Bird Confessions

Someone asked if I cooked the turkey with the breast side down. To tell the truth, I'm not sure. How you see it on the table is how I cooked it, I think. And I'm not sure if that's the breast side that's up or not. I try not to look at raw whole birds too much.

My aversion to raw whole birds comes from two incidents in my childhood. The first, an ongoing occurrence, was hearing my mother cutting through whole chickens when preparing dinner. Just hearing the sound in my mind still gives me the willies.

The second incident was killing and plucking chickens at my grandparents' farm. My cousins and grandpa did the actual chopping off of the heads, but my sister and I had to wait for my grandma to dunk the headless chicken in boiling water and then we would have to pluck all the feathers off. The plucking wasn't too bad, but the smell of hot, dead, wet chicken is enough to make just about anyone crazy.

So, with the exception of Thanksgiving, I only use boneless, skinless breast portions. And when I cook the turkey, I cook it until the meat slides off the bones, so I don't have to do any cutting. There you have it. I'm a poultry weenie.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Somehow we had our family Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. I say, "somehow," because I'm not quite sure how it all came together. Saturday night I felt awful, but thankfully I already had several dishes made. Sunday morning I didn't feel much better, but most of the big work was done, so it came together. And then I hit the couch for the afternoon.

Jack is making this face because he's worried about having to eat turkey. He's not too adventurous as the dinner table.

Now it's on to Christmas!

Thanksgiving Planning

We've started our countdown (actually a countup, I guess) to Thanksgiving with a turkey. Turkey gets a new feather each day. I first saw this on Candace's blog, and then somewhere else, and I think the idea was to take a feather off, but then you get to Thanksgiving and you have a bald turkey instead of a nice feathery decoration, so I'm doing it this way.

Each year we do a big Thanksgiving dinner at our house for the three of us. We do this on the Sunday before Thanksgiving and then eat the leftovers all week until we go home for official Thanksgiving with the rest of our family. This will be the fourth year we've done this, and I've just about gotten it down to a science.

I start by finding the smallest turkey I can. Jay thinks there is some kind of correlation between the smallness and the juiciness. This year's turkey is 12.07 pounds. And we're not eating that piece of cheese that has apparently jumped to the bottom of the fridge back there. Did I mention that when I clean out all of the leftovers the fridge gets a good cleaning?

After the first year I made a master list: all the dishes, where to find them, and their ingredients. With a few exceptions, I make the same things each year. This list has helped save a lot of time with shopping lists. I also got smart and copied the recipes I use over and over and put them in a binder so I don't have to go hunting down all the different cookbooks anymore.

Now all I have to do each year is calculate my cooking times. I usually make the sweet potatoes, dessert, and cranberries on Saturday and everything else Sunday morning.

Last year's final result!

This year's menu includes:

• Turkey
• Gravy
• Rolls (I usually use the frozen Rhodes Rolls)
• Green beans
• Corn
• Sweet Potato Souffle (my aunt's recipe)
• Stuffing (I use Stove Top because I hate picking out celery from real stuffing)
• Cranberry Pineapple Salad
• Pumpkin Pie (my grandma's recipe)

The cooking starts in less than 24 hours!

Baby Answers

Now I'm getting text messages for details and I have no clue how to send text messages, so I thought I'd post some details here!

• I'm due June 7. That should make planning Jack's party fun, because his birthday is June 10.
• Jack seems mildly interested, but he was more excited about getting a new Madagascar toy in his Happy Meal after we went to the doctor. At least he was not negative about it, so that's good.
  
• I'm not finding out if it is a boy or a girl. Last time, Jay knew, but I didn't. He says he doesn't know if he'll find out this time. We don't really have a preference either way, so it's all good.
• I'll have the baby at the hospital down the street. Heavily drugged.
  
• We haven't agreed on any names yet. If it's a girl, her middle name will almost definitely be June. The name I liked for a boy was August, and I don't think Jay is going to go for that since it won't be born in August.
• We have known for just over a month, though I suspected it for a while before that.
• Jay has signed up for three extra months with the Air Force, so we won't be moving with a one month old. That's good.
• Jay is not delivering this baby. He's a little out of practice since they don't do OB in the clinic here. He is apparently still good at heart rates, though.

Those are all the questions I can think of....If I missed something, let me know!

Yes, Sir

That's my baby.

So you never win anything, huh?

Well, today is your lucky day, Heather! Jack picked your name to win the copy of Christmas Trolls. I'll get it in the mail to you this week--guess I should have held off a day on mailing your card, huh? ; )

Becky OK's post reminded me of several Oklahoma authors I got to meet: Harold Keith (the only Oklahoma author to win the Newbery Medal), Anna Myers, and Bill Wallace. I don't have any pictures of me with Anna Myers, but I did find this one of an assembly she did at our school.

I know I have pictures with Harold Keith and Bill Wallace somewhere, but finding them is another story. Maybe someday they will appear and I will post them!

Leaves

The last couple of weeks we have been learning about leaves. Due to the insane wind and some other things that kept popping up we didn't get as much done as I was hoping, but we still had a good time. A couple of the things we did:

We made a tree that changes from green...

...to pretty fall colors!

We also did a little cooking with an idea I found in Family Fun.

Ours don't look quite as pretty as they did in the magazine, but they were still delicious! We filled ours with chocolate chips and cream cheese. Yum!

Some of the books we read:

Leaves! Leaves! Leaves!

Fall Leaves Fall

In November

Fletcher and the Falling Leaves

Autumn: An Alphabet Acrostic

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf

Leaf Man

When we're driving around I'm always pointing out pretty trees to Jack, and my love for the fall colors must have rubbed off. As we were out the other day, we had the following conversation:

Jack: Is it fall?

Me: Yes.

Jack: I love all the fall colors. I like red leaves and yellow leaves and orange leaves.

Me: Me, too!

Jack: (In a surprisingly hateful voice) I hate green leaves!