A Thanksgiving to remember (with pictures to prove it).

So we decided to do Thanksgiving a little bit differently this year.  My Grandmother has been diagnosed with Parkinsons and I really wanted to spend this holiday with her.  😦  So Dave, Bradley, my mom, and I prepared a yummy Thanksgiving dinner complete with turkey, potatoes, biscuits, brocollini, stuffing, the works!  It was going to be awesome!

I did as much as I could in advance: I brined the turkey, made the pie & the mousse for dessert, prepared one of the appetizers and everything.  I was so proud of myself.

Then this morning we headed over to my Grandma’s to cook the turkey.  The recipe I have (Alton Brown’s from the Food Network, in fact) calls for cooking the bird at 500 degrees for 30 minutes to give it a nice brown, crispy skin and then lowering the temp to 350 to cook for 2 – 2 1/2 hours for the perfect, moist, delicious turkey.  Things were going SO well and I was timing everything perfectly.  At 1:00 pm I put the turkey in the oven and cooked it at 500 for 30 minutes.  Then I took it out, as required by the recipe, and tented the breast with foil so it wouldn’t burn for the remaining cooking time and put it back in the oven.  Then I headed off to the living room with my warm cup of cider to play Killer Sorry (that’s another post) with my family while the bird cooked.  🙂  Great, right?

Yea, well, if you’ve actually been following this post you will have seen the debacle start a few sentences ago.  Mmmm hmmmm.  I flippin’ forgot to turn the damn oven back to 350.  So TWO HOURS later I went to pull the turkey out when I noticed that the oven was still set at 500.  I flipped.  F-L-I-P-P-E-D!  And then pulled the bird out.

Here’s what I served for Thanksgiving.  ::Hangs head in shame::

Dude, how awful looking is that??? 😦  Ugh, I’m so ashamed.  This turkey would have been PERFECT if I had changed the freakin’ temp!  lol OMG it looks so gross you guys.

But here’s the thing.  The turkey breast was actually REALLY good!  It was moist and flavorful. lol  So unless you like crispy, burnt dark meat, I’d say stick with the white.  Or flippin’ follow the recipe for Pete’s sake.  ::sigh::

Anyhow.  I hope your turkey turned out better than mine and that you had a great Thanksgiving. 😉

Happy turkey day all!

xoxo
Steph

Remember this.

I’ve been having some awesome conversations with Bradley lately and I didn’t want to forget them.  He is seriously SO smart and chatty and clever.  A few conversations we’ve had in the past few days:

Convo 1.

B: “Mama, where did God come from?”

Me: “Wow, B, that’s a good question.  I’m not sure.  Where do you think he came from?”

B: “Well, God was first, right?  And sometimes the first person comes out of an egg.  But I think God came from his own belly.”

Seriously.

Convo 2.

In talking about how he’ll be losing his teeth soon since he’s 5 now:

Me: “So B, do you know who the tooth fairy is?”

B: “I sure do.”

Me: “Oh yea?  Who is she?”

B: “Well, when God is putting people together, like he put me together, she’s the one who puts the teeth in.  Like when God was putting me together I opened my eyes a little bit and I could see her putting in my teeth.”

I couldn’t BEAR to tell him the truth. lol  It was too cute.

I love talking to him.  Sometimes he can get a little chatty and I’m ready to pull my hair out, but most of the time I just lOVE listening to him.  🙂