Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Takin' Care of Busy-ness

The bathroom remodel is almost done. Shane was true to his word that he'd have it 90% finished by the end of the day Sunday. It was close, but that remaining 10% is details, and we all know that's where the devil is. All that is left to do is a little touch up painting, put the towel racks up and hang a few do-dads on the walls. Done or not, I'll be posting pictures tomorrow.

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Today Kat and the rest of the 1st Graders are having their Thanksgiving Feast, and I'll be heading to school in a few minutes to take some hot rolls and join in. I think it will be a pretty good feast, although I'm not sure how well turkey cold cuts are going to go over instead of an actual bird.

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Speaking of turkey, how long does it really take one of those things to thaw?

Every year I move it from my deep freeze to the spare fridge and come time to cook it, it's still a little frozen in the middle, resulting in us scrambling to get it thawed by running warm water in the cavity. This year, I moved the bird from the deep freeze last Thursday, allowing it a full week to thaw. When I checked it on Sunday, it was still rock solid. So I put a cooler filled with cold water on the back deck and stuck it in there, making sure to bungee down the lid to keep out any stray raccoons.

Yesterday, the water was so cold it hurt my hands, but the turkey was starting to thaw. This morning, the water is still nice and cold and the turkeys feel like their coming along. By tomorrow, I'm sure they'll be ready for Shane to inject with some yummy Cajun-spiced butter and store over night in the spare fridge again. Then by Thursday, it'll be ready for him to deep-fry. We love deep-fried turkey, and it frees up my oven for other things on Thanksgiving morning.

How are the rest of you doing with your holiday preps? Anyone else frying their turkey?

6 comments:

McVal said...

We fried ours last year! This year, the parts are scattered throughout the garage from several people borrowing it and it never getting put back quite right...
This year, we have 5 turkeys to cook, 1 for Thursday and 4 for Fridays bash.
I did the 4th grade Thanksgiving dinner last week with my daughter. Fun time! Last one I get to go to! wahh!

Sonya Ann said...

Ours is always frozen but it dethaws in the oven quite nicely. We never stuff it so it seems to be fine. But I really don;t know cuz Den cooks it.

Kim @ Kim and Mikey said...

We are having Thanksgiving dinner with my Aunt (Mom's sister) where we will have both a deep fried turkey and a baked one....along with a baked ham.

Annie Jones said...

McVal: Thanks for stopping by!

We're actually frying up two this year. We usually do that so that 1) we have lots of leftovers and 2) we take advantage of the already-hot oil. :)

The feast was fun, but did they every overestimate on the food! And trivial as it may seem, I was a little miffed at the mom who stood over my homemade whole wheat shoving store-bought brown-n-serves into the kids hands before they could even decide on their own. Yuck! LOL.

SonyaAnn: Well, put Den on the line then...

Kimberly: Sounds like a lot of food...I love ham!

Unknown said...

Robert wants to deep fry a turkey for Christmas. Bless him he's been talking about it for the last couple of years:) I haven't the first clue of how to go about it, something to do with brining and what not and where on earth do you ever find a pot big enough to take oil AND a whole turkey and is it not a bit frightening....and

Maybe next year.

Annie Jones said...

Late response here, Leanne, but I wanted to let you know that they sell special fryers just for frying turkeys. It's really not too difficult. You don't have to brine, but it's good to inject the bird with seasoned butter the night before (they sell syringes for injecting the butter, too). The turkey ends up very juicy inside but not greasy outside. When I simmered the carcasses in water to make stock, there wasn't nearly as much fat to skim off as there is with an oven-roasted turkey.