Fried Turkey, It’s what’s for Dinner! (continued) I’ve been deep frying my turkeys for several years now and the following suggestions will enable you to start down the path of deep-fried yumminess during the holidays. Pick your fryer – The latest trend in turkey fryers is the electric ones that sit on your counter. I’ve never used one so I can’t make any definitive statements for or against them. From the ones I’ve seen they are very pricey, most begin at one hundred dollars or higher, and they have a limited capacity. If you normally cook a 12 – 15 pound bird, then this could be the thing for you. Me, I’m all about the leftovers so I want a big bird. I went with the basic floor fryer model that hooks directly to a propane tank and I love it. Pick your oil – You can use any number of oils to fry your turkey. I recommend Peanut Oil as it has a high smoke point and it can be reused 3 to 4 times. You’ll need approximately three and half to five gallons of oil. To determine the amount of oil you will need, place your turkey in the pot then add water, a gallon at a time, until the bird is two inches below the water level. Remove the turkey then mark the water level in the pot with a pen, tape or whatever. Then fill the fryer with oil up to that mark. Set-up your fryer – Obviously you don’t want to use a propane fryer in your house if you want to keep that roof over your head. Remember, one percent of people who opt to fry turkeys do manage to set their homes on fire so let’s not go there. Select a well-ventilated place out of the way from children and animals. Make sure the area is free of anything flammable, so please don’t set it up on a wooden deck. Place a fire extinguisher within easy reach of the fryer as well as heavy duty potholders. Pick your Turkey – Deep frying a turkey works best on a bird that is around fifteen pounds. The last turkey I cooked was eighteen pounds and it was fabulous! Select your Seasonings – I personally recommend using an injector when deep frying a turkey, though rubs work equally as well. You can find injectable marinades in the seasonings aisle of your supermarket. My favorite is from the Tony Chachere’s line, (http://www.tonychachere.com/) Creole Butter Style marinade. It’s yummy. Frying Your Turkey
Some final thoughts
By following these few simple tips, you can ensure a safe and happy holiday. Trust me, you don’t want your legacy to be one of, “I remember J.C., she set the house on fire with that turkey fryer a few years back.”
J.C. Wilder is a multi-published author of paranormal and erotic romances. Book I of her new series, The Coven, will be released December 7, 2007. Norman Rockwell Got It All Wrong (continued) I carried my fear of the holiday into my teen years. My brothers were both in and out of our lives—the groovy days of Vietnam protests, free love, and not-so-free drugs and alcohol. For the first time in a long time the whole family was together for Thanksgiving, and as we went around the table saying what we were thankful for, my eldest brother came last. “I’m thankful for Alcoholics Anonymous.” That was quite a thing to say in my house of repressed Irish Catholics, trust me. All hell broke loose, and my mother ran upstairs in tears. One Thanksgiving several years ago, I didn’t see my mom. She was recovering in the hospital from a massive heart attack and quintuple bypass surgery. I was now in charge of putting together the meal for a new family—my husband, my stepfather (my real father had long since passed away), my brother (now fully sober), and my dear Aunt Carolyn (who was a little nuts). While my stepfather visited my mom, I labored for hours over pots and pans, trying desperately to imitate all my mother’s recipes, down to the exact amount of celery for the stuffing. I remember agonizing over whether we really needed sauerkraut now that my German father was no longer alive. My nerves were frazzled from worry about my mom, and evidently I wasn’t paying much attention to the big stuff. Like making sure the aluminum pan the turkey had cooked in was strong enough to hold the turkey. It wasn’t. Cue frantic music. The grease from the pan caught fire, flames poured out of the oven, catching the cute little window curtains and singeing my hair. Time slowed to a crawl for an ultra second of shock. I woke up from my stupor and screamed. My husband came into the kitchen, but slipped on the grease and went sailing across the floor on his backside. My brother went around opening windows, which of course just fanned the fire. My aunt simply reminded us to watch out that the cat didn’t get out the window. The curtains now fully engulfed, I could only think that my stepfather would come home from the hospital to find his house burnt to the ground, and we would be the ones this year featured on the six o’clock news that always includes a house fire during the holidays. A voice whispered, “Close the oven door.” I did. I took the fire extinguisher to the curtains. All was well, and the cat didn’t even get out. The voice? Well, it was probably common sense, but I like to think it was mom, from her hospital bed, too weak to burst into tears and run up the stairs. Or is that too strong? For she’s seen every kind of trouble come and go, and although she’s very frail, she still instructs me on the exact amount of celery that has to go into the stuffing. Now Thanksgiving is whatever we can pull together. My Aunt is long gone, my brother lives far away, and we get a mixed bag of visiting relatives and friends. No throwing of drumsticks, no profound announcements. Just a sense that we’re lucky to have one another, lucky to have found our way through another year with love and health. Norman Rockwell got it wrong. Thanksgiving has nothing to do with a table, a turkey, and two-point-five children.
Groovy Love: Woodstock Lives On (continued) First off, the grounds are beautiful. Developers were determined to maintain the rural feel of the place, and they’ve succeeded. A single narrow road leads in and out, which is the only major drawback; traffic tends to back up at the end of the night. But there’s plenty of room for parking, and most people arrive early to do a little tailgating. From the parking lot to the main concert area, paved pathways curve around to the arena, which is a combination of covered seats and open-air lawn seating. If you get there early enough, you can grab a great vantage point from the native boulders that line the upper edge of the lawn. Or you can take a detour and visit the memorial statue on the other side of the property, which marks the spot where Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Joe Cocker made Max Yasgur’s farm famous. Modest wooden buildings dot the perimeter, with eats that vary from burgers and fries to vegetarian chili and homemade cookies. Beer and wine kiosks stand next to an open BBQ tent. (The bathrooms, by the way, are worth mentioning: spotless, huge, and over-stocked with paper towels and soap, even at the end of the concert.) The covered stadium seats 5000, the grassy lawn behind it, another 12000. It’s a bring-your-own chair, spread your own blanket, enjoy your own picnic dinner kind of setting. And once the music starts? That lawn fills up with people of every shape, size, and age, all dancing and singing along with the music. Take a look around, and you’ll see teenage boys sitting on blankets with their fathers and adolescents winding through the crowd hand in hand. You’ll see senior citizens in polo shirts and khakis dancing next to twenty-somethings in cowboy boots and jeans. Everyone at Bethel Woods has a good time. Strangers become friends. They share extra chairs and split bottles of wine. They whistle for encores. They slow dance in the dark or keep warm under a blanket. They pass a cigarette while they wait in the beer line, wander arm in arm into the shadows, or snuggle under a tree. And when you take a moment to breathe it all in, suddenly you feel a whole lot closer to the groovy lovin’ of 1969. Once the stars come out and the music is rocking, you can almost feel the hum of the hills, the vibrancy of the original Woodstock artists, looking on and enjoying their legacy. Sure, it’s not the same as the original Woodstock. But the feeling of good will and good lovin’ and good appreciation for music is alive and well in Bethel, New York. It’s a great place to hear a concert and witness a landmark location. So dig out your bell-bottoms and pack a wicker basket for a journey back in time. If you’re planning a trip anywhere close to NYC, a visit to the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts is a must. You won’t be disappointed!
Allie Boniface is the author of One Night In Boston. Tommy Turkey Treats (continued) No baking required! Prep time: 25 minutes Servings: 6 treats
Ingredients: 1 tube (4.25 oz) chocolate decorating icing – or a can “stiff” chocolate frosting 6 chocolate-covered marshmallow pinwheel cookies 6 oatmeal cookies (about 3-inch diameter) 6 small star-shaped pretzels or pretzel twists 48 corn candies (about 3 oz.) 6 miniature milk chocolate-covered peanut butter cups, unwrapped 2 red gummi worm candies 1 tube (4.25 oz) white decorating icing
Directions: 1) Squeeze chocolate icing on bottom of each oatmeal cookie. Attach 1 marshmallow cookie even with 1 edge of each oatmeal cookie to resemble body and fan of tail. 2) At area where 2 cookie edges meet, squeeze about ½ teaspoon chocolate icing onto marshmallow cookie: attach pretzel to resemble feet. Squeeze chocolate icing on each oatmeal cookie about halfway around marshmallow cookie; firmly press corn candy into icing to resemble feathers. 3) With small amount of icing, attach 1 corn candy to each peanut butter cup to resemble beak. Cut each gummi worm in half lengthwise and crosswise and curls. Squeeze chocolate icing around each corn candy beak; wrap 1 gummi piece around top of each beak to resemble wattle, pressing firmly. Pipe small dots of white and chocolate icing on each peanut butter cup for eyes. 4) Squeeze chocolate icing on largest flat side of each peanut butter cup; place over center opening of each marshmallow cookie to resemble head; pressing firmly. Tips: To help younger children, moms can do step 3. Once the details are complete the child can attach the head to the body. These make fun table decorations for Thanksgiving Day. Eat and enjoy! Sweet Mystery (continued) More fun bits of trivia I found out while researching this article:
Speaking of delicacies, I wouldn’t be a good Carolina girl if I didn’t give a shout out to the role this tuber has played in my food heritage. Southerners have been using sweet ’aters for everything from main dishes to side dishes to desserts for centuries. If you can think of a cooking method, it’s probably been done to the sweet potato at one time or another. I leave you with my favorite (and much encored) recipe that combines two of my favorite things – sweet ’aters and pecans. (That’s PEE-cans to you Yankees!) I have been known to eat it for dinner. And dessert. And breakfast the next day. Enjoy!
Sweet Potato Casserole
3 cups cooked, mashed sweet potato 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 1/3 cup milk 1/2 cup butter, softened 1 tsp. vanilla
Topping: 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar 1 cup finely chopped pecans 1/3 cup flour 1/3 cup butter, softened
Combine sweet potatoes, sugar, eggs, vanilla, milk and ½ cup butter. Beat with electric mixer until smooth. Spoon into greased, two-quart shallow casserole. Combine brown sugar, flour, 1/3 cup butter and pecans. Sprinkle over top of sweet potato mixture. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Makes 8-10 servings.
Cook’s Notes:
Resources: North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission
Carolan Ivey is a North Carolina native living in Ohio with her family and two highly opinionated dachshunds. She writes paranormal and Celtic-flavored fantasy romance for Samhain Publishing. Web site: http://www.carolanivey.com/ Granddad's Country Ham (continued) To his relief, he wasn’t forced to sample the delicacy that very moment. He was granted a day’s reprieve while the ham soaked in a bowl of water to leach out some of the salt before it was cooked—which to my Grandmother meant frying in a pan of left-over bacon grease she kept in a coffee can on the stove. Everything from spinach to eggs to tomatoes got fried in her cast iron skillet liberally filled with lard. I still shudder at the memory. But back to my husband. “Do you really eat that?” he demanded over and over again as we tried to settle in to sleep. “It’s green.” “It’s country ham. Just wait till you try it,” I assured him. “There’s nothing better in the world. Just remember you can’t eat too much…the salt does wicked things to your system.” I don’t think he actually slept a wink that night. At lunchtime the following day he approached the sandwich my Grandmother handed him with a terrified look. He sniffed, pulling off the bread to inspect it before he took a tentative bite. His expression instantly turned to bliss as the flavor of the ham took hold. He took another bite, and another, and another until he finally asked for a second sandwich. “Easy,” I warned him again. He gave me one of those yeah-right looks as he finished off the meal, even snitching a last piece of meat when he thought no-one was looking. An hour later, the dry-mouth hit. He began to down glasses and glasses of water in an attempt to counteract the salt. The next day he spent hours and hours in the bathroom trying to unbind. When I finally gave him a glass of Metamucil, he took one sip and bellowed that I had given him sand to drink. (If anyone remembers Metamucil in the 80’s you’ll know it was like trying to swallow sand.) We still laugh about the entire episode. Both Grandmother and Granddad have crossed over. I gave up eating meat years ago and my husband hasn’t had a bite of country ham since, but the memory remains one of our favorites to this day—how a northern city boy got his first taste of a southern treat and actually lived to tell the tale!
Gia Dawn is a multi-published author with Samhain Publishing. Her latest title, A Fairy Special Gift is now available at www.samhainpublishing.com/authors/gia-dawn . Or you can visit her website at www.giadawn.com .
Sexercise: 101 (continued) Sounds like a good trade-off for 30-60 minutes of exertion earlier in the day, doesn’t it? And who knows? If you’re an author, more satisfying sex for you might mean more creativity, or more motivation, for the sex scenes you’re writing in your latest WIP.
Anyone can do it, and it doesn’t have to cost a thing. Sure, you can join a gym and start taking classes. But you can also start making changes at home without spending a dime. Here are 5 ways you can fit exercise into your day, free of charge:
Exercise, in any form, is one of the simplest and most underrated ways you can improve and lengthen your (sex) life. Don’t your characters – not to mention your loved ones – deserve that much from you?
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