Live Blogging Thanksgiving

There is probably a more efficient way to do this, but I am planning on updating the blog in-progress of my first Thanksgiving Day cooking attempt.

I haven't charged the SLR in a while, and I've misplaced my Point-n-Shoot, so this is with the
web-cam.... but doesn't it look homey in my living room? Notice I put up festive deer in the upper left!

Early observations:

The fact it's Wednesday gives me undo confidence that I have lots of time to prepare. I casually looked at the brining bag directions (I plan to brine the bird) and see I should brine two hours for each pound of bird. OK, that's math, so let's see.... my bird is about 15.5 pounds, so that's 31 hours... and I'm supposed to cook the bird 4 hours (unstuffed), which comes to 35 hours (assuming 3500 ft above sea level doesn't affect cooking time too much)... so, if I want the bird to come out of the oven tomorrow at 5:30 to start it's half hour resting period, I need to start brining.... four hours ago!

Luckily, the brining is something I can cut short. I'm not supposed to cut the cooking time short. I know that much. ;) 26 hours is plenty of time to sit in salt and sugar water (YUM).

Another observation:

I believe it is all hostess's goal to not kill their guests. Maybe this goes without saying. But the process that goes into one not killing one's guests is a behind-the-scenes often undervalued set of rituals.

To pull my bird from it's tightly formed plastic casing, I dawned disposable gloves that I might be more self-conscious about the placement of my hands. I did pre-clean the whole kitchen, remember, so in theory, the kitchen cannot kill anyone right now.

I set out the measuring cup to start dumping my water into the bringing bag (enough to cover the bird, but you have to count how many cups go it, to know how much salt to add [more math... 1 cup of salt to 4 cups of water, up to half the salt can be substituted with sugar]; I counted 38 cups). Then, you are supposed to take out some of the water to heat to dissolve the salt and sugar. I removed 8 cups to put in my saucepan (the bird in the bag is resting in the roasting pan, my only pan big enough to hold them), and as I turn, the bag tips about 2 cups of raw-bird water all over the counter and the measuring cups sitting there.

So much for not killing the guests.

Just kidding. I soaked it all up and cleaned again. By the time I was done, my salt was dissolved and ready to cool to be added back to the bag.