Thankskilling 2013

November 27, 2013, at 5:36 pm, my much loved 5 qt Kitchenaid mixer decided to commit sepuku over a box of gf cookie dough.  Ten minutes later, I dragged Dan to BB&B to get a replacement.  My lovely brother offered to get me a 6qt for christmas!

Unfortunately, not in time for the rest of Thanksgiving, but we made due.  For starters, Dan got a Butterball electric deep frier.

• 13 lb deep fried turkey
• 18 lb roast turkey with all of the garlic
• Onion soup
• Gravy
• Fresh cranberry sauce
• Home cured ham with green beans
• Home cured ham with black beans
• Brussel sprouts with bacon
• Scalloped potatoes
• Hummus
• GF cherry pie
• GF apple flax muffins
• GF chocolate chip cookies
• GF brownies
• apple caramel cookies
• Haroset

Brought by guests

• shells a la putanesca
• cheese
• veggies
• assorted chips and dips

Forgotten in fridge

• creme brule
• 9 egg whites that are probably still there

It was a good few days full of fantastic food and even better people.

[review] Books and Movies and crap

Recently, I've been very active. Not only in crafts, but also in reading and movies. Here's a quick summary of everything.

Knit One, Kill Two
rofl. This is the first in a series of mysteries that take place in a knitting store, or around it's patrons/owners. This first book was a good way to blank out on the world. Easy read, I'm curious how the New Found Love at the end evolves throughout the rest of the books.

Dead Till Dark
First of the Sookie Stackhouse books, on which True Blood is based.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book! It keeps with your typical Anne Rice cannon of vampires (no glittery shit here) and respects tradition. The beginning was a little too simple, where the main character just can't help falling for the new vampire in town, but the interactions and plot throughout the rest of the book are very entertaining. There's a guest character at the end that is just fucking hilarious! It just kept on getting better and better, and there were times towards the end where I couldn't help laughing for five minutes straight. The best thing is that it seems like it was intentional.

Whip It
This was Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, based on a memoir of the Texas Roller Derby in the 80's. If they hadn't used a cell phone, I would have sworn it was set in the 80's. There were so many hipster kids in it (including the chick from Juno) that one more guy in girl's pants would have made it painful. Luckily, it all managed to blend together and disperse. I loved the story, I loved the bouts, the music was incredible, and the cast was surprisingly tolerable. A very good experience all in all.

Julie & Julia
This movie made me have to make room on my altar next to Martha Stewart in order to also fit Julia Child. Holy crap, this woman was amazing! She just decided that she was going to take classes at Le Cordon Bleu with the Big Boys, just because she was bored of being a house wife! I hope my love for her super duper cooking prowess isn't just due to my love of Merril Streep who played her. I now want to find her memoir, cookbook and tapes of her show, because I really, really want to cook like her!

Zombieland
I saw this for the second time, and it is still a great movie. It is a wonderful movie where all you have to do is laugh and enjoy. It has a great soundtrack, simple yet effective plot and cast. And Bill Murray ^_^

ThanksKilling!
Gobble Gobble, Motherfucker! hahahahahahahahah. Dude, DUDE! You have GOT to find this movie on Netflix on Demand! It is a horror/slasher movie that prides itself on its minimal $4000 budget. It's a spirit that is pissed off at the pilgrims, that reincarnates 505 years later in the form of a turkey (puppet) that is out to kill the descendants of the pilgrims. It is bad, and they know it, and embrace it, and make it absolutely awesome!

[recipe] Fakesgiving the Third Turkey

Last sunday was our annual Fakesgiving dinner, where we invite the kids over to the house and force feed them before they are kicked out of the dorms. This year was quite an impressive feat, in which I cooked a 23 lb turkey (to perfection, IMO) that got devoured!

This recipe takes the guidelines from Martha Stewart's Turkey 101 and some ideas I found in a Jamie Oliver cookbook.

Ingredients:
23 lb turkey
1 bottle white wine (dry and un/lightly oaked like a chardonet)
1 lb apples
1 lb onions
1 lb bacon
2 heads good garlic, or 6 from the supermarket
1 stick salted butter
Rosemary sprigs for stabbing
Thyme, rosemary salt and pepper to taste

Accoutrements:
Big ass roasting pan, with rack
Meat thermometer
Turkey button (just in case)
Basting brush or, well, a turkey baster
Wood toothpicks
Cooking twine, or enough completely natural fiber string/yarn to tie legs together (you can test if it burns in the oven before cooking)

Prep time: 1 hr
Cooking time: 6.5 hrs

Prep:
1) Quarter all apples but one and all of the onions and let marinate in the wine with 2/3 of the garlic over night.
2) Take giblets out of the thawed turkey and rinse out the cavity.
3) Mince 1/3 of your garlic and mix with butter, herbs, salt and pepper.
4) Chop up half of the packet of bacon.
5) Carefully separate the skin off of the breast, leaving it intact. Tack down the neck flap and fill in the skin/breast pocket with the butter mixture and bacon pieces.
6) Make 12 rolls out of a couple of inches of rosemary staking a chunk of garlic and wrapping it in a two inch piece of bacon.
7) Fill the cavity with the apple, onion and the rest of the garlic pieces, and save the wine for basting. Use leftover apple to plug cavity and tie the legs around it.
8) Puncture each thigh 6 times with a sharp knife and stick a rosemary roll in each.
9) Tent with a sheet of aluminium.

The turkey is now ready to go into the oven, at 325 F. You will need to pull it out every 30 minutes to baste with the wine.

10) Around the middle of your cooking time, or when skin starts to get crispy, cover breast with a layer of the remaining bacon.


Use the weight of the stuffed turkey to calculate the cooking time (about 20 minutes per 500g/1lb 2oz). This 25 lb monstrosity took about 6.5 hrs. Turkey is ready when button pops, or when you stick the instant read thermometer in the meatiest part of the turkey it reads 180.

In the meantime, use the giblets and neck to make gravy. You can boil them in some stock for the whole time the turkey is roasting. Season towards the end, and use flour or corn starch to thicken. These should both be incorporated by mixing in a separate bowl with not-boiling liquid to avoid clumps, and then adding little by little to the sauce pan.