Thanksgiving Day, 2010

The morning after. The turkey leftovers are in the refrigerator, and there is a little bit of blackberry pie and pumpkin pie left. There aren't many dishes left to do - I did, I think, 5 loads over the course of the day yesterday - but there are wine glasses and empty bottles on the table, left from the after dinner conversation.

The day was less eventful than last year, with the dishwasher performing as expected and not almost burning the house down. Last year I tried to get a heritage turkey but the farm in Elberton (the only place I could find close to nearby that raised them) was sold out by the time I got around do looking. So I ended up on the waiting list, and sometime early this year I got an email asking if I wanted to order one this year. So I paid my $25 deposit to hold my place in line.

We got an email a month or two ago, giving us the pick up dates - November 15 and 22 - so Tom and I went there on November 15. There were half a dozen cars there on a beautiful morning at Liz and Tim Young's farm. Tim was teaching a class on about how to dress your own turkey and a young woman was cooking beignets. (They were really good.) Liz had the scale and the preorder list and got a 16 lb turkey out of the freezer for us. It was bird shaped, not round like the ones at the grocery store. She told us that they had raised about 150 birds this year. As turkey lives go, this turkey had a good life, wandering a 126 acre farm; Liz said that for the last two months, their first task each morning was to find the turkeys. How to cook it? Pretty much the same way you cook any other turkey, but no basting needed as there is a thick layer of fat under the skin. Tom had brought a measuring tape to make sure it would fit inside the smoker (it would), so into the cooler it went.

So, after brining overnight, the turkey went on the smoker yesterday morning. The girls made pies and I made cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, two loaves of bread machine bread, and butternut squash with sour cream and dill; Caroline made green bean casserole. I'd gotten a folding table with the idea we'd have the kids at separate table but Iain wanted to be with the adults and I told him that was fine, as long was we could get 10 chairs around the table. So he and Tom put in all our extra leaves and we could seat 10. The tablecloth was just long enough.

It turned out that we only had 8 people (Max and Emma didn't come after all) so I was glad we were set to have everyone in the dining room. And we didn't eat the bread from the bread machine, because Fred bought a wonderful loaf of homemade sourdough bread. Angela came, and Mark, and Angela brought two of her dogs, who kept Bullwinkle company in the backyard for the afternoon. After dinner, Fred and Angela stayed til they had to go home and attend to the dogs that were still at home, and Tom and Mark and Iain played guitars. The girls wandered in and out and had seconds and thirds on pie. (Bullwinkle did get a slice of pumpkin pie that Sarah left, just for a moment, unattended at the edge of the kitchen counter.) Kathy came over to visit with Angela and the leftovers got put away.

The turkey was good - it was more like meat than the grocery store turkeys are. Of course, it lived a life more like a bird than the factory farm turkeys do, so I guess that's not unexpected. We'll enjoy the leftovers and make some more pumpkin pies. The dishwasher didn't autodestruct. It was a good day.