Sometimes Turkey Happens... And It's The Best!

Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October, so it's been almost two long months since I had a home made turkey dinner. I hadn't made one of my own in over a year and I was itching to roast one and take advantage of having a fridge full of leftovers. It didn't help that the U.S. celebrated their Thanksgiving a few weeks ago, and the news feeds on my Blogger, Twitter, and Happier were filled with countless photos of delicious turkey dinners with all the fixings. It was only a matter of time before I cooked one, and I knew there was no way I could wait for Christmas.

Luckily I had two turkeys in my freezer, so I made one earlier this week and had my sisters-in-law over. It was a good meal with great company and I even made pumpkin pie for dessert. Last night we enjoyed leftovers for supper and this morning I boiled up the turkey bones for some stock.

We used part of the stock tonight to make some home style turkey soup. Making a big pot of soup is one of my favourite ways to eat turkey leftovers. Plus the house smells amazing while the stock is boiling.

I also packed away 10 cups of turkey stock for the freezer. Sometime down the road we'll make some fresh soup and/or add it to other dishes for flavour.

Every time I make a turkey I remark at how far the meal goes. There really is so much joy that comes from one awesome bird.

Impulse Cookie Decorating

I had some leftover royal icing from my D20 cookies, so I picked up some Gingerbread men and sprinkles and decided to have a little fun.

Three dudes getting ready for sprinkles

My only goal for decorating these was to eat decorated cookies. So my inner child let loose and added all the icing and all the sprinkles (especially on the center guy).

No, these were not made by a small child.

Halfway through the third one, I realized my icing bag had sprung a leak. I wouldn't be able to keep icing leftovers from hardening, so I added what was left to my third man.  Mmmmmm.... only 35 calories...

Is he a (1) snowman? (2) mummy? (3) super delicious? (yes on 3!)

D20 Dice Cookies

I have been playing RPGs pretty regularly this year. Or I should say, as regularly as six adult schedules will allow. We played a continuing story over most of the sessions, with our characters slowly advancing in level. We also did a one off game where I was already high level and got to use a bow that shot four arrows at once. That was pretty cool.

I generally like to bake something for our gaming nights, and this week I finally made D20 dice cookies. After watching the Nerdy Nummies tutorial earlier this summer, I knew they were something that would eventually happen in my kitchen.

The D20 dice cookie requires a hexagon cookie cutter, but I couldn't find that shape at our baking supply store. I found a home made cookie cutter tutorial online, that used folded aluminum foil to make the shapes. I gave it a try and many folds later, I had myself a 5 inch hexagon cookie cutter.

Using a sugar cookie mix, I made the dough and sectioned it into three so I could dye it multiple colours. D&D dice are usually multi-coloured, so I wanted my cookies to be that too.

I rolled the dough to 1/4 inch thickness and used my home made cookie cutter to make the cookies. It made giant cookies! I was happy, as I wanted them nice and big so I could easily decorate them.

Using prepared royal icing, I sectioned my cookie faces into triangles and filled the triangles with numbers. 20 was always in the center. I only had enough dough to make 7 cookies. But they were 7 giant cookies, so that was okay.

 

These cookies were super fun to make, but the best part was sharing them with my gaming buddies. My friend Bryan took this action shot of his cookie while we were rolling up our characters.

Fancy Dinner and a Movie

Any celebration with my family or friends always involves food. The food ranges from big home cooked dinners, to vast quantities of take out, to giant piles of hors d'oeuvres to nibble on throughout the event. For us, there really is nothing better than sharing food with the people we love.

John and I have been having movie date nights recently, most of which have been spent watching the Lord of the Rings films. I have been reading the books, so it's been a lot of fun to watch the movies together and discuss all the ins and outs of putting such an epic tale to screen. For our most recent date night, we continued our Tolkien obsession and had a fancy dinner to start the date off right.

We picked up a smoked turkey leg, a Brie, and Ciabatta baguette for a fancy nibbly dinner.

I baked a brown sugar coated Brie for about 10 minutes in a 350°F oven. John made an oil and spice mixture for the bread, and toasted slices of it while the Brie cooked. We both cut pieces off the turkey leg and sampled as we did so. Then we grouped the food festively on a serving tray and were really excited to get eating.

 

We even made a salad to go with it, so we weren't just eating meat, cheese, and bread.

We paired our fancy dinner with The Hobbit: Extended Edition. It was hard to focus on the movie at first, as my mind was completely taken over by the Brie. Once we finished most of the food, we were able to pay more attention to the movie.

The movie was fantastic. We've seen the theatrical release about a thousand times already, and this version was even better. Most of the extended scenes added welcome back story, or more depth to the characters. The entire Rivendell sequence was greatly enhanced by the extra scenes, some of which were really important to the plot. The LOTR extended editions are miles above the original theatrical releases, and I'm glad to see The Hobbit is too.

Take Out Turkey Dinner #FoodPicFriday

To add to the festive week I've been having, my mother-in-law treated us to some turkey take out from The Kozy Kitchen in Elmvale. It's a small town greasy spoon type restaurant, full of comfort foods and home style cooking. As I love preparing a big homemade turkey dinner, I wasn't sure what the take out version would be like. All in all it was quite good. It didn't come with stuffing (what?!), but there was a whole heap of turkey (far more than I would normally eat, as my plate is usually loaded with too many sides to fit a lot of meat). The gravy had a nice light flavour and the potatoes were fresh and yummy. Even the peas and carrots tasted good!