Hillside Farm

Since moving into the new house in August, I decided we would host both sides of our family for Thanksgiving so the grandparents wouldn’t have to cook. I delegated some of the food to my mom, mother in law, and sister and had my husbands grandma make some pies.

I was responsible for making the turkey, mashed potatoes, and rolls. I’ve made a turkey 2-3 times before, but it had been a few years and I didn’t remember the brine recipe I used so I did a quick Google search and quickly found the Pioneer Woman’s brine recipe.

Again, consulting Google, I found that I needed to set the frozen turkey in the fridge on Tuesday so it would by thawed by Sunday for our meal. Cool. Did that on Tuesday.

Through the week I’d been busy both cleaning for our gathering as well as getting ready for a craft show that was Saturday, so I had quite a bit going on. My plan was to put the turkey in the brine Saturday evening when I got home.

So Saturday evening when I got home, my husband smoked salmon for supper while I started making my brine.

We ate supper while the brine was cooking and I got my turkey all settled in the cooler to brine overnight, and get up early the next morning to begin cooking it.

The next morning, 4 am alarm wakes me from a deep sleep and while I first snoozed my alarm, I then remembered that I had to stick to my schedule or the turkey wouldn’t be done in time. I removed the turkey from the brine, rinsed it off, stuffed it with citrus and onion and got it in the pan and stuck it in the oven to roast. It’s at this time I decide to go back to bed for a bit. My husband decides he’s going to do the same. Not 5 minutes after going back to bed, the wind howls and the electric goes off.

So I’m thinking “Great! How am I going to cook this turkey?” My husband said he could hook up a small generator to the smoker and I said well that’s what we have to do! The turkey fit well in the smoker and we hoped the electric would be back on soon. The estimated time for repairs to be done was about 8 am. By this time it was about 5:30.

We took a nap since it was still early. Got up and swept and mopped the floor and got our tables setup for lunch. My husband hooked up another generator because I was worried about taking an ice cold shower. So we had a smoker and hot water. Woohoo! That’s all we needed…for now.

It was nearing time to leave for church (9 am) and still no power. Well, I thought, mom will be here around 10 and surely the power will be back by then.

We got to church, service started and ended and still no news. At this point, we decided we would get a cord for our larger generator to power the house so we could finish cooking. We didn’t have the right cord at home, so we stopped while we were in town to get one.

Lo and behold, at 12:00, right ad we were turning down our road, the electric came back on! Perfect timing though because because we still had an hour and a half to mash potatoes and bake rolls.

Even though it was an eventful morning, I am thankful we got our power back on, we were able to finish cooking the food, enjoy eating it ( the turkey turned out great!) and we got to take warm showers that morning! The day was a great day, spent with our family in our new home. Here’s to many more gatherings!