Any Thanksgiving screw ups?

Not yet, but the day is young...

Yep. Spent all morning checking out ceramic cookers and custom tables.

Big EXPENSIVE screw up.

It's still early. But so far so good.

Dog apparently was sick last night; woke up this morning to scattered *piles*. We're tag-teaming the carpet scrubber now...

So far, no, will there be, almost certainly.

I honestly can't call the ugly pies I am making screw ups, since I have always made ugly pies and can't roll out pie dough to save my life, it could be the tapered French rolling pin I insist on using.

so far evereything A OK !

Besides the brining disaster I I mentioned yesterday. I had smoked some cheese, herbs, garlic, almonds and butter. After I took them off the smoker I blended the butter, garlic cloves and herbs with just a little olive oil to set it in motion in the blender. This morning I put the bowl in the mic to soften it up a bit but went just a little to far so I put the bowl with the spoon in the freezer to firm it back up. When I took the bowl out of my freezer which is a slide out drawer type, the spoon caught on the top of the door and flipped the bowl upside down on the floor.

All was not lost a good amount was firm enough and stayed in the bowl and no one was up yet to see any of this, hee hee hee, my little secrete. :icon_shy

Just hope when its time to take the sides out of the oven, well I wont even go there.:tsk:
Dave

here's the day game plan:



turkey - in and rocking along

pumpkin pie with home made whipped cream - done!

lemon meringue pie - done!

mashed pots - need to peel/boil/mash

stuffing - need to bake

steamed broccoli - need to steam

cranberry sauce (from scratch!) - done!

gravy - after da bird!



and on the smoker:


10# of home made summer sausage - almost done!

bacon bomb fatty - just went on

sea salt for smoked salt (great on steaks!) - done!



then after eating:


strip meat off carcass and make turkey tetrazzini
boil carcass to make stock for turkey soup


other duties:


drink beer (sierra nevada celebration in frigo) - started!
watch detroit lose
drink beer

watch different football game
nap
drink beer

:thumb:

You mean besides trying to smoke a turkey without brining first? Yeah, wish me luck!

My Italian Beef smells great and I just got done writing out bills. All on schedule so far. I see a nap in my future too.

All I can think of is I've had too many 'adult beverages' already and it's only 1:30. I still got like another 4 hours for the butt to be done.

Huge catastrophe! Hosting 23 people at my house today. I had everything planned out. I bought 2 minimally processed turkey breasts on Sunday, got all of my ingredients for a buttermilk brine, prepared the brine last night and set the alarm for 3:30 this morning to begin brining my breasts. As I pulled the second breast out of the bag to put in the brine I noticed a foul odor. One of my breasts had spoiled. I went online to find out how long they are supposed to stay good in the refrigerator and learned a valuable lesson. They don't usually stay good for 3 1/2 days. So I rushed to the local Food Lion, Publix is closed today, and they had nothing but large 20 plus pound whole birds. I went to Krogers and found the same thing. Settled on a Honey baked ham from the Honey Baked Ham kiosk at Krogers. The manager had to find the key to it because the Honey Baked Ham workers took the day off. So I guess ham and turkey for us today.

Only screw up is that I didn't pick up a case of cold ones. I may have to tap into my whiskey cabinet. :doh:

Oh no, not the whiskey cabinet!

Well it didn't run out too bad although I had to finish the turkey in the oven as I had a hard time getting the temps high enough to finish.

Everything went pretty well for me, but I had an almost "oops." Part of the turkey prep was rubbing it down with canola oil. I then put it on a roasting pan THAT DID NOT HAVE A LIP. I carried it out of the house and over to the smoker. I put the pan down, opened the smoker lid, and then picked up the roasting pan to put it in the smoker -- and the oiled up turkey almost slid off the pan. After a little panic-induced juggling, I managed to catch it up against my shirt. Disaster averted. (Except for the oily shirt.)

Lake Dogs said:

Dog apparently was sick last night; woke up this morning to scattered *piles*. We're tag-teaming the carpet scrubber now...

Click to expand...

Awww... poor thing. Hope your pup is feeling better now. :sad:

Yep......screwed up and invited the in-laws!:laugh:


Just kidding. I love 'em to death, but my MIL.......MAN, the DRAMA!!!!:drama:


Hope everything went well for everyone today!
Happy Thanksgiving!

We went from this year, for the first time in 20+ years, planning on not having ANYONE over and just going to Cracker Barrel with some in-laws and enjoying ourselves while somebody else did the work for us, to the other parts of the family deciding they just couldn't do without coming to our place for turkey and ribs. So, bird & multiple sides of ribs were bought, along with many pound of sweet taters, corn and green beans, plus the makings for a bunch of pies, enough to feed over 20 people.
At 7:30 this morning, work calls and somebody is out, so the supervisor (me) will have to fill in. My wife, who has been up since 4am and was already in a tizzy over wondering if the house is clean enough and will everything be done on time, is now ready for an official heart attack. I hooked up some jumper cables to the truck battery just in case I needed to zap her and restart her heart.
My brother-in-law was already planning to do the ribs, but I was scheduled to do the turkey, so I got the UDS fired up and was just going to put the bird in at a lower temp (to heck with crisp skin, just get it cooked in time for them to have it by 1:00pm). Just before I put the turkey on, another worker called and volunteered to work the open slot for the extra holiday pay. Praise the Lord, for HE is good! My wife also decided not to have that heart attack, and actually found a moment to smile. I went ahead and unhooked the jumper cables from the truck.
OK, so the UDS is already fired up early and climbing to temp, but what to do with it since I wasn't going to put the bird on until about 9:30. Hmmm, a Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage roll was in the fridge, along with some ground turkey..... that spells FATTIE time! I rolled out the sausage, spread out some ground chicken on top of it, added some Stovetop Stuffing, some whole cranberry sauce, and topped it with a touch of Sweet Baby Ray's Raspberry & Chipotle BBQ sauce. There was some ground chicken left over, so I made a second, smaller fattie without the pork (I know, a sacrilege). On they went.
At 9:40, after helping with many, many other chores, I set the turkey on top of the "Sittin Turkey" and placed it all in a pan filled with chicken broth. The bird had been seasoned with some of Steph's SM Spicy Apple rub, and the Sittin Turkey was filled with a mixture of apple juice, cranberry juice, SM Spicy Apple, celery and onion, to steam up into the bird's cavity. I had planned to use the medium BGE but the bird wouldn't fit (figured this out yesterday) so the UDS was being used with the "tall lid" and cruised along a 325 rock solid. Perfect temp holding, no worries. I had even decided to add another rack position up just above the fire basket so I could put a 12x12 tile to act as a diffuser, and it worked perfectly, giving even, indirect smoke (couple of chunks of cherry wood and another chunk of mesquite for good measure) and heat all through the UDS cooking area. Perfect, ah, I could rest for a few.
All was perfect until....... Well, since I fired up the UDS almost 2 hours early, I, like the dummie I often am, forgot that I had filled the charcoal basket with enough Kingsford that should last, oh, at least 4-5 hours (for a 3 to 3 1/2 hour cook), and didn't think about the fact that I had fired it up almost 2 hours early. About noon, my rock solid 325 began dropping, so I shook the barrel, which loosened the ash and helped bring the temp back up. Yeah, for about another 10 minutes it climbed back up, and then began to drop again. In a mad rush, I opened it up, pulled out the grate with the turkey balancing precariously on top of the Sittin Turkey, pulled out the grate with the diffuser tile, and added a bunch more briquettes. To heck with the diffuser, I set the grate with the bird back onto it's perch only managing to splash myself with boiling broth a few times during the whole process, and got the cover back on the UDS.
Needless to say, the bird was a few minutes late coming off the cooker (about 20 minutes late while getting IT up to 165 in the breast) and then some resting time. Actually, it worked out OK because everybody got ribs the first go around, and had turkey for seconds. Yes, there was a major screw-up, but all worked out well.
Oh, yeah, about the fatties. They were done about the time the bird went on, so they were the appetizer. In my haste I forgot to season the "chicken only" small fattie but some season-all afterwards fixed that. The big one, made with the JD sausage, was very well received by everyone, including one person (Greyeagle) who doesn't care for cranberry sauce.
No pron (sorry bout that) because as you might imagine, things were a bit too hectic to think about cameras, but we had a wonderful gathering of family and we feel very blessed. And, next year, they've already been told, if they want to have it at their place, great! We'll bring deserts and a meat dish. Otherwise, plan on meeting us at the Cracker Barrel, :wink:.
PS: No dogs got sick during the making of this production, but a great niece was sick all day long; however, she still found a way to eat ribs, turkey, dressing and desert. :thumb: