Turkey Day Report

OK, so we did a little turkey for Thanksgiving - a 7 lb turkey.  I didn't know they came that small.  Anyway, it was for just two of us so was plenty big!  We decided to brine the little guy and I have to say it was not a great success but maybe I screwed it up.  The brine recipe called for a gallon of water and a cup of kosher salt for a 12-14 lb turkey.  Since we had half that amount of bird, I cut the recipe in half.  I also added some cracked peppercorns and a few bay leaves which I did not taste at all..  The place where I may have hurt our outcome is that you are supposed to brine for 8 to 18 hours.  Our little guy was in the brine for almost 24 hours.  We did rinse him off after the brining.  After cooking he was certainly moist but he was also quite salty.  He had nice color when he was done and his skin was nice and crispy.  Here he is after resting for about 10 minutes.  I'm not at all sure why the foil that was tenting him is so discolored.  It's just one of those mysteries of life.

You can see his small size by that ordinary table knife that is in the lower lefthand corner.  My wife likes to put a combination of butter and herbs under the skin which really adds a lot of flavor.  She also uses the pan drippings to make gravy.  Unfortunately the gravy ended up REALLY salty without adding any additional salt.  So while the turkey was acceptable, the gravy ended up going down the drain.  Will we brine again?  I doubt it.  We casually watch our sodium intake and this was just too salty.

The day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, was spent watching tv that we'd collected including the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.  It's kind of funny how not having grandchildren means that we aren't familiar with some of the newer balloons.  The Sesame Street float is from when the kids were keeping us up to date with toys!  That's a long time ago now.  We didn't bother with shopping even online.  When we buy we are pretty careful to get what we want; it the hurry to get a bargain it's way too easy to get something that isn't quite the thing.  Well, at least it is for me! 

Man!  December 1st is tomorrow!  It's just a matter of moments until it will be 2015.  Amazing.  Hope things are going well for you and yours.  Take care.