Friday, November 25, 2011

The night before Thanks Giving, my husband and I were reading upstairs in our own rooms. Around midnight, we suddenly heard a noise sounded like something had slide over the fence. I thought it must be a burglar, we turned off all the lights to look outside, Kelly got scared too and followed us closely instead of laying in her bed by her lonesome. We were too afraid to go out, so we locked the doors and went to bed. The next morning we got up to check the backyard when the neighbor called me across the fence to come outside and have a look. And this is what that mysterious noise was...


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Apparently, the tree root had rotted so much that there was barely any root left to grab a hold to the ground, so it collapsed and crushed our neighbor's car. We joked around that it must be the squirrel jumping up and down a little too much because there was certainly no wind or rain that night. Our neighbors got positively excited, all took out their dslr cameras to record this exciting moment in the neighborhood, I'm betting some money that we'd finally make our 15 minutes of fame at the neighborhood newsletter.

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So, the first thing that popped into my head to solve the problem was to call Louis, our fix-it-all gardener, to come in and saw the tree apart and change the roof and plumbing while he's at it too. While that didn't seem like too good of an idea, we decided that we might just be able to lift up the tree, plant it a little deeper into the ground and scotch tape it, and then it will be just fine. We toyed with the idea for a little bit, then decided that our neighbors might just not like it so much, finally, maybe we should call some tree expert to take the tree apart so we can have some nice firewood.

Yesterday was Thanks Giving, our neighbors were nice enough to let us deal with it today. Since the tree blocked out their front entrance, they had to dug a walk way through some bushes to let their guest in for their holiday party, one of the owner's friend said to us, "you know, it's always on Christmas or Thanks Giving that this sort of things happen!" Our neighbors were really nice about it, or maybe they are settled with the fact that their new neighbors are just young and stupid!

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This year I wasn't planning for a full on Thanks Giving dinner, but it just happened that my mom bought pre-made dinner for us. I still had to cook a turkey and make cranberry sauce, but it was the easiest Thanks Giving dinner ever, all I had to do was stuff the turkey to the oven and relax. I think cooking some but not all of the dishes is the way to go!

Since this is my third time cooking a turkey, I've gotten a few tips that seem to work well.

1. Rub the turkey skin with generous amount of butter (come on, it's a holiday, you can think about diet and health later), stuff it with a mixture of apple, onion, cranberry, carrots, rosemary, cinnamon, seasoned with all spice, salt and pepper. Cook the turkey in the oven at 500˚F for 30 minutes or whenever the skin begin to look crispy and golden.

2. After that cover the turkey with a aluminum foil cap and set the oven for 350˚F for 2 1/2 - 3 more hours or however it requires to reach 200 degrees on the thermometer.

This way the skin is crispy but the meat stays juicy and tender.

Did you have a nice Thanks Giving day?

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