TURKEY DAY 2008

And finally, I will blog about Turkey Day, though you may find this posting rather disappointing since I forgot to photograph the results, but more about that later. This year we celebrated Turkey Day at home, with just a small party of 4. Tom persuaded me not to go overboard, which I have a tendency to do, so I stuck to a bit more of a simple set up. We didn't get a whole turkey - just a turkey breast, and that was mainly for Tom. I was more interested in the duck breasts I got.

But here I am starting to prep my turkey breast.

You know, you never realize how big a four pound turkey breast really is until you're given one by the butcher. I had specially ordered this one from a butcher in SF - it was an organic Diestel turkey breast. As for preparation, I had pondered for a while what I wanted to do. At first I considered frying it, but upon watching an episode of Tyler's Ultimate on the Food Network, I decided to do his Turkey Breast with Cornbread Stuffing Recipe. I ended up choosing this recipe because the ingredients were fairly simple, and it would cook up pretty quickly. In the photo above, I'm slicing the turkey breast in half in preparation for stuffing it.

Here I am stuffing the breast with the corn bread stuffing. I had made the cornbread earlier in the week with my favorite Marie Calendar's cornbreak mix. Sure, it cost 4.5 times more than the other cornbread mix, but it's well worth it. After stuffing the breast, I had to tie it all together with butcher string.

Ok, here's the finished thing, with the stuffing kinda spluging out.

Now the next step was to brown this in a pan, but the other thing you don't realize is how heavy and unwiedly a 4 pound turkey breast stuffed with corn bread really is. This thing just wasn't easy to handle. However, all the work ultimately paid off - sort of. The turkey itself came out really nicely cooked and tasty. The stuffing was another matter. It ended being far more mealy than expected. I actually wished I had stuffed it with a more traditional stuffing, or maybe even wild rice. But the good thing was that Tom enjoyed it, and he finished all the leftovers off within 2 days of Thanksgiving.

As for the rest of the meal, well, by the time I finished the turkey and started putting everything out, I had completely forgotten about taking photos. But I did make a lovely tarte tatin, even though I didn't get to pick the apples myself, like I would have done in Boston. And overall, it ended up being a very peaceful, quiet evening. Just what I needed after all the work and chaos of the holiday season.