Hey Roz, how was your Thanksgiving this year?Mine was okay, we skipped the turkey and my brother got each of the attendees a Cornish Game hen (4EA). Once again I was assigned the sweet potatoes, I thought about reprising my "Orange Man Bad Sweet Potato Souffles" but it sounded like a lot of work for little payoff: Dad doesn't eat the sweet potatoes, brother & mother just want a baked sweet potato so I would have been to only one to enjoy the effort. Plus sister (
saucier/garde manger) was at her in-laws this year so no Marshmallow
Gastrique & Cajun Candied Pecans to go with them.
I did make my usual Sweet Potato Casserole with a slight twist: I think I usually make a Pumpkin Pie spice/
Quatre Epices blend to flavor the filling, this year I opted to use an experimental spice mix I whipped up for Sweet Potato Chips that I had already made for an earlier successful food experiment over the summer. I believe it was garlic powder, black pepper, cinnamon, sea salt, sage and parsley flakes; maybe something else? I have it written down somewhere...
That is now on the approved list for seasonings used to construct a Sweet Potato Casserole, and very probably could replace
Quatre Epices in the Marshmallow
Gastrique sauce for souffles should they ever be made again.
I
still have a turkey to cook though; a fellow veteran in the neighborhood gifted me with a Turkey (10lbs I think) that he acquired through the VA somehow. It showed up the other day on my front porch with a cryptic "
Turkey on your front porch" text message. Very weird, I did not inquire too deeply into the provenance of said bird: I have a sneaking suspicion he was taking advantage of some sort of VA Food Bank thing to score free turkeys, not that there is anything wrong with that...
Anyway, I have decided that I will go ahead and cook this potential "Stolen Valor Turkey" and dispose of the evidence via some frozen dinners that I will construct with the left-over Sweet Potato Casserole, some sort of vegetable and some cornbread stuffing. I have discovered a "new to me" method of baking a turkey:

Apparently this is called "
spatch-cocking" or something. Actually, I may have known of this technique from my chef's school/chef days and forgotten. Nautical Shore, those were some wild and heavy drinking daze! Ha!
Well, I have once again probably said too much: Apogees!
Happy Thanksgiving.

