The Fallons: Thanksgiving 2014

For the first time ever, I decided to cook Thanksgiving dinner. It was only going to be the four of us, plus Lollipop, so I figured it would be good to do a test run on our family of "five."

And by test run, I mean it. We are talking YouTube tutorials, google searches, reaching out to family, friends and random people in the grocery store for advice…. Yep, that kind of "test run."

For the dressing or is it stuffing??? (I didn't stuff the bird with it so I guess it is dressing) I wanted to make it from scratch and ditch the Stove Top version I think my mom always made. Well, I didn't make the bread so I am not sure that constitutes from scratch but close enough. Fast forward to Thanksgiving dinner, I see now why my mom uses Stove Top. I won't even share the recipe I used because it turned out all watery and the chunks of bread were too big. It did however have the flavor of stuffing just not the consistency which made it odd.

The brining process that Alton Brown recommends takes ALL day and ALL night. After talking with friends, neighbors and family they all said, "just slap some butter, salt and pepper on the bird and stick it in the oven. You don't need to do all that fancy stuff ahead of time."

I also found it hard to find a turkey that wasn't over 15 pounds. I read that you should figure a pound a person for your bird for the typical overeating that day and leftovers which would mean we only need four pounds, or five counting Lollipop. The smallest I could find was an almost 8-pound bird from Gelsons. It was free-range, organic, vegetarian fed, no antibiotics and had all the certifications to make you feel like you were making the right choice as far as eating an animal on Thanksgiving.

Following Alton Brown's suggestion, we gave it a bath of some sort of iced salt water concoction in the largest bucket we could find, our beverage bin we bring out at parties. Don't worry, I washed it.

Todd looks mortified.

I see why.

Fast forward to actual Thanksgiving Day and Samantha and I went on a run together.

Ya know, working off those pumpkin pie calories we were about to indulge in.

Love my running partner!

We ran to Peabody School and met up with some other families for a boot camp workout and then a family game of soccer which further solidified that Todd, Samantha AND Thatcher are good at soccer and I am not.

Okay, back home to the meal that takes 24 hours to cook and 24 minutes to eat, if that. Oh and yes, we discovered there are more parts to remove from inside the turkey besides whatever is in that bag we pulled out the night before. We found the heart (I think) and worse, found the neck. Yuck!

Alton Brown, who I was beginning to really dislike after playing/stopping/rewinding/repeating his video every 2 minutes, suggested this "aromatic"mixture to be poured inside the turkey. Again, discussing this with friends/family they all thought I was nuts and reminded me butter, salt and pepper was all I needed.

We stuffed it with herbs…..

The aromatic mixture.

Measured it for a breast-covering to be put on mid-way through to prevent the white meat from burning.

We read the instructions on how to use the built-in thermometer our oven came with and stuck it in the bird. We set the timer and all said a prayer.

Timer beeped and it was time for the "foil bra".

Stuffing was done and looked kind of okay but like I said before it wasn't that great.

Getting a bit delirious from all the cooking and began using the brussels sprout stalk as a bat.

No really, I am having fun cooking.

And Alton Brown is awesome!

These actually were pretty good. I'll share this recipe here.

Our thermometer never registered and we felt like the 8-pound bird was in the oven too long based on the timing I read for a bird twice its size so we thought we were ready to eat.

The table was set with Thatcher's T-day preschool cuteness.

The kids were toasting with sparkling cider.

And I began to question the doneness of our turkey:

At this point, I'm flipping the bird at Alton Brown.

Our new neighbor, Lee, heard we were having turkey issues (word gets out fast in this neighborhood) and came to our rescue.

She was mortified how we were cooking our turkey. She also was a butter, salt and pepper fan. Our worst offense according to her was NO GRAVY! "What were we basting the bird with?!" I followed her next store to get some of her gravy from her bird, how embarrassing…..

Let's take a break from the stressful cooking and meet Finn. This was Lee's grandson. Lee's daughter, Krista, was in town for about a week and we became fast friends with her family and loved having her right next door to us during the holiday.

We hope to see them in Boulder next time we are in Colorado. We had them over for dinner before they left to go back home and Thatcher still asks where his buddy is. Finn may have been the one to tell his grandmother that we were having turkey issues. Speaking of which….