Day 64, Year 11: Merry Christmas from Tennessee
Date: Friday, December 25, 2015
Weather: Rainy All Day, High Temp in the 60’s
Location: At Home with Patsy and Joe Kerwood, Mt. Juliet, TN
Merry Christmas from Tennessee! If you live in the eastern half of the country, you probably had a warmer than normal Christmas day as we did. But possibly unlike the start of your day, ours started off with a bang. We had early morning thunder and lightning. Not the usual for Christmas morning, but then nothing about the weather the past few months has been quite usual. Enough about the weather, but not being the norm was a theme for today. Instead of getting up and opening presents, we got up and cooked dinner. Then while the turkey ‘rested’, we opened gifts in the late afternoon. Cooking the turkey and then giving it a three hour rest before eating was the recommendation of our good friend Kevin Russell. Kevin and Claire came to Little River to have Thanksgiving at Patsy and Joe’s last year and Kevin cooked the turkey. It was delicious and juicy, so Joe asked me to call him earlier this week and find out exactly how he cooked it. We remembered that he basted it with butter quite often and then when it was done, he took it out of the oven, covered it with foil and then with bath towels and let it sit. When we talked to Kevin this week, he had an update on his process. He had always known that you should keep the fully cooked turkey covered with towels for a full three hours, but he and Claire had never had the nerve to leave it that long. They were sure it would cool down too much. But this Thanksgiving they did it and found that the result is an even tenderer, juicier, perfectly warm bird. We tried it today and it worked just as Kevin and Claire said it would. They were having Christmas in California with Claire’s family and Kevin was cooking the turkey there. Hope theirs was as good as ours. I love this process as it not only gives you a tasty turkey, but it also gives you three hours of free oven time to cook the other dishes after the turkey is done . . . no fighting over oven time. And we even had time to open all of our presents. Thanks, Kevin and Claire!
What we thought was going to be a very small Christmas gift-wise, turned into a very big Christmas. In addition to the chocolate-covered strawberries from Justin and Jo, this morning we got an Amazon gift certificate from them. Heather and gang sent us new micro-fiber towels and Mark got me new sheets for the boat. I got Mark a new shirt and I got three new shirts from everyone here. In addition, Mark got all sorts of electronic gadgets. So it was a bountiful Christmas. Thank you to everyone.
We talked to Heather, Jed, and boys this morning and got to see them as they were opening presents in Maine. And then we received photos via email from Justin and Jo and talked to them on Skype as well. All of the grandchildren had more than enough new toys to keep them busy. We miss them all so much, so it was great to see them in action on this very special day of the year.
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| 151225 Day 64 Nashville Trip–Christmas Day |
