J and I are hosting Christmas for the families this year. We are super excited (okay…I am especially excited) and are feeling marginally more
grown up. I really do enjoy cooking at Thanksgiving and am looking forward to the challenge that will be Christmas dinner. I have the utmost confidence that we can pull it off, but it’s gonna be in one hella tight space. Our kitchen is teeny so counter space is at a premium. I feel like we’re going to need to diagram it out before we start…
Anyway, I will be brining the turkey the night before in a mixture of kosher salt, brown sugar, citrus and maybe some rosemary. I tried brining for the first time a couple of weeks ago and, according to my guinea turkeys, it worked well! I wanted to try it once before the big day so I wouldn’t stress about it on The Day. I only brined the 9lb bird for about 4.5 hours that time an will be doing it overnight for Christmas. I’m expecting that the bird’ll be even better this time! We’ll be grabbing my in-laws’ cooler this afternoon and using that as the garbage-bag-and-bucket method was a bit awkward. For the size of bird we had that night it worked well…aside from the fact that I did all the work in the morning before my coffee injection and spilled a not-small amount of brine on my kitchen floor. The lesson? Caffeine first, everything else after.
The menu we’re putting together for the evening will look something like:
Brined citrus-herb turkey & roasted vegetables
Cornbread stuffing
Roasted potatoes
Sauteed asparagus with orange zest
Gravy
The in-laws are bringing the always-scrumptious rice & beans; my parents are bringing the cranberries and the trifle; the Hot Biscuit will be bringing the salad; my brother will be bringing..something! Hors d’oeuvres, maybe? We’re planning on taking a break between dinner and dessert as it will give us a chance to not only do some dishes (sadly, we are dishwasher deficient) but to bust out the Wii to burn off some of the gigantic dinner.
In all honesty, I am genuinely thrilled to be hosting Christmas dinner this year. Family and friends gathered around the table (and a very excited dog under the table) is one of my favourite things in the world. I anticipate a night of love and laughter – and, of course, the roast beast. Once it has all gone down, I will post recipes and pictures and share the adventures in foodNURDland!
Food Nurd 
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