Turkey to death: hello!

Nothing like home cooking -- especially when I'm in my parents' home. It's so nice here -- in South Carolina...a little town called Georgetown near Myrtle Beach. I flew in yesterday and worked from my parents' home most of the day. When I finally finished, my mom, Seymour and I went to dinner at a place called the Rice Patty. Sounds Asian, but it's not. South Carolina was a big rice producing region back in the day. The dinner was amazing. Really -- great food, ambiance and company.

So this morning I awoke pretty early (given that it's a holiday) and started cooking with my mom. She wouldn't let me take any photos of her because she wasn't "made up" yet. Not that she needs a bunch of makeup or anything. Anyway, you'll see her hands in the photos below. She drew a face (a pilgrim!) on her hand with magic marker so that the photos would have a little more personality :-)

So the first step was to make some flavorful stuffing. My mom and I chopped up onions, garlic, dill, carrots, celery, apples, oranges, prunes, dates, raisins, dried cranberries and a pomegranate.
Then I sauteed the concoction for a while. Once it was cooked through, I added some chicken broth and some white wine.

Meanwhile, my mom demonstrated this season's latest fashion: turkey gloves!


After mom cleaned the turkey, I stuffed it full of the yummy, fruity stuffing. I think the orange flavor was a little over-powering, but we'll see. The onions and garlic will probably come through more when it's cooked for a while.

Here's my mom trussing up the turkey. We used a little bit of tinfoil to make a turkey-stuffing-diaper so the stuffing wouldn't fall out of the turkey's ass. Why?

Because we're using one of those "set it and forget it" thingamajigs instead of an oven. This is my mom holding up the turkey after impaling it on the brochettes used in the rotisserie cooker. See? She drew a little happy pilgrim face on her hand. Hurray for seasonal hand puppets.

It took a bit of effort, but we got the 14.5lb turkey spinning in the rotisserie machine. One of the wings was rubbing the heating elements in back, so we had to do a little triage. An extra string to hold the wing in place did the trick.

Oh, and we bought a flavor-injector for $2.44 at Wal-Mart last night. I took the juice from the stuffing and injected it into the turkey thighs and breast. You should have seen them plump up. It was totally hot.


So the turkey is now set and I am trying my best to forget. It's going to be about 4 hours total in there cooking, but it already smells awesome. Ok, so it's noon now and any minute my sisters and Adrian will show up. Can't wait!