[Mike Nolan]

Well, I started the two thighs in skin down and when I turned them over in 20 minutes I added the turkey tenders. The thighs got done a little before the breast meat, but they needed to rest more anyway. There was enough juice off the turkey in the bottom of the pan to kick the gravy (made with a roux and turkey stock) up a notch.

I think I was the only one who ate any of the dark meat, but that didn't surprise me.

For a change, I got the potatoes cooked enough that they weren't any lumps after I whipped them in the mixer. But I started them about 20 minutes earlier than in past years.

My son in Pittsburgh did duck legs using a sous vide circulator for 18 hours. He said they were incredible.

[Mike Nolan]

I looked in both of the supermarkets I usually shop in, but didn't see the Nabisco chocolate wafers in either one of them. In both cases, it seemed like at least half of the cookie section was variants on either Oreos or Chips Ahoy.

There are a couple of threads on other forums from people looking for these cookies as well, one place to check if there's one near you would be a Wegmans.

[Mike Nolan]

So this morning I baked my pie and a 10x10 Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake, and then I made popovers as the appetizer for dinner. One of our guests brought a cherry pie her daughter made, so we had 3 desserts on the table. Plenty to give thanks for.

I'm going to wait a day or two to see if the first batch of pie dough can be rescued, not sure what I'll make with it anyway, since we've already had some cherry pie this weekend.

[Mike Nolan]

Pizza's been on my to-do list for a while, I even bought a 5 pound bag of whole milk mozzarella at Sams that I haven't opened yet. Probably not the next few days, we'll be munching on leftovers from Thanksgiving, even though I'm not making a whole turkey. (I could eat the whole bowl of DGBC in a single sitting.)

[Mike Nolan]

I wound up making another batch of pie dough for this pie, and it needs to chill for an hour or two, so I might wind up making the pie tomorrow morning. If I can rescue the first batch I'll make some other kind of pie with it over the weekend, possibly a cherry pie, I think I still have some pie cherries in the freezer.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm just not a fan of pumpkin pie, but my wife likes the custard filling in it, so a few times either she or I have made a batch of the filling and baked it in ramekins--pumpkin pie without the pie crust. She often makes it with Splenda instead of sugar.

[Mike Nolan]

Well, tonight was supposed to be the night I baked my apple pie for Thanksgiving, but when I took the pie dough out of the fridge it was too crumbly to roll out, I must not have hydrated it enough last night. I sprayed it with water and am letting that soak in, if that doesn't rescue it I may have to make a new batch.

[Mike Nolan]

We had tomato sandwiches using the tomatoes I picked 6 weeks ago while still green and stored in the garage.

I"m getting ready to make my turkey stock for Thursday, and I'll probably mix up my pie crust tonight, too.

[Mike Nolan]

We had tuna salad on tomatoes that I had picked from our garden before the first frost six weeks ago and left in the garage to ripen. They're kind of cold, so we threw them in the microwave for 30-40 seconds to take the chill off, and they were probably better than any tomatoes we could have bought at the store this week.

[Mike Nolan]

Those were the days, when there were actually shows about COOKING on the Food Network!

[Mike Nolan]

It seems to me that the dark meat around the legs and thighs always gets done first, it's the meat on the inside of the breast (which are HUGE compared to a wild bird) that takes the longest to get fully cooked.

[Mike Nolan]

I was talking to someone recently who lives on an acreage outside of town. A year or two back she raised two turkeys from chicks. When they had then prepared, one of them was 55 pounds--dressed.

We see groups of wild turkeys who probably live in Wilderness Park most of the year foraging beside one of the highways just outside Lincoln from time to time, I'd hate to have one of them chasing me, they're monsters.

I remember my grandmother getting these 25 pound birds, she'd do two of them for Thanksgiving, because she had two seatings of about 20 each for Thanksgiving dinner. (She'd cook one the day before and store it on the porch overnight, throwing it back in the oven to reheat between the two servings for dinner.)

[Mike Nolan]

I've got the turkey tenders and the turkey necks in the fridge to thaw out, I'll make stock tomorrow with the necks. The tenders will only take about an hour to roast on Thursday. I have to rework my standard timeline for Thursday, I can start a couple hours later than usual because I don't have to allow 3-4 hours for the turkey. So I may be able to watch most of the Bears-Lions game.

For dessert we're having Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake and an apple pie, I'll probably make those on Wednesday anyway. We have had contractors working in the house the last week doing some drywall repairs from the roof leaks we had several years ago, they're nearly done. But I'm waiting for the dust to settle before I do much in the kitchen.

[Mike Nolan]

We had stuffed red peppers for supper.

[Mike Nolan]

Even when it's fully cooked, wild rice has a bit of a snap to it. I've made a wild rice and mushroom soup a few times, but haven't hit on the right recipe yet. (Famous Dave's had a great version, but dropped it from the menu. I haven't been back since. Zoup has a pretty good one, but all their soups are unnecessarily high in sodium, and most have garlic, so we've stopped going there.)

Caraway tends to be really crunchy in a baked bread, too, but rye bread without caraway isn't an option as far as I'm concerned.

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