Merry Christmas & boxing day & day after etc.....

Our dinner on the 25th was fine, with only minor kerfuffles.

Turned out we had to think a bit to figure out how to get two turkeys into one oven. We do have a second oven but I've been cooking for a week & that oven was supposed to be heating up three shelves of vegetarian dishes. If we had to use it for a turkey, it would have meant heating those up way ahead, putting however many fit into the warming drawer, and using the old housewife trick for keeping the rest warm: you wrap them up in wool blankets and put them to bed under down quilts.

Luckily Roo figured out a way to get the turkeys to fit so we avoided having rice, potatoes, beets etc in our bed.

The convection roast setting makes a lovely turkey. We bake unstuffed, using the guidelines in the SF Gate's recipe for an unbrined turkey. I messed around with the temperature because I read that smaller turkeys should have a lower temp so as not to get too dry - so we started at 300F. Then, about 45 minutes later I panicked that things were going to slow & jacked it up to 350. Then 20 minutes I panicked again & dropped it to 325.

I was so much fun to be around that night.

Roo was in charge of prepping, using a kosher salt with fresh ground pepper and poultry seasoning rub, along with generous amounts of butter & basting liberally with stock & more butter after the first 45 minutes.

The birds were from Ladybug Manor (organic, free range and SPCA animal welfare certified) and everyone who ate them said they tasted very, very good. Nice, tender & juicy and all that is wanted from a turkey. If you live around the Lower Mainland, their turkeys are available in many of the smaller boutique grocers.

Our family all arrived safely, though Roo's parents were slowed down by a small argument which broke out between their car and the lift gate on the garage of their condo. Apparently the gate took offense and got stuck, trapping them in the garage. And on Christmas Day at 5:30, there are not a lot of repair men hanging around to fix things like this. In the end, my sil quickly drove out to pick them up, rather than waiting for the gate to stop sulking & let them out.

In the interlude, my mom popped out for walk with Bear & that's when we discovered that his gastric troubles appear to be over. Yippeee!

Bear even got a present:

For me? Hurray!!!

And here's a blurry snap of the rejoicing when a game of Risk was unwrapped. Yay, we can keep our own Risk campaign notebooks, a la Rimmer from Red Dwarf!

(Btw, we've played several games already & I've been soundly beaten in Irkutsk.....)

And on a more pacifist note, here is my favourite holiday song. It's been redone many times but I find many versions really muffle the background vocals, muting the song's message. The Harlem children's choir on this version is brilliant.

May all our battles take place on a piece of cardboard, among friends and laughter.



It's only the third day of Christmas - keep celebrating!  :-)