Too Much Turkey

          It's been a quiet week in the Luby household this past week despite the fact that we had Thanksgiving thrown into the mix.

           Well, now that the week has come and gone, now that the week is done, it seems like it was kinda quiet. That just shows you how much we forget — and how quickly we forget it! But here's the truth...

          Thanksgiving week started out with me transferring my 13.13-pound for-the-two-of-us turkey from the freezer into the refrigerator for the thawing process. Then I made my beloved Aunt B's pumpkin roll recipe to give as gifts to our neighbors for their Thanksgiving feasts.

          "When you make mine," Momma said, "I'd like you to make it less sweet."

          So I Googled it. Some people make things less sweet by reducing the amount of sugar in a recipe. Someone else said vanilla makes sugar sweeter so try using lemon extract instead. I ran both these past Momma.

          "I don't think lemon would go well in this recipe," she said. "And if you take out some of the sugar, you'll reduce your volume. How about just using mashed potatoes?"

          And what comes up on my FaceBook feed? A candy recipe that uses mashed potato, sugar, and peanut butter.

        What sounded kinda gross when Momma first said it now makes perfect sense. The mashed potato is mild and easily overpowered by the sugar, and in this case, the peanut butter. I bet it will work in the pumpkin roll as well.

         I got busy and made some mashed potatoes, which wasn't hard since I use Hungry Jack. 

            Then I made the filling for Momma's pumpkin roll. I reduced the powdered sugar by 1/4 cup and added 1/4 cup plain mashed potatoes (I didn't add butter or salt and pepper to them). 

          "Taste this," I demanded of Mike as I handed him a beater with a generous dab of filling left on it. Mike took it and went to work.

          "Well?"

          "It's fine," he said between licks.

          "You can't even taste the potato, can you?"

          "No, but I detect a little difference in the texture — but it's not bad."

          Once the pumpkin roll had chilled for a while, I got it out and sliced the ends off.

          "Why'd you do that, Peg?" you wonder.

          For two reasons. The ends are ugly and I wanted to taste it.

          You know what? It was less sweet but still pretty good. I decided to go ahead and slice the pumpkin roll into 12 slices and individually wrap them to make it easier on my sister. I was slicing away when I got a niggle. What if she doesn't want it sliced?

           I texted Patti. "Should I wrap Momma's pumpkin roll in slices for you?"

          "No, I'll slice it," she answered.

          Uh-oh, was my first thought but then decided it was fine. I'd just make another pumpkin roll. It's not a big deal, not for me anyway. They're easy to make. Besides, I'd have reduced sugar pumpkin roll for the neighbors to take for a test drive.

          When Steph Robinson stopped to pick up her pumpkin roll, I gave her a piece. "It's less sweet but it's good."

          The Kipp girls were home for Thanksgiving and stopped by with their mom and dad to visit before heading home on Saturday.

          "It's good," Miss Rosie said, "But I think I'd still go for the regular stuff."

          "I like the other stuff better," Lamar said.

          "But he likes really sweet," Marla jumped in.

          I looked at Lamar and gave him one of those you-and-me things where you point back and forth making a connection. I seldom find things too sweet too.

          "Since we just came from having the regular stuff at Mom and Dad's house," Jenn said, "I can tell this is less sweet, but it's still good."

          "I don't normally like stuff that's too sweet," Marla said, "but the cream cheese filings don't seem too sweet to me. I think the cream cheese cuts the sweetness. But this is good too."

          I reported back to Momma on our Saturday afternoon chat. "Everyone says it's good."

          "I have the impression that you took some of the filling out and added the potatoes."

          "No. I reduced the sugar by 1/4 cup and added 1/4 cup potatoes so I have the same amount of filling. I thought that's what you told me to do."

          "No. What I want you to do is make it just like you normally do and add the mashed potatoes. It'll give you a little more volume but it'll be fine."

          I'm glad we got that straight before I actually made her's.

          And you know I've been working on making rosaries for Momma too. I drilled more seeds than I thought I'd need just so I'd have plenty to choose from.

          "Wait a minute, Peg, just wait a minute," you say.

          What?

          "Last time, you said if you don't put the seeds in the vice tight enough that they'll slip out. My question is, why don't you make the vice tighter?"

          Good question. If I make it too tight, the seeds will crack as soon as I start to drill them. I lose some that way. So it's kind of a balancing act.

          I've got a bunch of seeds drilled and I went looking for the stuff to make the rosaries with. Beads. I need beads as separators. Momma likes the square ones and got me a bunch the last time I made rosaries for her. I wonder if there's enough. I dumped them out and counted them. 94. 

         There're 94 beads. Maybe I've got more someplace else, and I went on the hunt. I looked high, and I looked low. I looked in the drawers, and I looked in boxes. I looked on the shelves, and I looked in tubs under the workbench. I moved things, and I moved more things. You'd have to see my shop to understand that. It's a mess right now. My shelves are glass and the brackets are mounted on slat board. The moisture and time have caused them to sag and one shelf slid to the floor, dumping everything off along the way and shattering into a million pieces on the floor. What a mess. So, as a precaution, I've unloaded all the other shelves and there's stuff everywhere. Hence the move things and move things some more statement. Someday I'll get the shelves back up and organize my shop again.

          I looked every place! And I looked everyplace twice. And I went out the next day and repeated the process a third time. Who knows, sometimes I find stuff that way.

          Finally, I called Momma. "How many beads do I need for each rosary?"

          "Let me see... mumble-mumble-mumble ..." In my mind's eye, I could see her counting the sections on her rosary which is never far from her hand. "Fourteen. Fourteen times three," she finished.

          I drew a picture of the problem in my head... three times four is twelve, in my mind I wrote the two and carried the one. Three times one is three, add the one I carried... "42 and I've only got 94 beads. I don't think I have enough."

          "We could use just two for each section."

          I happened to be in my shop when I called her because I was making the rounds yet again, making a half-hearted last-ditch search in all the same places again. I wandered over to my drill press, talking as I went, looked up, and what do I see?

          "Beads?" you guess.

          Yup. Beads. Right there, front and center, so to speak.

          "Oh ho ho, Momma. You're not going to believe this."

          "You found some."

          "Yup. Okay. Cancel the panic attack." I pulled the jar from the shelf as I was speaking and pulled the baggie from the jar. "There's plenty here."

          "Are you sure?" Momma asked.

          "I'm sure."

          Now it's two days before Thanksgiving. I open our second, not as often-used fridge to get something and there's red Kool-Aid spilled all over the bottom of the fridge. That truly was my first thought. It took a nanosecond for me to remember that I don't have any kids in the house anymore and I haven't made Kool-Aid in 20 some years. My eyes went to the turkey sitting on the shelf and you can guess what was really all over the bottom of my fridge.

          "Why didn't you tell me to put it in a pan!" I admonished Mike like it was his fault.

          "I just thought you'd know." He always has an answer.

          "I thought the plastic bag would keep the blood in."

          "Peg, have you never thawed a turkey before?" you ask.

          Umm. No. I usually don't remember in time and end up roasting a mostly still frozen turkey. However, this year a handy chart came up on my FaceBook feed. It said if you have a 13-16 pound turkey, move it to the fridge on Sunday. I did that. Now I have a clean fridge.

          I also cleaned up the mess from drilling seeds and carried the Dremel back out to the shop. Then I set up to make the rosaries. I picked up one of the wooden beads to start and realized why the beads were in two different spots, why the extra beads were on the shelf by my drill press. It's because the holes in the beads are too small for the cord I'm using and I have to drill them out first.

          OY! Oh well. I'll get started and when I run out of drilled beads, I'll just have to set my drill up again and drill some more.

          I've got one rosary done.

          Thanksgiving dinner consisted of just our favorite foods. We had turkey, of course, dressing, sweet potato, cranberry sauce, and apple pie for dessert — which we were too full to eat until several hours later. After stuffing ourselves fuller than a Thanksgiving turkey, I picked all the meat from the bones, tossed the bones into the stew pot, and simmered them all afternoon. There's turkey noodle soup on the horizon!

          I, uh, I tossed pieces of turkey to all the little beggars under the table. I may have overdone it a little. Two-thirty in the morning Ginger wakes me up. I get up to let her out and despite acting like she wants to go out, she gets to the door and backs away. It was really, really cold out as our temps dropped to the single digits overnight. I closed the door and went to pee. Ginger runs around in frantic circles.

          "All right," I tell her. "I'll let you out."

          I opened the door again, and again she's on the verge of going out and backs away at the last second. I head back to bed and find a nice gooey pile of diarrhea on the floor. I grabbed Ginger and forced her out the door, then cleaned up the mess.

          Serves you right, Peg. I scold myself. You gave them too much turkey!

          But I was careful not to give them any fat! I justify.

          I guess it doesn't matter.

          After getting the floor and puppy bottoms cleaned up, I washed and went back to bed only to repeat the process two more times during the night.

          Black Friday we woke to heavy frost again, so I went out for pictures.      

             

            

           On my way out to take pictures, I filled the birdfeeders. When I came back in, I saw the birds were hitting the feeders.

          A pretty red Cardinal.

          A Chickadee on my homemade suet. I used my leftover grease from cooking, raisins, nuts, I chopped up an apple, a scoop of peanut butter, and birdseed.

          A little Downy Woodpecker took to the backside of the tree when I went out for a closer shot.

          "I can still see you, ya know," I told him. He took wing.

          And the bad boys of the bird world, Blue Jays.

          There's six of them on this pan of cat food that I put out for them.

          "Peg, why are you feeding them cat food?" you ask.

          Because the cats won't eat it. I don't know what it is about this bag of food but none of them like it. I tend to have two different flavors of food open at a time and mix their bowls half-and-half. They don't like and won't eat this stuff, so I'm feeding it to the birds.

          Tractor supply was having a one-day Black Friday sale and I needed some birdseed. I normally buy the really cheap stuff and add sunflower seeds to it. They have a better mix in a 50-pound bag and it was $3.50 off the normal price. I figured it was a better deal since I didn't have to buy sunflower seeds to put in it.

          So after everyone was fed, Mike and I made the trip to Wysox to get birdseed.

          Frost on the hillside coming into town.

          And the power plant. It's so cold the steam was frozen in mid-air.

          Tractor Supply was busy for their sale, the store was packed, and we looked around, finding a couple of other good deals. 25 pounds of scoopable cat litter for $3.99. I stocked up. Although it doesn't have enough odor control for the inside cat boxes, it's just fine for the feral cat room.

          And Mike got a jacket made by Blue Mountain. It's a little lighter in weight than a Carhart but very similar in material. They actually had a tall, which made the arms long enough for Mike. This is only the third jacket I've ever seen him buy. He wore the first one out. The second one... Oh my gosh! He bought an expensive jacket and the first time I washed it, I ruined it. I dried it too hard and it shrank. He went back to wearing his worn-out jacket because he just couldn't find anything he liked or the sleeves were too short. So you can see why Mike buying a new jacket is an event. 

          The deer come around in the early evening hours and clean up the dropped birdseed. Mike was in the kitchen with me. "There's deer at the birdfeeders," I told him and went for my camera. He came to look. I zoomed in. "She's looking at you," I told Mike.

          "No she's not! That's her butt!"

          I laughed. Since I was looking through the zoom I knew what I was looking at but Mike couldn't see it. "No, she's looking at us."

          But Mike was insistent. "Peg! That's her butt!"

          I snapped the picture and showed it to him on the camera.

          "Oh. Now I see it," he says.

          Her fawns are with her yet and they're getting big.

          Another afternoon we were visiting with the Kipps and the deer can actually reach their birdfeeder. "They'll clean it out," Rosie said. And we watched from the window.

    

          This time of year it's really easy to spot the Bittersweet hanging alongside the road and there's a lot of it too if you just look for it.

          Lastly, I'd like to thank my mother for getting me hooked on coloring. When I was visiting her she gave me a calendar with those intricate pictures that you color. "I'm just too shaky," she told me.

          "Okay," I said as I took it, and honestly, I intended to stash it away for a rainy day or whatever. Coloring was not on my radar.

          "And when you get it done you can send it back to me," Momma said.

          Oh great! Now I had to color it for her! But don't take that the wrong way. I'll do anything I can for my mother — and happily too.

          A couple of years back, adult coloring books were all the rage. I didn't bother with it. I didn't think I was interested in it all. But sitting here with the vibrant colors of the markers, the ease with which they glided over the glossy pages of the calendar... I don't know, it just somehow hooked me.

          After I finish the calendar, I'll have to buy a coloring book.

          Thanks, Momma!

          Let's end this with sunrise pictures I took just this morning.