dr_phil_physics | Entries tagged with thanksgiving

As mentioned earlier and in keeping with years past, we did our big Thanksgiving meal today. Last year's attempt to brine just dark meat -- turkey thighs and wings -- with the wings on the stuffing casserole and the thighs on a roasting pan to make drippings for gravy -- worked so well that we'd be silly not to repeat it again.

And earlier in the fall we had a pumpkin pie, because why not. Cousins Bill and Cindy send a box of cracked Arkansas pecans for the holidays, so I requested a pecan pie for Thanksgiving. That probably leaves pumpkin and mincemeat pies for Christmas and New Year's. (big-pie-eating-grin)

We ended up eating early for us, since not doing a whole bird really cuts down on the cook time, so we sat down around 5pm and put on Love, Actually on Netflix. *** (Almost couldn't find the pictures, because when I changed the Nikon D100 from EDT to EST, I must have accidentally changed the year to 2013.)

Turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes and root vegetables & beets. Just off to the right, two kinds of cranberries. The beer in the gravy was Leinenkugel's Helles Yeah -- really hoppy. The wine was a lovely Riesling. A technical note for me, used the Nikon SB-28DX flash in bounce mode on the D100 for the first time. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

We managed to keep things to a reasonable plate. At 7pm I took my usual nap, to elevate my leg, and then it was time for pie.

"All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up," says the pecan pie. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

The pie is almost candied -- yum -- but you have to cut it with more skill and care than a pumpkin pie. Mrs. Dr. Phil demonstrates. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

As shown, one slice for you and my slice in the foreground. (grin) Not shown, the Hudsonville Vanilla Ice Cream. Later pecan pie sessions will feature whipped cream or Hudsonville Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2014 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Watching Kristen Chenowith: Coming Home on PBS from Broken Arrow OK.

Lovely.

Back to writing, grading...

Dr. Phil

*** For those keeping score at home, as a kid the Christmas season began when Santa Claus came at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade on the television. As an adult, after the turkey meal. Anyway, Love, Actually is one of the handful of top classic Christmas movies we tend to see every year. The others are:
A Christmas Carol (Scrooge) -- the 1951 Alistair Sim version / Scrooged -- the 1988 Bill "I Can Do Any Holiday" Murray
A Christmas Story -- the definitive kid's view of Christmas
And two Jimmy Stewart flicks, the obvious It's A Wonderful Life and the wonderfully quirky 1940 The Shop Around the Corner -- if you have EVER worked retail, you must see this film. At Christmas.

Current Music: Christmas Is All Around / Bill Nighy

The New Usual

We used to do our Thanksgiving dinner as we had grown up -- big meal on Thursday. But for a long time we've moved the cooking to Friday or Saturday, and chosen to go to the movies on Thanksgiving Day itself.

This year we got to the movies on Wednesday, so decided to stay home for a change. A lazy, warming and partly sunny day with temps near 60°F. Used the TV remote's Jump button to flip between the NFL games and a 13-hour Castle marathon on TNT. We are way behind on that series, as we'd only seen a few Season 1 episodes and then had conflicts at that time slot. Wendy would've approved -- she adored the show and we had fun.

The Thanksgiving Word of the Day is Spatchcocking

We didn't spatchcock a turkey, but it came up with our research on Alton Brown's site.

Actually what Mrs. Dr. Phil was looking up was how to brine a turkey. We've heard about good results from people who had brined their turkey before roasting, both in terms of flavors and keeping it moist. Alas, we realized that while our big canning kettle was probably big enough to immerse a turkey, we didn't have a cold place to store while brining, so it wasn't worth it to unearth the canning kettle from a packing box, which we haven't used in probably 25 years.

Instead, I pointed out that since we prefer dark meat, why didn't we just see if we could buy drumsticks and thighs and brine those? We ended up with a couple of turkey wings and some six turkey thighs -- those drumsticks are too full of tendons to be as much fun as thighs. The cook made half a batch of the brine, which was split between our Revereware stockpot and a similar sized pressure cooker, both of which easily fit in a bed of ice in our big cooler.

For cooking, one group of thighs went into a roasting pan filled with stuffing, the other thighs and the wings went onto a Revereware roasting pan with some chicken broth in the pan below so that the drippings would make gravy. Then 70 minutes or so in the oven.

Brilliant

The brined turkey thighs on a bed of stuffing fresh out of the oven. (Click on photo for larger.)

Our Thanksgiving spread of turkey, stuffing, root vegetables and two kinds of cranberries. (Click on photo for larger.)

Thankful for Mrs. Dr. Phil who built this feast for us. (And yummy leftovers for days to come!) (Click on photo for larger.)

And of course there's pie. Pumpkin pie. (Click on photo for larger.)

The Day After

We'd planned on going back out to the movies to see Lincoln today, but the cold front roared through last night and so we had high winds and snows today. Nothing that was going to likely stick, but with the temp falling to around freezing and all those silly people running out to the so-called Black Friday shopping, we didn't need to involve ourselves with their inabilities to remember how to drive on slippery roads.

Instead, a year after Mrs. Dr. Phil got a Kindle Fire, we decided to abandon Hulu+ and reactivate our Netflix account as a streaming account and connect up with out Internet/WiFi enabled Blu-Ray player. MUCH, much easier to negotiate and better response. More on Netflix streaming anon.

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: accomplished

Thanksgiving Weekend

As previously reported, we had Brunswick Stew on Thanksgiving itself and we did a Saturday movie. For years, when we are home for Thanksgiving, we haven't done the big meal on Thanksgiving itself, but on Friday or sometimes even Saturday.

So on Friday I was able to make a perfectly ordinary grocery store run -- which in Allendale doesn't involve getting anywhere near the insanity of the so-called Black Friday shopping nonsense. It was a pretty blue sky day and I threw a camera bag in the back of the Blazer.

Made it all the way back up our driveway before shooting this stand of exploded milkweed pods -- next year's Monarch butterflies. (Click to enlarge)

We had company scheduled to come for Thanksgiving, but they had to cancel. I was just getting back from Atlanta and Mrs. Dr. Phil was treating her sinuses, so we settled on little chickens -- Cornish hens -- which are so easy to cook versus turkey.

A whole little chicken, sage stuffing, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas, gravy and fresh cranberry relish.

Ah, the aftermath. We eat one side of the little chickens on one day and the other the next -- and the remaining bits get used another day. Note that the one Corning Ware has both chickens. (grin)

New Toys

Mrs. Dr. Phil has been debating getting some sort of tablet or smart phone, mainly because the university library is expanding its online and borrowable e-book holdings, and she wanted to be better equipped to deal with both students and technology. Apple has refurbished iPads on sale at educational discount, and there's the iPhone and Android variants. But while I was away she decided to give the Amazon Kindle Fire a try. It certainly made being at home with her sinus cold more bearable, especially with the spiffy red case she found. (e-grin)

Here's Mrs. Dr. Phil using her Fire in the Alt-Mode to do the Sunday Sudoku from the newspaper.

She hoped it was okay to spend the money on a new toy. Okay? After I'd picked up some bargains on eBay and acquired a backup digital SLR for home -- a Nikon D1X -- and another for the office -- a Nikon D1H -- how could it not be okay?

The D1X is a 6MP camera with an extended 27 frame buffer and 3 frames per second speed, the same resolution as the medium setting on the full-frame Kodak DCS Pro SLR/n I bought last year. The D1H is a 2.7MP camera, can shoot at 5 frames per second, has a 40 frame buffer and has a more sensitive sensor up to 6400 ISO, with almost no noise at 1600 ISO, which I intend to mainly use in B&W mode.

I'd inherited from my sister Wendy an extra auto-focus lens, a simple 35-70mm f3.3-4.5 AF Nikkor, and a compact Nikon Speedlight SB-22 electronic flash, which I tested in the Kindle Fire shot above. I'll add them to the office Nikon D1H setup.

Tonight we had a spicy Szechuan eggplant -- Mrs. Dr. Phil feeling we'd had enough chicken the last couple of days. All in all, a lovely weekend. (Even if Northwestern didn't win against Michigan State.)

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: pleased

Despite The Rain

We needed to get out of the house and rack up at least one movie this holiday weekend. We've been known to do double-features on Thanksgiving Day itself, but this year I was catching up on sleep after my Atlanta road trip.

It was time for Muppets.

The Muppets [PG]

Holland 7 Theatre #2 4:05pm

Totally wrong -- there's no way a 10 gauge wire is sufficient to power... Oh wait. Never mind. It's a MUPPET MOVIE! Ya-aaaaay!

It's been a long time since we've enjoyed the Muppets and they have a lot of history. As a result, we get a lot of cameos of both Muppets and humans. If your favorite Muppet isn't on screen much, don't worry, it's a bewildering array of colors and felt and joy -- no problem. It's like any great franchise, like Star Trek -- they don't have to explain everything.

And it's a musical. Great gobs of wonderful, happy, sad and sometimes self-referential musical numbers. The story is mostly immaterial. We have Walter, a young boy in Muppet form who yearns to meet Kermit & Company. His brother and his girlfriend. A pilgrimage to the Muppet Studios in L.A. A devious oil baron played over-the-top by Chris Cooper -- does he ever play really nice guys? A plot to bulldoze the place. A contact and an out clause. A quest to "get the band back together" and "let's put on a show", where we throw in Jack Black for the former and Mickey Rooney for the latter. And, because it's Muppets, things don't quite work out right, except they do.

I was impressed by the vivid sharpness and color of the digital projection. We've never seen Muppets like this before. The theatre wasn't quite full, but it was a big happy crowd with lots of little kids. If the Muppets in the movie were worried about being forgotten, this love letter to Muppet fans will charm the new generation and keep the Rainbow Connection alive.

Highly Recommended... for those in the know.

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: happy

This Phase Is Finished

I turned in Wendy's keys on Tuesday and then started north -- it's a two-day trip from either Atlanta or Greensboro. Tuesday was damp and traffic was jammed for an hour beginning in Knoxville, 20-25mph on I-75. But unlike the way down, Ohio was blue sky civilized. Finally pulled into the garage Wednesday evening around 7:30pm.

We unloaded my things and a few things that needed to come out, like Wendy's laptops, on Wednesday night, but saved the main offload to Thanksgiving afternoon. Over the weekend I had to make some quick executive decisions. Most of Wendy's things were given away. We just don't have room for a lot of stuff, but I did gather up the DVDs -- no time to sort out the duplicates, but Wendy had a lot of sets of things like Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica. No point in me spending money on those things if she had. And a lot of Wendy and Paul's photographs and yearbooks -- heavy damned things. (grin)

But there were a couple of things I had made notes to look for.

First on the list was the purple Bargello quilt that Mrs. Dr. Phil made for Wendy in 1991, after she was widowed. I was going to take a picture of the quilt, but Mrs. Dr. Phil beat me to it. (grin) The colors are fabulous and this was the first in a series of Bargello quilts Mrs. Dr. Phil did.

Operation Rodney Rescue gathered up Big Rodney from a stack of books in the living room first off -- he's now looking at us from atop the CD case or rather I think he's looking askance at the ceiling fan. Many smaller Rodneys were pulled from the boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations.

There were a couple of pieces I wanted to bring home, including a brass rocking horse (not shown), a wooden carousel horse and a lovely German Shepherd in honor of Suzie from years ago.

The one piece of furniture is this tiny little chest which we had in the toy room when we were kids and then Wendy took for a nightstand. I hoped we had room in the Bravada and we did. Stuck next to my side of the futon, it looks like it's been there for years, but that's just my familiarity with it, methinks.

Mrs. Dr. Phil didn't come down to Atlanta, which turned out to be a good thing with the cold she's been nursing to say nothing of having more space to load up. But our quilted chicken is always there to look after us when the other is out of town.

Sam barely acknowledge my return Wednesday night, but the next night he was all happy to see me. Cats. Fickle.

Mrs. Dr. Phil made a big vat of chicken stew from this recipe for Brunswick Stew. So we had this on Thanksgiving itself. Not to worry, we usually do our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday or Saturday, often going to the movies on Thursday. This year we stayed home... and had a quiet day.

Having made a lovely key lime pie this summer, Mrs. Dr. Phil made key lime tarts on Thanksgiving. We'll have some today, though we did have Edy's pumpkin pie ice cream with our stew on Thanksgiving.

More anon...

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: accomplished

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