Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Mmmm… Pie
I was pretty sure we weren’t going to bake anything else for the holiday, though I was tempted to find another, dessert-like banana recipe, or to try my hand at apple pie with all the apples we were given. Well, I needed to go to the store today for a few things like sour cream, cottage cheese, and soda.
Walked in the door and the first thing I saw was a table of pies with a sign “price as marked,” which is shorthand for “discounted because look, it’s Thanksgiving eve and we made about a hundred too many.” I ended up getting a lattice top blueberry and a crumb top apple for $3 each. Go me. I was tempted by the mince, but I’d be the only one eating it, unless Sadie liked it. Probably, since this is Sadie we’re talking about. Mince pie at holidays pretty much ends up being for me, my grandmother, my uncle if he’s around, and maybe my mother and sister. I don’t think anyone else likes it to speak of.
Anyway… luckily I didn’t have to buy a turkey, cheap as they were. Both of us were paranoid enough to think of giving the turkey in the fridge the smell test earlier, in case. I smelled a turkey-like, pleasant smell. She smelled nothing. We declared it good and I sealed it back up enough to keep it overnight. Yay for free turkey.
I thought about buying poultry seasoning while I was there. Looked at the ingredients, said “I could make that out of stuff I already have, except maybe the nutmeg” and returned it to the shelf. Nutmeg? (Which it seems I do have after all.) Who knew. I have the sage, marjoram, etc. Speaking of which, I need to look up what I did last year. I seem to recall I used my friend Tom’s method of starting at an extremely high temperature to sear in the juice, switching to a lower temperature for the bulk of the time. My uncle told me the opposite, cooking an extended time at a very low temp, then finishing at a high temp. It just goes to show there’s probably a different turkey cooking variant for each cook.
I still haven’t decided whether to bake or candy the sweet potatoes. It’s so good either way…