Bright Ideas

This morning, Brice and I were remembering a particular Thanksgiving 32 or 33 years ago. In Billings I had been able to buy a fresh turkey, delivered to my door by a turkey farmer. The birds were very tender.

In Ekalaka, Doug Bonsell raised turkeys. I ordered a small one, 12-15 pounds. When it came to the house it had grown, grown to 21 pounds!

It had to be washed in the bathtub! Would it even fit in the roaster or the oven? It got wedged in the roaster, and with all the other racks removed, set on the lowest rack in the oven. That rack was sagging seriously.

I don’t remember how long it baked. We were hosting a nice group of family, Castleberrys and Lamberts, but the bird easily fed everyone, and they all went home with leftovers for Friday’s meal.

This year we will bake a 12-15 pound turkey to serve Thanksgiving supper. Our daughter will work at our nursing home during the day, so Brice doesn’t need to get up early to start the bird and stuffing.

Katie will eat the nursing home holiday meal, then come the short distance from her workplace to our home where we will serve our meal. The main difference will be the stuffing. We use brown and white bread, cornbread, onions, celery, and mushrooms, along with homegrown sage for seasoning. It’s a combination of several families’ recipes.

For dessert Brice makes his pumpkin cheesecake. The crust is a graham cracker base with ground pecans and bourbon. The topping of sour cream also has bourbon, but not enough to overpower the desert.

Nine year old Gage will want to carve the turkey, and Brice will trust him with certain duties. It won’t be long, though, before Granddad will supervise the boy’s carving and serving the whole bird.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. Katie will probably send her brother a picture of the cheesecake, just to make him aware of what he’s missing. And with her brother’s mouth watering we will share leftovers and they will go home.

I may not use fine china so this one year we can load the plates in the new dishwasher. A silver plate still gets washed by hand, as does crystal. Brice does less than in past years, but this is just a warm-up for Christmas Eve.