TGIW

[emmawoodhouse]

So, the turkey brined away happily in its little bag of brine and herbs last night, surrounded by ice in my nice plastic Kmart tub on the terrace. This morning I rinsed it, and it's peacefully air drying (for the crispy skin, you know) in the refrigerator. There is NO room for anything else in the refrigerator. I think I can take out the pecan

Comments

[wayf]

Oh yeah, take that pecan pie out. I'm having my own fridge space issues, which will only get worse tonight when I make mushroom pie #1 (I am making two this year, fer cryin' out loud!), so I suspect my own pecan pie, made two nights ago, will be finidng a new home on the counter.

Cool that your parents are meeting the dog! My parents call Grady their granddog. Heeee.

[emmawoodhouse]

Yeah, my MIL does the same thing. But my MIL also does that MIL thing with excessive advice about how to raise said grandbaby. (She calls Natalie that.) Even though she's never HAD a dog.

[mommyinlove]

Mushroom pie??

Oh, please DO tell!!! Sounds scrupmtious!

[wayf]

I tell you what, Jamie. I'm just gonna friend you and you can get the recipes in my journal. :)

[bre_sarah]

oh can an apartment ever really be clean enough? My MIL is the one I'm nervous about- their house is SO clean, and it's all beige and white which just shocks me. I wouldn't have a hope in hell of keeping a beige home clean.

Sounds like youre right on track- I'm spending today at work rearranging items in the fridge in my head to try to figure out how the heck to fit everything in there after cooking tonight. Definitely take the pie out. I need to remove a shelf to make the turkey fit, so I'm losing twice the space I should be- very bitter about that.

[emmawoodhouse]

Ooh! I just realized I can put the turkey stock in the freezer, which frees up one bowl's worth of space. Excellent!

Yeah, I don't know if I could keep a beige house clean either. Or what about those people with white rugs? One of the things I LOVE about our apartment is that the floors in all of it except the bedroom are this poured concrete stone looking material which never ever shows dirt. Ever. And if I can't see it, I don't care about it.

[bre_sarah]

yeah our carpet here is kind of tan and I'n not a fan of it- I'd rather have dark hardwood floors anyday.

When I was a baby we lived in SF and the older couple who lived up stairs apparently lived in an *entirely* white apartment. Couch, rugs, chairs, walls- everything. They had one very large, very colorful painting on the wall and they placed a large white lamp with a huge white lampshade right in front of it. They loved to have me come upstairs to visit and my mom said she was always terrified that I'd find some way tomake a colorful mess. So weird.

[wayf]

Ack! What is going on with LJ? I'm replying to Bre and it's going to KC? Grrr. Trying again.

[mommyinlove]

I mentioned to Adeeb last night about brining a turkey, per your previous bucket post. You should have seen him--you could literally see the wheels turning in his head. I asked if he'd ever heard of such a thing, and what it was supposed to do, and wouldn't it make the turkey too salty, and where do you FIND the right type of brine (other than just adding a super amount of salt, that is) and all sorts of questions, and he (being the superior chef in our house) was SUPER excited about the prospect. Although we're not having TG at our house this year, methinks we'll be getting a turkey soon thereafter just to see the results of said brining. He was most positive that it was a WONDERFUL idea. :)

[emmawoodhouse]

Hee Jamie. I didn't know whether I would either, but I read a bunch of discussion about it and instructions. According to Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen the basic brine is 1 cup of table salt per gallon of water. That's if you brine it for four hours. If you brine it overnight, you use half the salt. And if you use kosher salt, you use twice as much Diamond Crystal kosher salt as you do table salt, or 1.5 times as much Morton's kosher salt. You can also put flavorings -- a lot of people put sugar in, but I don't like sweet meats. I added a lot of ground sage when I boiled the water for the brine (I made a 5X concentration brine so the salt would dissolve and I could cool the lesser amount instead of all of it, then mixed it with water in the bucket). It made a kind of sage tea, which I hope flavors the turkey. I also added some peppercorns

[mommyinlove]

I, uh...hmmm. My head is spinning, Caitlin. Wowie.

You best be sure that I'm adding this one to my memories, though! :)

[noa_le]

Hi! Its Noa from the wc. I used to lurk in your journal once (hanging my head in shame) and just started looking into the whole LJ realm. Anyways, thought I would say hello. So hello :-) !!

Noa