Knee-deep in brine

Really.  When you’re brining two 18lb turkeys the night before Thanksgiving, that’s a LOT of brine.

I can’t complain, I brought this on myself.  Either M and I cooked Thanksgiving dinner, or the person hosting would have purchased dinner pre-made from the grocery store.

That happened last year, and I spent all of dinner trying to eat enough to be polite and lie through my teeth that really, it was wonderful.

This year, M and I drew a line in the sand.  Which means we volunteered ourselves. To feed 14-18 people. At 2PM tomorrow afternoon.

Now really, compared to the 4-day-long marathon that is required to cook a turducken, which we’ve done 4 times now, this is nothing. But it is the first time that we’ve done anything on this scale with a baby in tow. So far G has been quite indulgent. He’s asleep right now, still in his stroller seat from when we took a walking break earlier (in the cool crisp 40-degree fall weather, it was awesome).

I’m in the kitchen with the baby monitor and I swear I keep hearing him coo or murmur, only to go out and check and see that he’s still deeply asleep. Slightly creepy.

Anyway, M is out picking up our local-recently-slaughtered-never-frozen turkeys (which may have been fed caviar…. what do I know?) and a few supplies that we missed on the first shopping run earlier this week (we go through brown sugar at an alarming rate apparently).

The brine (the cooked portion at least) is cooling on the stove. Buckets that we normally use for fermenting beer are now double-lined with contractor-grade garbage bags whose open maws hungrily await the forthcoming fowl.

Already today we’ve made mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, butternut squashed baked with sausage and apples. Still to come is greenbean casserole, homemade cranberry sauce with orange peel we candied ourselves, mini pumpkin pies, and a normal sized apple pie. And fresh whipped cream. Oh, and if we have time, some pumpkin bread to have all to ourselves (we shredded up the pumpkin and some of M’s finger yesterday… we’re pretty sure the finger bits didn’t actually end up in the pile of shredded pumpkin).

Tomorrow will find us cooking the two birds – one roasted in the oven and one grilled on our gas grill in the back yard. There will also be sausage stuffing (well, I guess it’s officially “dressing” because we’re not actually violating either of the turkeys with it), fresh steamed green beans, and gravy.

Mmmmmmmmmm grrrraaaavvvvyyyyyy.

But I digress.

No, wait I didn’t, this is all about our food.

Speaking of which, I have to get back to that cooking thing befor M makes it home and sees I’ve been blogging the whole time he’s been gone.

Happy Thanksgiving!