Wow What A Thanksgiving Weekend we had this year
It all started on Wednesday night at my Aunt Bea’s house with my Aunt Bea and Clora, my parents and Avery while we waited for Fran and Family to arrive from Michigan. The food of the night was going to be Blue Fish that I got from my co worker Tim Szwedo caught on one of his fishing trips. My dad had marinated the fish for a bit and then grilled them on the grill. Fran and family arrived right at 6:30 in time to sit down and eat. We sat around for a bit and talked and laughed. Avery and I headed out around 8:30 to hit Acme and then to crash out a bit for a bit.
Thanksgiving started for me at around 8:30 in the morning while I got the smoker ready for the big bird cook. I actually used The Minion Method for the Charcoal burn. Using this method kept the temp at a constant of 250 degrees for the whole 5 hour cook. The turkey had been marinating in a red wine marinade sine Monday. It came out of the marinade a nice dark purple color. After the smoker had leveled out to a steady temp the Turkey was put on the grate at 9:00am. I then moved back inside to start work on the Rye Bread Stuffing. This turned out to be a great stuffing. After getting that in the oven, it was time to start on another new recipe for Smoked Sausage Jambalaya another recipe that was a hit for dinner. While working on all of these new recipes I had a pot of Cranberry BBQ Sauce cooking up, which was talked about a lot last year and was requested to be made again. Other then making gravy and un canning the canned jelled cranberry sauce onto a plate I was really done cooking by 1:30. My cousin Tim and family showed up around 1:45 and then it was a constant flow of family arriving till about 2:15. I took the turkey off the smoker at about 2:15 and let it rest till about 2:45 and handed it over to my dad to carve while I got the rest of the food on to the table. We finally sat down by 3:00 and the food was passed till about 4:30 as well as the great conversation. The turkey was perfect and moist and had a great smoke ring around it. The last person left around 8:00 and I was finally able to sit down and relax and to start thinking about Christmas dinner.
Friday was a day of working at some side jobs and going into work for a bit……but dinner was a treat, we did another pizza off at my Aunt Bea’s house, but with a twist…we did white pies only. We got pies from Top Road Tavern & Pizza, Fedelos Family Pizzeria, Abruzzi Pizza & Cafe, Kings Pizzarama, Palermo’s III(Ewing), Limoncello’s Pizza. The winner for the second year in a row for the Bilancio Pizza Off was Palermo’s, it now holds the title in both the Tomato Pie division and now the White Pie Division. It was a fun night just hanging out talking to everyone. Dean brought some beer he had just bottled that day. It had a great taste but it will be better after it sits for a few weeks in the bottles. It was an early night because I ate so much pizza that it just made me tired.
Saturday morning started with me heading to my Aunt Bea’s to hang out with my Uncle Fran for a bit, so since I go there early enough I got a home cooked breakfast which was nice. We all headed our separate ways for a bit to meet back at the house for dinner. Which consisted of leftovers brought over from my house from Thanksgiving as well ham from Bath Packing. Dinner was great and of course the conversation was good to.
It was great seeing my uncle Fran and family since it’s rare that we see them much since they are up in Michigan..tried to talk them into coming back for Christmas but since the snow will be flying by then I doubt we will see them till the La Vigna Picnic in July.
Well time to go and see about Christmas dinner now….
To see all the photos from the weekend head over to here.