Thanksgiving preparations are underway which is kind of ridiculous since I’m only cooking for two. But I decided to make tomorrow easy by cooking candied sweet potatoes (for Jack) and mashed potatoes (for me) and the pumpkin pie today. We’ll skip the stuffing this year to keep things simple. Or maybe not, I really like stuffing, particularly as part of a turkey sandwich. Weird, I know, putting bread inside of bread, but it’s a throwback to my childhood. Mom’s stuffing was the best (I bet your Mom’s was, too.)
Anyway tomorrow I’ll have just the turkey and gravy to fix, along with some peas and onions (and maybe stuffing). And the whipped cream for the pumpkin pie. One day a year I go for the real stuff.
I’m going to dry brine the turkey tonight which sounds so much less messy than a wet brine. I’ve done wet brining before and it does turn out a great turkey, but my memory is of a lot of work and I’m all about taking it easy this year.
A dry brine sounds so much more exotic than it really is: rub the turkey inside and out with plenty of kosher salt seasoned with herbs and let it sit overnight. Tomorrow, stuff the bird with aromatic vegetables and throw it in a hot oven. No rinsing off the salt and since we never eat the skin anyway, I’m not overly concerned about a salt overdose. Anyhoo, it’s worth a try. The directions were in last Sunday’s Kansas City Star.
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At the risk of being a downer, I found this to be interesting as I’m preparing for a day when most of us will have more to eat than we need. What does it say about us that the number of overweight people is higher than the number of undernourished?
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I’m writing a post on fruitcake but apparently it takes as long to write the post as it takes to make the fruitcake. And somehow I’m thinking there aren’t a lot of you waiting with intense anticipation for a fruitcake recipe. No matter, there must be a few other nuts out there who think fruitcake can be good if it owes its flavor to dried fruit more than candied fruit and if it’s not overly soaked in brandy or bourbon. I should have the post ready this weekend.
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I also have another finished object to show off. It’s something I came up with on my own and while it’s awesomely simple, I’m pleased with how it turned out. It needs tidying up, blocking and photographing so maybe in a day or two.
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I went to Knitting in the Neighborhood last night, also known as If It’s Tuesday, It Must Be Knitters Night. During the Obama campaign we always had meetings on Tuesday evening so I’ve been absent since September. It was good to be back even though the tables were a little emptier than usual due to the holidays. I missed my peeps.
I made fruitcake one year — it was 1984. The recipe was called The Fruitcake Hater’s Fruitcake, and it had dried apricots but no or not much candied fruit. It was good. And it was so much work I never made it again.