Here’s this year’s Wednesday schedule. I didn’t end up prepping the celery and cheese ball stuff, but I can do that tomorrow. It’ll only take a minute.

Stuffing prep: Here are the lovely sourdough loaves I got at the gourmet shop in town. Sorry about the weird color… sometimes my camera doesn’t cooperate.

I diced the loaves, then put them in a 275 degree oven to sort of dry out a little.

Meanwhile, I sauteed a chopped onion with some minced garlic.

And while that was cooking, I chopped the sun-dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts.

Then mixed them in with the onions and garlic. The smell right about then was heavenly. This mixture went into a container in the fridge, ready to go.

Then I grated some Parmesan cheese. The recipe calls for half a cup, but I think I have more bread than the recipe says, and I added extra artichoke hearts too, so I did about a cup of cheese. You know how I am with measuring (or not) though. This awesome grater has a container the stuff goes into automatically, and then the container has its own lid, so into the fridge it went!

Once the bread had dried out a bit, I let it cool off on the stovetop… you do NOT want to put hot steamy bread into a plastic container or bag. It’ll get all soggy and gross.

After it was cooled, I stuck it back into the bags the loaves of bread had come in. Very convenient.

Hard boiled eggs for the spinach salad… I tried a trick I read about recently somewhere. I always put my eggs into ice water after they’re boiled, but this time I also sprinkled baking soda into the ice water… I cracked the eggs and let them sit in the cold baking soda water for a little bit, and it was SUPER easy to peel them. Don’t ask me why.

I chopped these suckers and put them in a container in the fridge.

Aaaand… cooked a pound of bacon. Saved the grease for later incarnation in honey cornbread.

And after the bacon dried out on some paper towels, I cut it up with some kitchen scissors. Zora actually groaned while I did this. Container in the fridge? Check!

I also made the dressing for the spinach salad, and got the brine ready for the turkey.

For the brine, I boiled some water, added 1 cup of Kosher salt, 1/2 cup of sugar, and 2 cups of lemon juice. Then I gave it a healthy sprinkle of garlic powder. I let it cool completely, and in a little bit, we’re going to pour it over/around/in the turkey in a cooler and let it brine and defrost at the same time, overnight (butterball says a turkey this size will take 11 hours to defrost in a water bath, so I think we’re safe).  My mother thought brining and defrosting at the same time sounded creepy, but I googled around and lots of people say they’ve done it quite often, so hopefully it’ll work.

The only thing I’m a little worried about is the giblets/neck issue… if we can’t get it out before brining (due to being frozen inside), they’ll jsut have to brine along with the turkey… I guess they might get really really salty, which normally I wouldn’t care about, but this year I’m going to make stock out of the carcass/neck/giblets. I guess they will be okay though, and if the stock tastes too salty, I can throw in a chunk of raw potato to absorb some of the salt.

I really want a meat thermometer that I can stick in the bird and LEAVE THERE while it cooks… one like Alton Brown has, that’ll beep when it gets to a certain temperature (through a remote beeper) would be even more awesome. Mine’s a digital one which is super-easy to read, but it’s plastic so it would melt in the oven.

Here are my notes for tomorrow. Let me know if you’re in town and want to come! For some reason I thought my next-door neighbors were going out of town, but I just found out today that they’re staying here for Thanksgiving, so I invited them over… I hope they come!

The one thing I haven’t done yet is get out all the serving dishes and sticky-note them with what will be in them.

I love Thanksgiving. Good friends, good food, good dog, …lists… what could be better?