Quarantine Thanksgiving

 If someone had told us that we'd be relegated to our homes for both St. Paddy's and Thanksgiving, and everything in between, because of a global health crisis...

...I probably would have begrudgingly believed it. My view of how this country duly operates has no blinders, especially since the election in 2016.

Anyway, we celebrated the November holiday at our beach-y apartment in the nice So-Cal weather, like...like...er, every other goddamn day since March?

The turkey was a gift for our starting a butcher box subscription, and I got to work on it once it thawed. I carved the breasts off, and then the thigh/drumstick combo, and then deboned the combos. Next they went into the salt solution to brine for a few days. My brine was a tablespoon of salt and a quart of water, and I was nervous that it may be too heavy for the days it was working on the meat. I had two bags going, one with the breasts and one with the dark meat, and that solution in each: a quart/tbsp in each.

In the end it was perfect. The meat was juicy and flavorful. I tied up the meat so it would cook evenly, and slathered it with the compound herb butter.

Funny thing: with no bones it takes just over an hour to cook.

Days and weeks are still running together, blurring in my brain...

The smoke returned, as swaths of both Orange and Riverside counties are burning:

Morning orange glow

That picture doesn't really do the glow justice...

(Sigh)

Happy Thanksgiving!