Tuesday 22 December 2009

Just Beat It Beat It Beat It Beat It No One Wants To Be Defeated - Take 12

Operation: Cook a Salmonella-Free Turkey Dinner was a huge success. I was overwhelmed (in a good way) by all of your suggestions; I didn't know which recipes to choose. I ended up using Nigella's method for cooking the turkey because Nigella can do no wrong. The turkey was delicious but to be honest, I'm more of a side dish kind of gal.

My dinner, in all of its gluttonous glory:

Clockwise from the top:
turkey with cranberry orange sauce, garlic smashed potatoes with gravy, Meg's brussel sprouts (steamed and then sautéed in butter, brown sugar, and pecans), maple balsamic roasted beets (ewww beets but also yay! December beets!), sweet potato mash with an unfortunate topping of burnt-ass (why yes, that is the technical term) marshmallows, and not-cooked-in-the-bird stuffing of my own recipe that featured bacon (heck yes), dried cranberries, apples, and caramelized onions (which is just a fancy way of saying that I burned the onions and was too lazy to chop more so I used the burnt ones.)

For dessert (because we weren't already bursting at the seams) we had pecan bourbon pie with bourbon caramel sauce and pumpkin chiffon pie. It was ridiculous.

The pups were being irresistibly cute so more than one person slipped them a few morsels of turkey, resulting in what may be the cutest thing I've ever seen, the Puppy Turkey Coma:

Tryptophan Overdose


I'm glad that I attempted the full turkey dinner but I seriously doubt I'll do it again. It took two full days of cooking to finish everything and I still ended up an hour behind schedule, forcing my dad to make the gravy and carve the turkey while I drank bubbly wine and set the fire alarm off with my unfortunate marshmallow / broiler incident. It was a tad stressful. I had leftover pumpkin pie for dinner last night though, so I'm not complaining.

16 comments:

  1. Nice job! That looks totally drool worthy. The pecan pie looks especially delicious, and stuffing/dressing with bacon? Brilliant!

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  2. It looks glorious. I love Brussel Sprouts and I have never thought to cook them that way, but I will have to try it.

    Eh, if you never do it again - every woman should have at least one martha-ish moment whether you want to or not. Right?

    Way to go, Hillary.

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  3. You made a smoked turkey? That's freaking awesome.

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  4. You did sprouts too!! Om nom nom, can I come next Christmas? :)

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  5. It all looks delicious! Glad it turned out so well!

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  6. Cranberry orange sauce eh? Maple balsamic beets eh? (minus the beets, that sounds really tasty!)

    I'm so hungry. My boiled perogies look totally lame right now!

    Those are the cutest turkey-high puppies I have EVER seen!

    Oh, and congratulations on eating beats 12 times this year! I never would have been able to do it!

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  7. Well done! Looks fantastic, burnt marshmallows and all!

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  8. Oh the puppy turkey coma is so cute!!

    Carmalized onions are sooo good- I make them in my slow cooker sometimes (so low effort aside from the slicing). It looks like a great success! But I think I can see why you wouldn't do this every year- I have trouble standing for as long as it takes to cook all of that!

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  9. Holy turkey fest woman! All of that is AMAZING! You deserve a massive gold medal for this! (Or anything at all you wish for.)

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  10. I've got to say that's one of the most colorful plates involving turkey, potatoes and stuffing. Seriously, you did a great job. I'm drooling just looking at all of it!

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  11. That dinner looks amazing, well done! And the puppy comas are cuteness overload.

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  12. Well done!!

    I hear you on the prep. Our dinner is two days away and I've already started prepping...

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  13. I will never do this. But I admire it. Also, I admire the pies.

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  14. Wonderful job!! It looks great. And the puppies are cute as always!

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  15. My goodness, doesn't all that look glorious!

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  16. I know, I'm late to the party on this post but SQUEE! PUPPY FACES!!

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