T1B

It seems as if there are many here that do the cooking, personally I would not trust my wife in the kitchen on Thanksgiving unless she is getting me a beer or opening a bottle of wine. So this is what I am planning:

Roasted Turkey - (on the grill, gonna try out Mikeys Brine he posted in the turkey thread)

Sausage and Apple Cornbread Stuffing

Green Bean with Wild Mushroom Casserole (fresh green beans and mushrooms, not that canned bean and cream of mushroom soup slop)

Sweet Potato Gratin (essentially sweet potatoes and butternut squash cooked in brown sugar, cinnamon, butter, and Myers Dark Rum)

Orange Glazed Carrots

Mashed Potatos

Giblet Gravy ( I love the look on my mil's face when she asks me what the chunks in the gravy are)

Mom is bringing the Pies.

After dinner drinks, make your choice,
fresh bottles of Baileys, Myers, Jack Daniels, and Drambuie.

I figure I will start drinking beer while I am preparing the meal. Switch to wine during the dinner. After dinner, have a little Drambuie and wait for the tryptophan (sp?) to kick in, i'll be down for the count.

That sweet potatoe Gratin sounds great- care to share the recipe? :)

It's pretty important to get the salt content right. Here's the recipe, as I remember it (don't have it in front of me)

2 qt apple juice
3 qt water
1 lb brown sugar
1 c kosher salt
4 oz fresh ginger, sliced thinly
6 bay leaves
15 whole cloves
6 cloves garlic, smashed (crushed)
3 fresh oranges, quartered

Add the salt and brown sugar to the apple juice and bring to a boil over high heat. Remove any foam or other scum and let it come to room temperature.

Add the rest of the ingredients and brine the turkey at least overnight. 24 hours is better - I set mine up last night.

some people do it in a bucket in the fridge but I don't have room. I take a clean trash compactor bag and open it up in an ice chest, put the bird and brine in it, get all the air out and twist tie it. Add some ice to keep it cold. No mess to clean up this way.

Remove the turkey and towel try before roasting.

This is the recipe for the Sweet Potatoes that I generally follow:
From food network.com

3 pounds sweet potatoes, pricked several times with a skewer
3 ounces (3/4 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup honey
2 tablespoons dark rum
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground mace

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Bake the sweet potatoes in the middle of the oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until tender. Let them cool. Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them diagonally into 1/4-inch slices, and place them in a buttered 14-inch gratin dish. In a stainless steel or enameled saucepan, cook the remaining ingredients over moderate heat, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved. Spoon the mixture over the sweet potatoes and bake the gratin in the middle of the oven, basting occasionally, for 30 minutes.
The uncooked gratin, can be assembled 1 day ahead and kept refrigerated, and covered. Put the gratin under a preheated broiler about 4 inches from the heat until the edges are browned lightly.

But there is something in my nature that I never can follow recipes exactly, I like to mix in some butternut squash as well. Instead of thin slices I will cook the squash and sweet potatoes until they are just soft not mushy and cut them up into about 1/2" cubes or so. 2 tablespoons of Myers is just not enough more like 1/4 - 1/3 cup or so. It depends on how many beers i've consumed up to that point. I nice little variation is to cut back on the Rum (probably use the actual listed amount) and add an equal amount of Amaretto if you have some around.

Mikey, thanks for the recipe, I will see how well I can follow it.

Thanks AD. I'm making my crustless sweet potaoe pie for tommorow- but I may make this as well- two sweet potatoe dishes is defintely better than one!

Don't know. Going to the sis in law's for dinner. But one thing's for sure. There better not be no smucker's blackberry jam there.