Month: November 2005

Seems winter is in a hurry this year. It’s the day before thanksgiving and it has now snowed for the second time.
This snow is heavy and wet. Fortunately we have only about four inches.
But it’s not all bad, as this is the best snowball snow I’ve seen in a long time.
It is soft, compresses well, splatters, and sticks to verticle walls. A boys nirvana.

Some how it’s just not as exciting as it used to be.
Then again maybe it was just that it was 17 degrees F!

Seriously.
Our life group decided to have a thanksgiving feast for our last get together of the year.
I volunteered to bring the bird.
Then promptly forgot about it until last Friday, the day before the Saturday feast.
I bought the bird Friday evening and bathed him all night in the tub.
As I slowly came to terms with morning over a cup of coffee, I started to look thru the November issue of Better Homes and Gardens.
I came across this page, read it through, and decided it sounded worthy of a try.
I mean, what with oranges and Maple syrup, how could I go wrong.
Of course Deb freaked.
I had to explain what was involved and show her just how easy it really was.
There is no dressing! (Hard part gone. Messy part gone.)
Gravy…Deb was on it.
She took off to get her hair cut and I went to the store to get Tarragon, fresh that is.
I followed this recipe to cook a 22 pound bird, adding what ended up to be 2 hours to the cooking time, more about that later.
It was hard to believe how moist the meat turned out.
I thought it would be dry with foil just draped loosely over the bird.
I guess the glaze seals the bird for the last hour and keeps it moist.
Just remember the glaze will seal the little plastic popup shut, so cook by time.
I ended up cooking mine a half hour longer than I needed too.
The skin turned out a little darker than I would have liked.
I found that by using a cooling rack in the bottom of the pan it held the bird up out of the drippings, so the bottom was just as good as the rest.
It also made it easy to remove the bird from the pan.
Oh, and make sure you get SEEDLESS grapes. Geez, what a drag.
And by all means MAKE THE GRAVY!
WOW! That’s good stuff!.

So pick up a copy of the November issue of Better Homes and Garden and enjoy!

Michael

Here is a view of the the Marshall Playground showing the entrance.

I helped build a new community playground in Marshall back in mid October.
This a picture during the build.

This is almost the same view of the completed playground.