Please Be Kind, and Brine!

Last year was my very first time cooking Thanksgiving dinner, or at least the turkey! I have to admit that it was honestly the best turkey I've ever tasted! The best thing about my turkey is that it was moist. No one wants a dried out piece of turkey on their plate. The key to keeping the turkey moist is brining, which is basically a salt solution that you soak the turkey in before cooking.
I cannot find the exact recipe that we used last year, but the one below is very close, with the exception that our recipe had sugar in it as well. Instead of a pot we used a 10 gallon bucket (aka: The Turkey Bucket) for our turkey - he needs room to swim around a little! It is usually cold enough here in Tennessee that you can actually leave the brining turkey outside with the lid on the bucket to "refrigerate" it. Give brining a try - you won't regret it!



INGREDIENTS
1 cup salt
1 lemon, cut into wedges
1 orange, cut into wedges
1 medium onion, cut into wedges
3 cloves garlic
4 bay leaves
1 tablespoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon ground black pepper
1 1/2 gallons cold water



DIRECTIONS
Rub salt onto your turkey, and place remaining salt, lemons, oranges, onion, garlic, bay leaves, thyme and pepper into a large pot. Place the turkey in the pot, and fill with water. Refrigerate overnight. Discard brine after removing turkey.



P.S. Do not discard the lemons, oranges and onions after brining or buy more to stuff inside the turkey!
Also, I basted my turkey the ole Martha Stewart way:

1 stick unsalted butter
1 stick of melted butter
1 1/2 cups of dry white wine (I used a white cooking wine that had a touch of lemon in it)
Cheesecloth (big enough to cover turkey)

Directions:

Rub butter on turkey. Soak cheesecloth in melted butter and white wine mixture. Ring out excess into the bowl and cover turkey with cheesecloth. Save remaining mixture for basting. Bast every 30 minutes. If turkey is browning too quickly, cover loosely with aluminum foil.
Always cook turkey to temperature. The timing on the turkey package is a good reference as to how long it might take to cook completely, but it has to be cooked to the proper temperature, so get a meat thermometer!

Gracie's 4!

It's hard to believe that my little fur baby, Gracie Lou, is 4 years old today! I'm too young to have a four year old! Ha! Hopefully I've been a good mother, despite the fact that she is borderline obese! Gracie means so much to me. She sleeps on my side of the bed every regardless for her hatred of Adam! Here's to four more years with my little cuddle kitten!

And if anyone knows how I can make the montage smaller, please let me know!

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We Are Duke!

I am very late posting this blog, but this past week has been busy and hectic! Last weekend Adam and I drove to Durham to visit Wes and Ashley and to see a Duke football game! The drive out there seemed to take FOREVER! Seriously, we heard Kid Rock's song "All Summer Long" and another song at least three times, and the time change might have had something to do with it too. However, when we finally got there, the long drive was worth it. We got to see Wes and Ashley's new home, which is so nice. Adam and I are partial to new homes, but I pray Wes and Ashley do NOT have the problems we've had with our new home! Anywho, then we went to eat dinner at Satisfactions, where we had an awesome pizza. Adam and I ate out entire pizza, which was at least 16 inches in diameter, and I thought Adam might try to steal some of Wes and Ashley's pizza. Adam's a big eater - grandmother's love him!
The next day was the big game against a rival team, NC State. Originally Adam and I chose this game for our visit because Dad's side of the family,who live in North Carolina, are HUGE NC State fans. All three of my cousins went to NC State, and two of them live in Raleigh, which is a stones throw away from Durham. So I thought it would be a visit with Wes and Ashley and a family reunion all wrapped into one weekend! Well, my family couldn't make it, but we still had a great time tailgating with the Gaillard's. As in Vegas, Adam and I assumed new identities to get the Duke family perks - we may make this a vacation tradition!
ACC football is sooo different in SEC, or maybe it's the difference between private and public school! The seniors of Duke University Marching Band (aka: DUMB) had letters on their hats that spelled out "Go To Hell Carolina", which you don't at UT's games unless you are at a rowdy tailgate and it would be Florida, Alabama or Georgia! Duke's stadium is tiny compared to Neyland Stadium, but there was more of a small town atmosphere!
The student at Duke are VERY different on game day. Ashley told me that they dress in unusual attire for games, but I could have never imagined what I saw. There is not rhyme or reason to what they wear. It's almost as if the 80's Goodwill store threw up on the student section. They don't wear team colors or anything with a Duke logo on it. It's just pure unbridled randomness! For instance, one girl had on a black spandex leotard with caution tape tied around her body and head. Another guy was walking around in nothing but UnderArmor! Another girl had on metallic silver spandex tights on, which interestingly enough I saw at Target the other day - the 80's are back and in a bad way! Now, NC State girls - they wear dresses and cowboy boots. I don't quite understand that either, since cowboy boots cannot be comfortable, but it's better than spandex and caution tape!
We had a great time in Durham! The campus is gorgeous! Wes and Ashley were wonderful hosts to us. North Carolina feels like my second home!

For All You Doubters!

I know my last post is probably hard to believe, but it's true - Chuck flushes the toilet! So I've had my camera sitting in the bathroom waiting for the perfect moment! So without further ado, I give you Chuck flushing our toilet!

Drum Roll Please...

You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Tricks...

But you can teach a cat, or they can teach themselves! As some of you may know, I have somehow managed to possess the two strangest and neediest cats ever! Gracie has an aversion to men, for some reason (possibly because Ronnie used to chase her around the house to scare the mud out of her) and Chuck has an aversion to nothing except the word NO! Most people think that my cats are dumb - granted they do act that way a lot, but my kitties have many talents! Gracie was the first cat I had ever seen actually fetch something like a dog. She is obsessed with hair bows and she will fetch a thrown hair bow all day! Chuck has also picked up the fetching skill but with a toy monkey (aka: Monk Monk) instead! But wait there's more!

When Adam and I lived in our first apartment, Gracie's 'room' was the guest bathroom. One day she started pulling all the toilet paper off the roll. I remember calling Mom and telling her about it -it seemed strange that Gracie was fascinated with toilet paper! I also remember jokingly telling Mom that it would be funny if Gracie started to 'use' the toilet paper - instead of wasting it! Well slap me silly and call me Susie, because I came home one day and found toilet paper in Gracie's litter box! Gracie had the kitty porta-potty type litter box with the lid on it so it's not like toilet paper fell in the box - she took it in there!

Well Chuck has learned a bathroom trick as well, and it's better than Gracie's! Chuck has actually learned how to flush the toilet - all by himself! He only seems to do it when I'm around, and I don't think Adam believes it, but it's true! He stands on the scale for a little more height and stands on his hind legs and pulls down on the handle with his front paws with enough force to flush the toilet! Now if only I could get him to use the toilet, then I wouldn't have to change a litter box all the time!