Last week I made all the yummy Thanksgiving fixin’s and took them (along with my hubby) for a long drive several hours south to the home of our son, Aaron, & daughter-in-law, Amanda, to have Thanksgiving with them. We stayed a few days and had a wonderful time. We deep-fried our turkey and left lots of yummy leftovers there for the kids to enjoy. However… I still wanted to roast a turkey here at home and have yummy leftovers to enjoy as well! Besides, I’d gotten an extra free turkey with my groceries last week, so this morning I injected my nineteen-pound bird with all the Creole Butter marinade I could get in there, rubbed it with a full cube of butter, sprinkled it with my homemade Cajun Spice blend, and put it in the oven. Actually, I put it in one of those turkey oven bags and in a roasting pan, then put it in the oven. :) I just love how those oven bags give you such a juicy bird and it cooks in nearly half the time!
After I got that gobbler in the oven, I realized it was starting to drizzle a freezing rain which was going to make the 8 new inches of snow reallllllly heavy & I’d better get started on my shoveling chores. So I bundled up and headed outside. Me and my trusty snow shovel went to work on the walkways, the mail trail, and the woodshed trail, plus a few other miscellany areas. It was hard work, but I caught it before it got completely saturated, so that was good. The snow looks beautiful, as do the icicles, and I keep laughing at the ludicrous amount of deer tracks I awaken each morning to find criss-crossing the yard! :D
After I finished shoveling, I realized I barely had time to finish preparing the rest of our meal before our turkey would be done. Thankfully, my dear hubby, Jim, volunteered to peel potatoes. While he decided which peeler was going to actually have enough edge to remove peels (yep, we need a new one!), I was able to get the giblets all diced up for the giblet gravy… mmmmmmmmm! While I worked on this, I thought of our son, Justin, as he always comes up to me with a silly grin and pleads for a bit of the liver. Yes, liver. I *only* eat it minced up in our giblet gravy and cornbread dressing. That’s it. But Justin loves liver. Crazy kid takes after his grandma, that’s for sure! ;)
We got those spuds boiled and whipped up super creamy, the turkey came out looking and smelling fabulous, the cornbread dressing got drizzled with a bit of melted butter, and I grabbed out the orange cranberry relish that I love (totally alone on that one, tho… no one else in the family likes it so far. :( ) Then the two of us sat down to quite a meal!
Now, normally kp is my job (kitchen patrol), but Jim started getting everything rinsed and stacked for me while I got all the leftovers put away, including all that I finished carving off that nineteen-pound bird! So that made cleaning up go a lot faster. :D By the way, nineteen pounds isn’t terribly large for our family – in the past our sons always helped dive to the bottom of the turkey bin and fished out the *biggest* turkey we could find, so we have had some amazing turkeys, even some 30 pounders! :D
Kitchen got cleaned up pretty quickly, and I got to sit down and relax for a few. After a bit I checked the woodbox to see if it would have to be filled, and decided it could wait till tomorrow. Oh, but tomorrow we have a lunch invite up to a neighbor’s place… she called and said she’s serving shrimp primavera pasta! yummm! So, I’ll fill the woodbox in the morning before our lunchdate! :D
Have a marvelous evening/day everyone!
`·.¸¸.·´´¯`··._.· Cari `·.¸¸.·´´¯`··._.·
