Some Thanksgiving Advice

[Burnaby49]

We don't want any Quatloosian thanksgiving ER visits. And, as an added bonus for the women of the household;

Lastly, it gives the men something to do. Set up a fryer and a cooler full of beer outside, and soon every man in the house will find himself around the fryer, even if it’s cold.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/201 ... _bird.html

[fortinbras]

And remember this little rhyme that I recite at the every Thanksgiving dinner:

Stuff your gut with tons of food,
__Then collapse while muscles pound.
Don't say Thanksgiving is the reason,
__You eat this way all year 'round.

[Judge Roy Bean]

In the spirit of family gatherings, where people gather, many with good intentions and a penchant for fixing things, may I offer the following:

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done
But he with a smile replied
That maybe it couldn’t but he wouldn’t be one
Who wouldn’t say so ‘til he tried
So he buckled right in with a bit of a grin
And his screwdriver touched a live-wire
And he let out a cry, and proceeded to die
In a shower of sparks and fire
And the people who gave the eulogy
Spoke of honor and love and ambition
They spoke well of the dead and nobody said
Why didn’t he call an electrician?

Prairie Home Companion, Poetry Corner, as read by John Lithgow, November, 2012.

[AndyK]

Typical deep-fry aftermath

[wserra]

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. May you spend the day in health and happiness with those you love.

[AndyK]

Likewise to all. And please consider all those who have less for which to be thankful.

[Lambkin]

This year's stuffing recipe, as improvised from my mother's recipe:

Collect heels of home-made bread in the freezer for 1 year.

Drink a glass of wine.

Cube bread til 8 cups. Expand with a few old bialys.

Sautee 1 clove garlic with 8 cups yellow onions, carrots, and celery (cut large) for a little while (50% cooked).

Heat 1.5 sticks butter with 2 tbsp crushed dry sage leaves.

Warm 2 cups of chicken broth.

Chop 1.5 cups walnuts. (Or filbert nuts.)

Collect tart plums from the back yard tree, dry in fruit dryer, reconstitute in boiling water, to 1/2 cup chopped.

Combine all of the above, plus salt, in a huge steel lasagna pan (spread thin).

Bake @ 350, stirring occasionally to maximize browning.

[AndyK]

This year's stuffing recipe, as improvised from my mother's recipe:

Collect heels of home-made bread in the freezer for 1 year.

Drink a glass of wine.

Cube bread til 8 cups. Expand with a few old bialys.

Sautee 1 clove garlic with 8 cups yellow onions, carrots, and celery (cut large) for a little while (50% cooked).

Drink a glass of wine.

Heat 1.5 sticks butter with 2 tbsp crushed dry sage leaves.

Warm 2 cups of chicken broth.

Chop 1.5 cups walnuts. (Or filbert nuts.)

Collect tart plums from the back yard tree, dry in fruit dryer, reconstitute in boiling water, to 1/2 cup chopped.

Drink a glass of wine.

Combine all of the above, plus salt, in a huge steel lasagna pan (spread thin).

Bake @ 350, stirring occasionally to maximize browning.

Fixed it for you

[Imalawman]

We fried a turkey and lived to tell about it - success. Happy Thanksgiving!

[Doktor Avalanche]

Typical deep-fry aftermath

Yup. Only my first (and last) attempt at deep drying a turkey went something like this:



Apparently I hadn't thawed the turkey all the way through and some time after I dunked the turkey in the hot oil it exploded, spilled oil over the flame and caught fire.

I managed to get the fire out but not before YCFD showed up and told me in no uncertain terms that I am now banned from deep frying turkey - for life.

[AndyK]

My son-in-law fried a turkey one year -- no problems.

Two years later, he decided to fry one again. This time, we had around twelve thousand people coming for dinner, so we had to do two birds -- one large-enough bird wouldn.t have fit in the fryer.

So, bird #1 came and went perfectly. Bird #2 wasn't perfectly dry. As it was lowered into the oil, the water inside the cavity began to boil. Given the shape of the inside of the turkey, the boiling water created a venturi effect, spewing hot oil several feet into the air.

That was no problem, except that when the fountain came back down, the oil became friends with the propane flame under the fryer. He pulled the bird out of the oil and I unleashed the garden hose I'd been holding for just a possibility.

Well, cold water and boiling oil are not friends. I still have scars on my hands from oil splashes. Also, we had to get our driveway repaved where the flaming flow ate away the surface.

However, bird #2 (in several parts) was processed thgrough the microwave and all guests were well fed and happy.

On a related note, the first year my next-door neighbor was in his house, he decided to fry a turkey in his back yard. Long story made short; he had to expand his patio by around 80 square feet to cover the area of his lawn where nothing ever grew again.