Hey Pumpkin, you know that money you've got burning a hole in your pocket? Here, throw it at the Kingdom Death kickstarter. No Wet Nurse in there, sadly(?).

| Brineage

It absolutely rocked. But in all seriousness I think one of the biggest flavor-enhancers was swapping out a gallon of water for apple juice. I do another gallon of brine using vegetable stock, allspice, rosemary, thyme, garlic, peppercorns, ginger, and bay leaf. I let that boil / reduce down for about 15-20 mins on a low boil.

This year's bird was unbelievable. Best I've ever done. Even when I was seemingly past the point of eating another bite for fear of barfing, I kept going back to pick at it some more. lol

I don't even bother using the drippings. I just make my own stock now using the turkey giblets. Throw that in a stock pot with a gang of chopped up carrots, onion, celery. I also put in some mushrooms for flavor and a few quarters of an apple. I start it off with 2 quarts of broth, 1 quarts of stock. I add in another quart or so of water. As I take stock out for mashed potatoes, dressing, gravy, I replace with more broth or water. It simmers for like 8 hours all day long and at the end of the night I usually have about 4 quarts of LIQUID GOLD to save for use in the next week or so.

| Brine & Bag

Ry, awesome. That is great to hear you are now engaged. Ignore jr0n, you totally need to have your destination wedding in Stockton. A completely rad place for a wedding/meth cook-off.

fArt, Brine and Bag is the way to go. I have been using a brine that seems to really work nice: 2-2.5 gallons water, 1.5 cups brown sugar, 1.5 cups salt, fresh thyme (1/2 bunch), fresh rosemary (1/2 bunch), fresh sage (1/2 bunch), crushed juniper berries (20), (2) oranges quartered and (1) lemon quartered. The oven bag makes it real easy too, just need to make sure you pop in the thermometer prior to tying up the bag. How did the wine brine work out?

The drippings are a little tough to work with because of the salt. I keep meaning to try cooking the drippings with potatoes to try and pull some of the salt out, but I haven't made it there yet.

I'm still suffering a bit of a post T-Day drag-ass. Too much Butta'

D>M>

We had a great time over at enr0n's place. Pretty sure I'm still sweating butter. enr0n makes a great bird and a green bean casserole that will slay your ventricles outright. I'm a little scared to make turkeys, but I do make a pretty damn good pumpkin pie, even if I had an epic brain fail this time around. (Whole cloves instead of ground? WTF??? Fortunately the taste wasn't affected.) I also made my Grandma's Jell-O casserole, which in and of itself uses 3 sticks of butter for the recipe, along with substantial amounts of Cool Whip and cream cheese.

Got today off and am STAYING THE HELL HOME.

Hope everyone had a great one!

| Turkeh Brine!

Rood:

I got home from Thanksgiving at Michelle's aunt and uncle's place a little while ago and did up my brine. I probably should have made it earlier today before we left so I didn't have to wait for it to cool down so long, lol. I put ice packs in ziploc bags and floated those around in my brine to cool it down.

Like you, I started off with the Alton Brown standard and then went from there over the last few years. I now use apple juice instead of water in the brine. Gives it a nice flavr. Also put in about 1/3 to 1/2 a bottle of white wine. Garlic, Rosemary, Thyme, Onion Powder. Comes out so much better than regular ole bird.

Something else to consider using if you don't already is an oven bag. That shit is EASY MODE. Cooks a lot faster and really very evenly.

Only bummer about brining is you can't really use the turkey drippings (too salty). But I remedy that by cooking up a batch of stock while the bird cooks in the oven, using the giblets and neck. That home made stock is GOLD for making mashed potatoes and dressing.

We're doing our surplus Turkey Day tomorrow and inviting some friends and family over. Should be a good time. :D

Ryan: You. Dumb. Bastard. lolol, I keed. I keed. Getting married was the best decision I ever made :D Hard to believe I'm creeping up on 17 years with Michelle. That doesn't even seem like a real number. Crazy.

| Gobble

Happy Thanksgiving!

I made my first turkey ever this week. I'm doing one Friday for my parents who are coming over, but I also did one on Tuesday as a test run. Came out surprisingly well! I did Alton Brown's brine for the turkey. I was worried it was gonna be super salty or bland, but it came out right in the middle and had a pretty good flavor. Not PERFECT but really good. It only took about 3 hours in the oven and nothing was particularly complicated. The brine was simple to whip up and the most nerve wracking part was waiting to see how it would taste after soaking in a brine for a day. Put my 2nd turkey in another brine tonight and this time added a few more items to the mix, so looking forward to tomorrow's turkey. It's been turkey all week (had Turkey at my ladies families house too)!

PS Watched all of Sex House the other night and it was hilarious! What a great webseries. Really funny and they nailed the Real World style reality show perfectly. Alan Moore of creepy comic book writing fame is writing a web series now. I watched the first "short" and it was good. Looked amazing. The colors and style were really awesome. Act of Faith
It's kinda "sexy" so maybe don't watch it with your parents or kids. Also, it's Alan Moore who seems like a deviant, so whatever you're expecting, that's pretty much what's there.

Congrats Ryan!    Happy T-day, you Turkeys

They'll have a destination wedding. Destination: Oxnard.

The problem is once you live in paradise, where do you go for your honeymoon? Fucking, Torrance?

| yay

Congratulations Ry! You guys are already in the most awesome place to get married, so you're all set. :)

All this talk about the bike shop got you in the mood, eh?

Congrats bro!!!!!!! You'll need to fly us over to Hawaii for a very special episode of Man-Con.

| I'm Engaged.

| RROD(udley)

Sorry for the Studly Dudley rant!

But back on the RROD discussion from earlier, I'm in the SAME boat if mine happens to RROD anytime soon. I lost my original one within the first 3 years of ownership, so they sent me this replacement for free. But I just never use it anymore for anything. My stepkid has a 360 with Live and Netflix from another family member, so mine is basically a dvd player, if that. Once I got an iPad, my video gaming has switched almost 100% to that. I love Steam to death, but I barely even fire up my desktop these days because what internetting I don't do on my iPad I've done for 9 hours at work each night.

You think Google-Glasses type things will be common place before we make our final saving throw?

| Dudley's Bike *wink*

LOL, I guess if I am going to weasel my out of one thing I may have participated in, I might as well be blamed for something I didn't have a hand in. Oh well, there goes my political aspirations. Oh wait, I think those went out the door years ago. Never mind. Carry on.

D>M>

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