Functionally ReTodded

We have been on the go since about noon on Wednesday and even longer in the wife’s case. She started cleaning about a week before the holiday and cleaned for about two weeks right thru the holiday.

We spent Friday doing a little shopping and got to bed early, but Saturday was busy with football watching. The Irish suck. Not as a people, but as a football team. The looked good for 15 minutes, but then they got run over by Matt Leinert and USC. I have no beef with USC being number one, but Oklahoma is nowhere close to number two in the country, and I am sick of the pollsters who only look at East coast scores instead of watching tape of the games. Auburn has trailed in exactly two games this year, and has given up less than 9.5 points per game. Oklahoma has given up bucketloads of points, but still gets some mystery respect for it.

(I know many of you may be tired of my rants about this, have no fear. It’ll all be over by next Sunday night or Monday morning. At that point, we’re either in or fucked and either way, I’m writing about it once then, and that will be it).

Anyway, we decided to go ahead and get a fake tree yesterday, and we got that bad boy put up yesterday and are decorating it today. We also got all of our exterior lights up today, marking the first time this family has ever had their decorating done by Thanksgiving Sunday. Big kudos to the missus.

It feels weird not watching racing today, but it’ll get easier and then, come January 10th or so, there’ll be testing news and driver signing news and we’ll be on the back side of the remaining 84 days until the Daytona 500.

Until tomorrow kids, WAR EAGLE!!

This Thanksgiving was, in my opinion, the best I’ve ever had. We made a Turducken yesterday that was supported by my Sister in Law’s perfectly brined free-range bird. Everything went perfectly, the turducken delay notwithstanding.

I had spoken with fellow Big Green Egger SmokinBoB yesterday and we had talked thru a few things, and since he was starting his Turducken at 7:30am, Bob agreed to call me every couple of hours to tip me about things to look for.

The wife lit the fire whilst I was re-shopping at the Super WalMart, and after a few tribulation of our own making, we got the beast on the Egg at about 11:10am at 360 (but heading to 350).

I used the inverted plate setter, egg feet, water pan, grid, turkey pan v-rack, bird, foil cover method. We threw some pats of butter on it before putting it on, but we decided finally that we weren’t going to baste or check on it until hour three.

Smoking BoB did tip me off that the wings would cook too fast if the thing wasn’t covered tightly. Check. He also advised not to panic when the thing started to split, which ours both did. We wondered if the v-rack caused that, but neither of us ultimately cared.

Here were my mistakes. When you buy a cajun product and the instructions say “cook covered at 375 for four hours then one hour uncovered, let stand one hour and carve,” you should probably just listen to them.

We adjusted the temp down and in doing so, affected our time to table by an hour. It was great, but it would have been perfect-er had we just used the K.I.S.S. method.

I filled the firebox to the top, but I needed another half hour of fuel at that temp. I ran out when the internal chicken temp hit 150, so we had to remove the whole setup to add fuel, and that solved the problem. This was the first cook where I ran out of fuel, but it was my fault.

Instead of coming off at 4pm and serving at 5pm, we were about an hour behind. We only let it stand covered about 20 minutes, and I think that was our biggest presentation mistake. As we were advised, it didn’t hold together too well once cut. However, we found that after standing for an hour, it presented quite nicely.

We got rave reviews from everyone. The skin was perfect with some nice heat to it, the meat of all three birds was juicy and perfect, and the stuffing had a good kick by anyone’s standards, but I loved it anyway. My wife and mother in law thought the stuffing too spicy, but I disagreed. They just said they’d avoid that next time, as the bird was too good to waste space on stuffing.

Many folks said that duck is very or even too greasy, but I thought it made for excellent flavor itself and did wonders for the other two birds as well. It was not overpowering though.

I have to commend the Cajun Meat Company in Marietta. The product was perfect, tasted great, cooked great, and everyone loved it. We are already ordering ours for Christmas.

I highly recommend this for anyone, especially folks who love duck.

It’s also been a great sports weekend so far. “Vaunted” Bowling Green gave up 49 points to Toledo and will not play for the conference title, so that will hurt Oklahoma a bit. Today we are hoping for LSU to win, further strengthening Auburn’s schedule.

We are hoping against hope that Ty Willingham and Touchdown Jesus can do something, hell anything, against #1 USC. That would solve a lot of problems for the Tigers.

Today, against my better judgement, we are going shopping at a mall. I only want to go to Bed, Bath and Beyond to pick up and kitchen island table for our deck. My wife, however, wants to hit Old Navy, The Gap, and some other places where I fear I will be miserable. It’s okay though. Getting the spawn out this morning will help alot come nap time.

I will post more later after our shop-athon is over. Stay tuned for my bitching about crowds, stupid retailers, the hypnotized cattle that simply MUST shop on black Friday, even though they are buying little that they want or need.

War Eagle Everybody!!