Thanksgiving

Seeing as I have little desire to study right now, and I'm waiting for the caffeine from my latte to kick in.. it seemed like the perfect time to write about thanksgiving weekend eats!


I started out making the cranberry sauce on Tuesday night. It is probably the easiest thing to make - I just put a couple of peels and the juice of 2 Florida navel oranges and brown sugar in a large pan with an entire bag of cranberries, cooked it down until it thickened to where I wanted it to be. I like to see the cranberries left whole so my cooking time was only about 15 minutes, stirring gently and not too often (plus I used a really large pan so there was greater surface area, so it reduced cooking time).


This is about how thick the end product was before cooling it down and putting it in the fridge.


SO DELICIOUS, it took a lot of energy to resist finishing this before Thursday.

On the day of Thanksgiving.. I made...


First I stuck the turkey in the brine, consisted of 2 gallons water, 10 oz soy sauce, 1/2 cup kosher salt, 1/2 cup sugar, 4 tbsp fresh sage, 2 tbsp fresh thyme, 1 1/2 tsp crystallized ginger, 2 tbsp black peppercorns, half a head of garlic. I made the brine the night before, because I dissolved the salt and sugar in some hot water before adding it to the rest of the ingredients. So on Thursday morning, I stuck the turkey in the brine for about 5 hours.


These are the things that I stuck inside the cavity of the bird, and for what couldn't fit, I just put it on the side on the bottom of the pan to help flavor the pan juices that dripped from the turkey and also so those juices wouldn't burn.



Baked Brie is a yearly tradition of mine. It is not Thanksgiving until I've had a bite of this deliciousness. This year I put the cranberry sauce I made in it - SO GOOD. We ate it with some sliced apple and pear for lunch - best way to perk up your appetite for the oncoming feast!


Cornbread muffins! I used Pat and Gina Neely's recipe from the food network. Simple, easy and really delicious. I didn't put any sugar in them, so I put some extra honey than the recipe calls for; I was making these for a group of Chinese people who do not like food that is too sweet, so the honey added a perfect amount of sweetness. I also doubled the recipe. I ended up with about 30 muffins. Cornbread is my mom's favorite, and there were none leftover by the end of the night.

This is my beautiful turkey, a perfect 160 degrees inside, crispy skin and nice and browned on the outside.

This is how the turkey was plated after carving :) Everybody loved it, the soy sauce brine was a success! Someone told me that it tasted like duck to them, which was supposed to be a compliment, haha. Sadly there were no leftovers!!! Makes me want to go out and buy another turkey...

Today, I made...
This is the study snack I made for myself this morning. Needless to say most of it is already eaten and I haven't gotten any studying done. This is one of my favorite go-to desserts - it is the French Apple Tart by Ina Garten. I LOVE LOVE LOVE apples when they are cooked.

I hope everybody had a great, food-filled Thanksgiving.

-J