat the outside (breast side up) with the remaining dry rub. Place the dry rubbed turkey in the refrigerator for two to four days.

Roasting:

Remove the turkey from the refrigerator one hour prior to roasting. Preheat oven to 425. When oven reaches 425 place the turkey on an oiled/cooking sprayed wire rack set over a roasting pan (to catch the juices) and place in the oven. Roast at 425 for 30 minutes and then reduce the heat to 350. Continue to roast until a probe thermometer inserted into the deepest portion of the breast reads 155 degrees. Then remove from the oven, cover with foil and let rest for 30 minutes before slicing.

Cornbread Stuffing

Ingredients:

Enough cornbread from scratch to fill a 9X11 baking pan

Kosher salt to taste

Freshly cracked black pepper to taste

Crushed sage to taste

One large, sweet onion – chopped fine

Four large stalks of celery – chopped fine

2 Teaspoons of olive oil.

The giblets from a turkey or a large chicken – sauteed and minced fine

Chicken or turkey stock to moisten the stuffing

Directions:

Bake the cornbread. In a sauté pan sweat off the onions in the olive oil. Add the giblets, sauté them, then remove from heat and mince the giblets. Crumble the cornbread in a big mixing bowl and add the sweated off onions, the finely chopped celery, and the finely minced giblets. Add the kosher salt, freshly cracked black pepper, and sage to taste. Mix thoroughly. Add just enough chicken stock to moisten the stuffing and hold it together. Once everything is combined and seasoned to your taste, stuff the turkey. Or, as in this case because the turkey is spatchcocked, place it in a roasting dish and cook it separately. 

To finish the stuffing: place the roasting dish full of stuffing on the upper rack of the oven above the turkey when you turn the heat down to 350 from 425 degrees.

Roasted Root Vegetables

Ingredients:

1 small bag of red heirloom potatoes

1 small bag of purple heirloom potatoes

1 lbs of carrots

4-6 celery stalks (depending on size)

Wash all the vegetables. Cut the potatoes in half and cut the carrots and celery into 1 inch pieces. Toss them in olive oil, kosher salt, and freshly cracked black pepper to taste. Place them in a roasting dish and place the roasting dish on the upper rack of the oven above the turkey and next to the stuffing when you turn the heat down to 350 from 425 degrees.

Turkey Gravy

1 Turkey backbone bisected half way up

1 Turkey neck

3/4 lbs of carrots

4-6 celery stalks (depending on size)

Kosher salt to taste

Freshly cracked black pepper to taste

Directions

Place the turkey backbone and neck in a stock pot and add the salt and black pepper. Chop the carrots and celery into 1 inch pieces and add to the stock pot. Place over high heat, bring to a boil, and let it continue to boil for 2 to 3 hours. Skim off the scum, cool, and transfer to the refrigerator.

An hour before serving remove the stock from the refrigerator, place in a sauce pot over medium heat. Once hot transfer the stock, including veggies, to the blender. High pulse the stock and veggies until everything is incorporated. Transfer back to the pot over medium heat, taste, and re-season as necessary. Once the turkey finishes resting, any pan drippings can be added to the gravy. Because of the carrots and celery you will not need to add any thickening agents (roux, corn starch, potato starch) to the gravy.

Double Chocolate Pie

First off, I’m pretty sure this is actually an Emeril Lagasse recipe. I’ve been making it for a while, and have tweaked a few things, but I’m almost certain I first saw the recipe on an episode of Essence of Emeril in the mid 90s. Now that disclosure is full, away we go.

Double Chocolate Pie is a dark chocolate mousse pie with crushed Double Stuff Oreos folded into the mousse on a crushed Double Stuff Oreo base.

Crust Ingredients:

1/2 a family size package of Double Stuff Oreos

1/2 a cup of melted butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease or baking spray the bottom of a 10 inch springform pan. Crush the Oreos and then mix them with the butter. Place the crushed, buttered Oreos into the bottom of the pie pan or springform pan and make sure you’ve covered the entire bottom. Bake for 10 minutes then remove to the refrigerator to chill and set the crust the rest of the way.

Dark Chocolate Mousse

Step 1: Whipped Cream

Ingredients:

8 Ounces of Heavy Whipping Cream

1 Teaspoon of Vanilla Extract

Directions:

Add 1 Teaspoon of vanilla extract to 8 ounces of heavy whipping cream. Whip until you’ve got stiff peaks. Refrigerate while making the ganache.

Step 2: Dark Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients:

8 Ounces of Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Chips (or your preferred dark chocolate)

8 Ounces of Heavy Whipping Cream

1 Teaspoon of Vanilla Extract

Directions:

Place the 8 ounces of dark chocolate into a mixing bowl and set aside. Place the 8 ounces of heavy whipping cream and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract in a sauce pot and bring to a boil. Immediately remove from the heat and pour the scalded cream over the dark chocolate. Let sit for five minutes. After five minutes whisk the cream and melted chocolate to combine.

Step 3: Making the Mousse

Ingredients:

Freshly Whipped Cream

Fresh Dark Chocolate Ganache

1 family size package of Double Stuff Oreos Crushed

Directions:

Crush the Oreos and set aside. Remove the whipped cream from the refrigerator and fold it into the dark chocolate ganache a little at a time. Once all of the whipped cream is folded into the ganache, fold in 2/3 of the crushed Oreos. Remove pie crust from the refrigerator. Scoop 1/2 the mousse into the springform pan. Smooth the top and then cover with the remaining 1/3 of the crushed Oreos. Then scoop the remaining mousse into the springform pan, smooth the top, and return the pie to the refrigerator to set up for at least three to four hours.

Optional finish (as seen in the pictures above)

After three to four hours make a second batch of ganache. Remove the pie from the refrigerator and remove the springform ring from the pie and base pan. Pour the dark chocolate ganache over the top of the pie, turning the ganache from the center to the edge and then around the sides to form a smooth, dark chocolate ganache glaze/shell for the pie. Return to the refrigerator until ready to serve (at least one hour).

You all are on your own for antacids and stomach pumping!

 

 

Reader Interactions

142Comments

  2. 2.

    Corner Stone

    This god damn spatchcocked Life Flight helicopter has been circling my neighborhood for the last 10 minutes. I sympathize and shit, but find your damn LZ already.

  4. 4.

    DivF

    Very nice. The turkey looked particularly impressive.

    However, given the tags I was expecting an essay on how this approach will affect US national security in the post-2016 world.

  6. 6.

    Yutsano

    Re: the double chocolate cake recipe: I ascribe to the Mario Batali theory of recipes. Once you have taken a recipe and modified it to your tastes you have made it your own. I have a Nigella recipe that I slightly changed and now it’s pretty much my version of it.

  7. 7.

    Diana

    so nice to be able to come back to this blog from dealing with live people … just had thanksgiving with a family where the boy is already an a**hole, the girl’s favorite book is a YA novel where the (female) protagonist does really well at school and nobody cares (true to form, she told me about her favorite book when her family wasn’t listening), and the family is more proud of the boy than the girl, despite the fact that the girl is way better at school.
    Trump voters, of course.
    The more things change, the more they stay the same.

  10. 10.

    DivF

    @Yutsano: agreed. I have a signature cheesecake recipe that is a 25-year evolution of my fathers interpretation of the JoC sour cream cheesecake (also uses the springform pan he gave to me).

  12. 12.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yutsano: The mods are minor: I use a springform pan instead of a pie pan. I use dark chocolate instead of semi-sweet. I ganache the whole thing once done.

  16. 16.

    Babette

    Just wanted to point out that Adam’s turkey, vegetables, and gravy recipes are dairy-free and gluten-free. The stuffing, too, depending on the underlying recipe for the cornbread. This dinner would be a deft accommodation for a guest with dietary restrictions without anybody else noticing.

  17. 17.

    PsiFighter37

    Did you brine the turkey? At his show we went to last night, Alton Brown basically said it’s a crime if you don’t.

  19. 19.

    magurakurin

    you do know that Cole is slagging your turkey on twitter right now?

    No turkey day here. Plus it is already Friday in Japan. Downside, no turkey dinner with gravy and mashed potatoes. Upside, no Black Friday bullshit.

  20. 20.

    Corner Stone

    The commercial for a Sumo wrestler figure skating is like the perfect metaphor for how the press treated the Trump campaign run.

  23. 23.

    chopper

    Doing the big deal tomorrow as that’s when family is in town. big-ass spread tho. gonna be epic. no turkey cause, well, fuck turkey.

  27. 27.

    Corner Stone

    @Origuy: On a bewildering and not heartwarming story note, I was at the store Wednesday and a seriously befuddled young foppy haired male asked me if the bulk Russert potatoes could be the “large potato” the list he was handed called for. I said, “excuse me?” and he said “Is this a large potato? I just came back from college and I don’t know.”
    I am pretty sure we as a people deserve Trump at this point.

  29. 29.

    NotMax

    Lamb Wellington just went into the over. 2 hours and 15 minutes to cook, or so. Then it rests while the sides are heated in the oven. So by 8:15 or thereabouts (local time) all should be ready to serve.

    Normally dine at about 8 or 9, so everything right on schedule.

  33. 33.

    Gin & Tonic

    We are thankful for friends who, basically, let us borrow their house so we could have a displaced Thanksgiving near where my son in law is hospitalized since his problems of Tuesday. The holiday itself was complicated and bittersweet, but we are making the best of a tough situation.

    I suppose things could always be worse.

  34. 34.

    Suzanne

    We went to a Friendsgiving and it was really fun. Good liberal company. We are doing our big meal tomorrow.

    I saw some yarn in a Craftsy ad, but I don’t know what kind it is, and I want to buy some yarn for my mother for Christmas. I was hoping Mnem could help me out. It was shinier than most yarn, and more…..rope-like and less fuzzy.

  35. 35.

    Mnemosyne

    My in-laws went for the pre-cooked T-dinner this year, but when my brother-in-law went to carve the warmed-up turkey, it was still raw inside. Whoops!

    They’re going to have words with the grocery store tomorrow, but for tonight, they just ate sides.

    We had takeout from a local chain, Mimi’s Cafe. Now I’m watching my teenage nephew play Star Wars: Battleground.

  37. 37.

    NotMax

    @PsiFighter37

    Another advantage to springing for a kosher turkey. They’re already brined. Remove neck and giblets, thorough rinsing, thorough patting dry, season to taste, throw something inside the cavity (stuffing or simply peeled raw potato quarters and some onion), cook.

  38. 38.

    Eljai

    @Adam L Silverman: He said

    How’d they kill this turkey? Hit it with a damned car? Jesus.

    I’m not saying I agree. For myself, I enjoy living vicariously through your cooking adventures.

  39. 39.

    Davebo

    For a change of pace and for my Scottish girls first American thanksgiving we did a roasted goose. Cornbread stuffing, garlic parmesan mashers, sweet potato casserole with walnuts and marshmellows, homemade cranberry sauce and goose giblet gravy and started with a nice Thai carrot soup.

    It was an odd but good mix!

  43. 43.

    Glidwrith

    Thank you, Adam, for the pie recipe – already making plans on how soon I can make it after the holiday dessert overload. Didn’t you post something like a grasshopper pie last Christmas?

  44. 44.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Gin & Tonic: So sorry to hear your SIL had problems Tuesday, and glad to hear you have friends with a loan of house for you to be close.

    Dark mood here, though in spite of it I tried to improve my aunt’s turkey breast with a compound butter baste, which butter I’d have put hiner the skin had she waited for our arrival prior to putting said poultry in her oven. I also seasoned dressing, for which she’d kindly chopped vegetables for me to sweat, with fresh chopped Scarborough Fair and minced garlic, and snuck minced garlic into the potatoes she (peeled! thx X and) cooked for me to mash. None of which helped my outlook on life, though I briefly brightened when the small crew said the dinner was tasty.

    I’m thankful for this community.

  45. 45.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @Gin & Tonic: Best to your family in this time.

    My wife is progressing nicely. Now her PT is some with a cane, not a walker. (She had knee replacement surgery a week ago, and I won’t compare her situation of elective/planned with your son in law’s.)

    The FB fotos from our regular Thanksgiving haunts were great to see. The wife’s cat is not as lonely as I thought. Hope he hasn’t forgotten about her simply cos I’m the one laying down the food

  48. 48.

    AliceBlue

    That dressing recipe is the same one handed down to me from my mother and grandmother. Not fancy like some, but oh so yummy! It’s actually my favorite part of the meal.

  52. 52.

    Sab

    @Adam L Silverman: I sent almost all my leftovers home with the stepchildren. My husband is thrilled that this year’s turpentine soup will not have wild rice because the kids took all the leftover rice. I cannot believe I never thought to do this before. No more pulled turkey in barbeque sauce a week from now. Also, why does auto correct change “step-kids” (without the hyphen) to “steroids”? I probably never will send leftovers anywhere with steroids.

  53. 53.

    sacrablue

    It was a weird day. I got the turkey in the oven and all of the side dishes cooked. Then I went for my daily walk. I discovered that there was a murder last night just one street away from my house. I didn’t know the woman that died, but I walk on that street everyday. We’ve lived here for twenty-two years and I think this the third time that someone has been killed. I’m still a bit freaked out and Thanksgiving dinner was rather subdued (never mind that I was forced to watch Dallas/Washington NFL)

    Sorry to bother everyone with this.

  57. 57.

    Sab

    @Sab: turpentine soup should be turkey-bone. Love those hyphens. Save us from the weird results of auto correct. You would be amazed at what computer scanning can do to tax returns (add your zipcode to your income, or treat a comma as a 1, increasing your income by 1000 times.

  59. 59.

    Major Major Major Major

    One of my dumber lefty friends posted on FB about how outrageous it is that Sessions said “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” I checked his feed and this is the first thing he’s had to say about Sessions. Sigh.

  60. 60.

    Mary G

    Just got home from an amazing dinner – the hostess used to make a terrible, dry turkey until she discovered dry brining a few years ago. She packs the whole turkey in kosher salt. It is delicious.

    We had a good Californian president-elect bashing. We have done this thing where everyone predicts things for the next year, like the Dow Jones Average, price of gold, air & ocean temperature on Thanksgiving day, Super Bowl & World Series winners right after Thanksgiving. The next Thanksgiving we see who has gotten the closest to the most and a little prize is awarded. I have never won. We added presidential approval rating on Real Clear Politics this year, and I am going to predict 27%. Might get it this time! No one got Pres/VP this year, obviously.

  61. 61.

    FlipYrWhig

    I’m disappointed to see so many of my FB friends getting excited about this Jill Stein recount nonsense, which seems transparently to be about getting pictures of Jill Stein on FB.

  62. 62.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @Sab: I thought “turpentine soup” was a secret nickname in your family for soup you ate a bit of to be polite. Honest!

    I think my family recipe book, were it to exist, would have a lot of words like turpentine, sawdust, and caulk in its titles.

  66. 66.

    Suzanne

    @Mnemosyne: She crochets, she doesn’t knit. She does a lot of blankets and afghans, but I told her that I love to wear hats, and that if she crocheted some hats for me, I’d be very grateful. So I wanted to get her started with some nice yarns In colors that I liked. I found some really gray options on Craftsy, but I think I missed out, since a lot of the nice colors seem to be gone. I like grays and soft, muted colors. I don’t much care for jewel tones or pastels.

  67. 67.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Glidwrith: I may have posted this one without the ganache coating last year. Or it might have been the triple dark chocolate layer cake, which gets frosted with the dark chocolate mousse per recipe above and then gets coated in dark chocolate ganache.

  70. 70.

    Suzanne

    @FlipYrWhig: I don’t know. I am only a very occasional knitter. It was the picture in their Black Friday Facebook ad, and now I can’t find the image. And they didn’t label the damn yarns in the picture.

  71. 71.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: Yep, they had a free range, young, kosher turkey. Was about $8 a pound. I went with the natural, young, free range one. Was less than 1/2 that per pound.

  73. 73.

    Adam L Silverman

    @AliceBlue: My Mom got this stuffing recipe from a nurse she worked with. For the first Thanksgiving dinner she had to prepare with Dad and a bunch of guests. She figured she could handle the turkey, but she had no idea about stuffing. So she asked a nurse she worked with who told her this was her family’s recipe. We’ve been using it ever since. She still has the original, and now quite worn, 3X5 notecard with the recipe on it for Bessie’s Homemade Stuffing.

  74. 74.

    sacrablue

    @Major Major Major Major: We live fairly close to a fire station, so I’m used to hearing fire sirens multiple times each day. But, sheriff’s sirens are rare in my neighborhood. Last night, it seemed that every vehicle in the north county went screaming through residential streets with flashing lights. I could feel that something bad had happened, even though there was no helicopter overhead. I wandered outside in my PJs, saw my neighbor doing the same thing I was. We both shrugged and went back inside. My son told me he heard the gunshots, but didn’t say anything because we have lots of gun-happy loons less than a half mile away in Rep McClintock’s district.

  76. 76.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Gin & Tonic: Adam has my contact information should you wish a discussion at some time. I will keep you family in my thoughts.

  77. 77.

    satby

    I don’t get the point of removing the turkey backbone?
    And though I know we’re supposed to not stuff the turkey anymore and cook the dressing separately, it never tastes as good as cooked in the bird, to me anyway.

    Edited to add: Not meant as criticism, it sounds and looking amazing.

  79. 79.

    Glidwrith

    @Adam L Silverman: Oof. Look, I bleed dark chocolate like any other chocoholic, but just reading that sentence might force me to check into detox. Stepping away to watch some old Trek now – ‘Amok Time’ is on…

  81. 81.

    NotMax

    @Adam L. Silverman

    Yup, they’re pricey. However, once a year worth it, IMHO. Have never ever had a less than succulent kosher bird emerge from the oven, no matter the faux pas committed.

    Trouble is that only one local chain of markets here ever carries them and they sell out fast.

  85. 85.

    Suzanne

    @Gin & Tonic: Hugs and best wishes to you.

    We just got some bad news, too. Mr. Suzanne’s grandmother, who is his last living grandparent, was hospitalized today after another “episode”, which is what they’re calling her periods of disorientation that are not quite seizures. Turns out she has a hole in her aorta. She already had surgery for lung cancer this year. Mr. Suzanne’s grandfather (on the other side) passed away this summer. Fuck 2016.

  87. 87.

    NotMax

    @Glidwrith

    More than apropos post-election: “After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but is often true.”

    P.S. T’pau is awesome.

  92. 92.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Sab: Easy to retire in your 20s when you’ve been making seven figures a year on a sinecure that you’re both not qualified for and terrible at because everyone that worked with your dad felt sorry for you.

  95. 95.

    Adam L Silverman

    @satby: And both homicides and suicides start to spike just before Thanksgiving, continue the increase through to New Year’s and then tail back off to the mean. And the types of homicides in that spike are weirder than the norm. Things like “family bludgeoned to death with gravy boat” type of weird. I used to do a module on this when I taught criminal justice. For the cops in the class it was like show and tell of the wacky, wild, and weird.

  96. 96.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Sab: If someone paid me several million a year for five or six years in my 20s I would have been happy to retire regardless of my competency.

  100. 100.

    satby

    @Sab: if you think for a second Russert ever thought he was incompetent, I have a bridge timeshare to sell you.
    “Retired in his twenties”. Must be terrible for him.

  101. 101.

    NotMax

    @Adam L. Silverman

    Not that I look to him for any sort of wisdom, but recall a bit from an interview with Alec Baldwin. Paraphrased version follows.

    Q: So what’s it like getting 20 million dollars a movie?

    A: Are you [expletive deleted] kidding me? If anyone ever offered me $20 million, I’d do the movie and immediately retire.

  107. 107.

    magurakurin

    spoke too soon about Black Friday in Japan. Just watched the news over lunch. Aeon group has introduced Black Friday sales this year in their stores in Japan. Oh well. Of course, it being Japan the entire things was orderly, calm and well mannered. That’s just how we roll over here.

  108. 108.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sacrablue: @Major Major Major Major: Yep. Its the problem with these things, the restraining orders are just paper. And the data tells us two contradictory thing in this situation: having a firearm both increases one’s ability to defend oneself, but also is more likely to be used against the woman leading to serious injury and death.

  111. 111.

    Suzanne

    @Major Major Major Major: My husband’s family is just like mine: dad has large Catholic Italian family, mom has small Anglo-Saxon Protestant family. So we get the Catholic guilt for being sinners AND the Protestant guilt for being lazy bastards. The Italians can cook, the Protestants can be passive-aggressive.

  113. 113.

    Sab

    @satby: I don’t think he thought he was incompetent, but maybe he thought his privileged life was pointless. He could have gone on to be Bill Kristol. I am withholding judgment until I see what he becomes.

  115. 115.

    Original Lee

    Finally home from dinner at a friend’s. We decided in the morning to make an apple strudel before we went, in order to have something for dessert that would handle either whipped cream or ice cream but not as rich as pecan pie. But we couldn’t find the recipe anywhere. This recipe is a hand-me-down from a neighbor of my mother’s. This lady’s grandmother was from Germany and an old-school cook of the highest order, and her strudel was always amazing. When I got married, the neighbor gave me the recipe as a wedding present, and I have never used another recipe since – it’s that good. (I’ll share later, I promise.) Anyway, I had a paper copy, a flash drive copy, and a hard drive copy on one of my old laptops, so I thought I was covered, but after about an hour of looking around, I couldn’t find any of them and had to enlist Original Son’s help in locating my old laptop and getting the recipe off of it. I now have multiple copies on paper and on multiple computers, and I’ll load it up to my cloud cache tomorrow, just to be sure. Bottom line, I had to make the strudel in world record time, so the pastry wasn’t as thin as I would like, but I soaked the raisins in cognac, so it turned out pretty well despite these problems.

  116. 116.

    Suzanne

    @Major Major Major Major: My people have many flaws, but homophobia and racism are not among them, thank Jeebus. We have gay and black and foreign and atheist and it is all good. You just have to be okay with never actually resolving your conflicts with each other, and instead learn how to suck it up for years and years while seething with anger and resentment.

    Ahhhh, family.

    @efgoldman: Might need to be a nice Jewish girl. We’ll see.

  119. 119.

    Suzanne

    @efgoldman: She says she’s also into boys, but that middle school boys are, for the most part, icky. That’s kind of unimpeachable logic right there. I am happy because the more she stays away from boys until college, the better, AFAIAC.

  121. 121.

    The Pale Scot

    Time ain’t on my side

    When mum gets grippy I hand her a glass of wine and put on music she likes. Lack of resources had me looking at the music selection on her Comcast cable, best choice is 50’s or Beatles..

    Comcast no longer has a 50’s channel, the “Golden Oldies” channel was playing Simon and Garfunkel. I’m hopelessly out of date. But they didn’t have a heavy metal channel either so maybe it just that Comcast sucks.

  122. 122.

    mattH

    @PsiFighter37: I brined mine last year and as long as I’m doing a whole turkey, I always will. The local alt-weekly food reviewer put out a recipe in ’99, reposted in 2010 and linked to every year that pretty much nails the brining and post-brine process to keep it moist. He goes a bit overboard (“saddlebagging” the breasts) but his cooking times always work.

  126. 126.

    Mnemosyne

    @Suzanne:

    So what you should get would be worsted weight or sport/DK weight yarns — that will be part of the description and may also have a 4 (for worsted) or 3 (for sport or DK) in the description. You will probably also want some kind of animal fiber in the blend, either wool or alpaca (though llama and camel can be quite nice, too). Cotton is a pain because it stretches out and never really snaps back, but a wool-cotton blend can be a good compromise. Same thing with silk — it’s not very flexible, but if they blend it with an animal fiber, you can get the best of both worlds and have a hat with some structure that also holds its shape. You wouldn’t want a pure acrylic or nylon yarn but, again, those can work well in a blend with an animal fiber.

    Usually, worsted or sport yarns come in skeins of about 100 to 200 yards. I don’t crochet but I’ve heard it uses more yarn than knitting does, so I would get 2 skeins of whatever yarn you like.

    Keep checking at Craftsy because they have good prices and they get new stock in all the time, so you may see something you like show up again next week or have a new yarn show up that looks just as good.

  128. 128.

    Suzanne

    @efgoldman: It’s interesting, because among her friend group, so many of them identify as gay, bi, pansexual, trans, non-binary, or some combination thereof that I am skeptical. Like, it just beggars belief that so few of them are cis/straight. I think it is seen as cool and avant-garde among her age cohort to be non-conforming in gender and/or orientation, and that being cis/straight is a little bit “basic”. In some ways, this makes me really happy, because I was a fairly young parent, so I wasn’t in junior high school all that long ago, and I muse occasionally about what would have happened if a classmate of mine would have identified as pansexual. Literally, violence. I am happy that her cohort is so much less judgey.

  130. 130.

    Suzanne

    @Mnemosyne: Thanks for the tip on the fibers. I know about the weights, but the fiber types are a mystery to me. This yarn in the picture that I can’t find appeared really smooth, but more like two fibers twisted together…..more rope-like than twine-like, if that makes sense. They had a lot of lovely options. I’ll definitely check it out frequently.

  132. 132.

    Mnemosyne

    @Suzanne:

    They’ve been doing some interesting new things with yarn construction — some of them are almost woven now, which paradoxically makes them lighter than if they were just twisted in the traditional way. I would just get a color you like in a mixed fiber and that should be versatile enough for your mom to make most kinds of hats from it.

  133. 133.

    Suzanne

    @EBT: Yes, I definitely agree. I just wonder if there isn’t a little bit of (good) peer pressure to be open to it. There’s been patriarchal pressure for women to be not truly bi, but to be performatively bisexual for the male gaze, for a while. And I wonder if this isn’t a bit like that. Literally I don’t think a single one of her friends IDs as cis/straight right now. The percentages just seem skewed to me. But they’re kids and they have plenty of time to figure this all out. I’m happy if she’s happy.

  134. 134.

    EBT

    @Suzanne: Yeah she is certainly in the figure it out age still, and it could just be self filtering. I know a single cis het white male. Everyone else is some combination of queer/non cis (a lot are non binary and some are gender fluid)/non white throw in varying amounts of poly furry and plural. And I am firmly in my 30s. Identity is a brave new frontier.

  135. 135.

    Suzanne

    @EBT: Yeah, I thought that about the filtering, too. It’s not a bad thing by any means, it’s just a sign of a social shift that seems to have taken place very quickly. I remember having to sneak a gay friend out of the stands at a high school football game because some goons wanted to kick his ass. Fast forward 20 years, and they’re all experimenting and exploring.

  138. 138.

    Applejinx

    @Adam L Silverman: Eyup. My goal is to not suicide before New Year’s (when, presumably, the appeal will subside). My short-term goal is to drive eight hours home on about 0.8 hours sleep. Up at 12:40 in the parents’ house, totally overwhelmed with self-destructo thinking and dark visions of everything, gave up around 3:30 AM and am working on my software programming. Will be pounding coffee, maybe that’ll kill me, if not I ought to be able to make it home through brute force and determination.

    At least 50% odds THAT hasn’t been robbed, burned down or nuked, so there’s a fair chance I’ll feel enormously relieved once I make it back.

    Never agree to an extra day w. family when you dropped ’em for reasons, or you might end up thrashing around for hours in pitch blackness. However, the turkey and stuffing was excellent ;P :)

  139. 139.

    opiejeanne

    Had my appendix out last night. Went home this morning at 10am, and our kids showed up and cooked almost everything for us. The turkey was already prepped; we removed all the innards packages, then “dry-brined” it, rubbed coarse salt and several savory herbs into the skin of the breast and legs. We stored it in the fridge, uncovered, so the skin would dry a little and be nice and crispy when roasted. It held like that for 3 days because it was a “deep chilled” turkey. All they had to do was pre-heat the oven and shove it in. We have a large range as well as a wall oven, so coordination of various foods was pretty easy.
    I had planned to make little mushroom tarts using phyllo dough, and they looked at the menu and cranked out a dozen of those. I wasn’t going to ask them to make them, thought it would be too fussy, but they insisted.
    They made the mashed potatoes, the pies, the stuffing, and roasted the Brussels sprouts. My youngest brought deviled eggs and a yam dish with toasted marshmallows.

    It was all very good, although I think my sense of taste is a bit out of whack because of the pain pills. I kept falling asleep all day from the vicodin and exhaustion but I feel so much better that I’m still awake at 1:15am.

  140. 140.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    I spatchcocked my turkey for the first time last year…and did it on a charcoal grill. It turned out great – and cooked A LOT faster than the previous year when I grilled a whole bird. I added wood chips soaked in water a few times during cooking and it had a really nice smokey flavor. This year I did it in the oven because I decided I wanted that nice clean roasted bird flavor rather than the smoke, but I still spatchcocked it. I basically followed your directions except I brined it beforehand and just rested the carcass on a bed of aromatics (whole carrots, celery, and onions and some herbs) and put herb sprigs and garlic cloves in the various nooks and crannies on the top of the bird. I used an herbed butter rub with salt and pepper and doused the top with olive oil.

    It turned out great and cooked in about an hour and a half. Spatchcocking allows the dark meat to cook quicker because it’s more exposed so the breast meat stays moister. I may never cook a whole turkey again, ever. I made my gravy from the pan drippings and just used the backbone along with the giblets and the rest of the carcass to make turkey stock last night which will become turkey soup at some point today.

  141. 141.

    Miss Bianca

    @DivF: Yeah, seriously…I was expecting to discover how Food Coma can be used to dispatch threats to national security…

    “Death to the Americans! We will….ooh…is that spatchcocked turkey I smell?”

  142. 142.

    Chris T.

    In general, you should use chopped-up (finely chopped) dark chocolate, rather than chips. The chips tend to produce the wrong texture. Some chips are better than others, Ghirardelli for instance don’t add too much shelf-stabilizer (but you will still get better results from chocolate not designed to hold its chip-shape).

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