Another Thanksgiving in the Books

November 26, 2021

We got up at 4:30 to get the smoker going...the file cabinet smoker.  I get up around 5am daily anyway, so it wasn't much of a stretch for me at all.  I had brined the turkey in a buttermilk brine overnight.  Eddie got the coals going before 5am and I prepped - shoving the garlic chive butter 'pieces' under the skin.  My cousin, Chuck, told me about a neat trick (around 10am so I went and did this..albeit a little later) where you put butter inside a clean cloth inside the turkey.  That makes the butter not just drip through, but it's like a butter sponge inside, basting away as the turkey cooks.  Yum! 

We didn't have a second aluminum coal pan.  Big mistake on our part - you have to completely empty the spent coals/ash every few hours or you can't maintain the heat needed to finish - so we wound up finishing in the oven.  The results were still delicious!

Luckily, we had a second turkey which I roasted in the oven in one of those oven roasting bags.  You simply can't go wrong wtih those.  I had injected both turkeys with a lemon pepper marinade and it really came through.  The turkey was done in 3.5 hours.  Everything else came out very delicious - the Acorn squash/bulgar dish (instead of yams), mom/grandma's famous stuffing, mashed potatoes my sister brought from Roberts of Woodside, and oh....the pie.

The pie was from Gizdich Ranch in Watsonville - we were very lucky to have scored the Dutch Apple - when we got there, on our way back from a quick trip to Pacific Grove earlier this month, the people ahead of me in line were told there was no more Dutch Apple.  Oh no...so when it was my turn, I asked if there was any kind of apple pie left.  The lady looked up at the top of a rack and said "Oh!  I have it!  I have two more!"  I guess it was the Dutch Apple Pie Gods smiling upon me. 

So, the food and company were amazing and there was Thanksgiving 2021!