I usually buy fresh young turkey, and marinate it just before I want to put it in the oven.

Marinate: (make a day earlier)

Add a ½-tea spoon of each of the following: grind black pepper, poultry- seasoning, sage, thyme, 1teaspoon of salt to one stick of butter, well softened, and mix well.

Wrap the butter in a roll in wax paper as best as possible, and refrigerate it for the next day.

Just before you want to put the turkey in the oven, slice the butter in 1-inch disks. Try to insert the butter disks under the washed turkey’s skin as much as possible. The best areas to insert the butters are top of the breast, entering from the neck skin and thigh and lower part of breast from the skin under the thigh. The trick is to be patient and very gentle not to break the skin and just loos the skin from the meat. Leave some butter to rub the outside of the bird before putting in the oven and then brush from time to time while in the oven.

Stuffing:

Normally I have stove-top stuffing and stuff the bird for flavouring. Season birds cavity with salt and pepper and then stuff it with cut up pieces of carrots, onions, celery, flat leaf parsley(with stem, the stem has more flavour), and couple of garlic. This will give the turkey a great flavour and the vegetables can be used on the side. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Roast turkey recipe

Potato and Carrots

You need baby potato and cut up carrots (for this dish it is better to cut them in one inch disks)

Boil the potato, peel and let it to cool. Mean while make a bowl of ice water, boil the carrot until slightly tender, transfer the carrots from the boiling water to the ice water to get the best color.

Fry the potato and carrots separately, in lightly oiled pan, until golden brown. Mix the two vegetables, garnish with chopped parsley. As you can see, I decorated my turkey with this side. If you make this make sure to make plenty, mine was gone in minutes.

Pumpkin roast

Just slice the emptied pumpkin, add some salt and olive oil. Coat all pumpkin slices with oil and salt, place them on a foiled cookie sheet one by one, you don’t want over lapping pumpkins, won’t roast well. Place the cookie sheet on the bottom rack of 450° oven. Let it roast for about an hour turning once halfway through cooking. I did this the day before and just warmed it when I wanted to serve. For presentation and little bit of extra flavour I garnished it with chopped parsley and fresh grind pepper and a pinch of grind sea salt.

Potato and Yam oven bake

Slice potato and yam of equal amounts. In an oven safe dish place a row of potato add few pieces of butter, salt and pepper, add a row of yam and add butter salt and pepper. Continue until the finished, leavening 2 inch space from the top of the dish. Slowly add milk to cover the potato. Cover with foil or lid and put it in the second rack of a 350° oven. Let it cook about 30 minutes, check the potato, if tender, then top it with shredded cheese. I used a mixture of Mozzarella, Cheddar, and sprinkle of Parmesan, but any kind of cheese will work. Continue cooking until the cheese is melted and golden.

Happy Thanksgiving, enjoy.

I found my first and oldest friend thanks to Face Book. I can say we were friends for 36 years as both don’t remember when we got together. What we remember was that we were young kids, our parents where friends when we were very young and crawling.

We were very close in elementary then we took different path from middle school but we were still friends and got together once in a while until she got married and I moved and we lost touch. I can say although we are apart by continents, we are closer than ever by heart.

She also has a blog and she writes beautifully about her thoughts and worries and her two wonderful kids. When I read her blog, it’s like I’m reading my thoughts with another point of view. Although her blog is in Farsi not English, I thought to mention her blog here for my Farsi reader.

Enjoy

I like nice table settings but don’t like to waste or spend too much money on it. As I had limited time this year, I came up with this cute easy, green and with almost no cost table setting. I created this look with whatever leftover I had from our craft projects.

To keep the mood in harvest colors, I picked a burgundy napkin, wrapped it around the cutlery and then secured it with a piece of raffia and made a bow tie.

For glasses I made a cranberry wine charm. I pulled a cranberry through a  jewelery ring that has a loop at one end, and then bend back the open end to be able to hang and secure the ring on the neck of the wine glasses.

The centerpiece was very simple and yet elegant, it was a dark wood oval shape bowl full of green apples. Sorry forgot to take a picture.

Be creative and have a happy Thanksgiving.

Until later,

Tags: green table setting, thanksgiving, thanksgiving centerpeice, thanksgiving decorations, thanksgiving dinner, thanksgiving lunch, thanksgiving party, thanksgiving table setting

This is a very cute and easy craft, my kids did this jumping up and down, couldn’t wait to finish the project.

And of course then the attention was on something else!!! What should I expect from a 4.5 years old boy and a almost a 3 years old girl???

So, the craft! You need:

Construction paper

Googly eyes

Colourful feathers

Glue

Red crayon

Pencil and scissors Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Fall craft, preschooler, Thanksgiving craft, toddler, toddler craft, toddlers