Food: Thanksgiving 2014

Thanksgiving was a success! All that planning and it felt like it was over in the blink of an eye. Everything came out exactly the way I wanted. Turkey was a bit dry, but not bad.

The rub consisted of sazon, adobo, garlic, paprika, salt, pepper, and olive oil. I used the chicken stock from the practice chicken I made a few weeks ago. The gravy was absolutely delicious! (Thanks Regina and Barb!) We also had garlic mashed potatoes, green beans, homemade Duffy stuffing, carrots, Puerto Rican pork and rice, cranberry sauce, and pearl onions. For desserts, we had chocolate pudding pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie, chocolate cake, ice cream, homemade whipped cream, brownies, and a variety of cookies.

A couple days later I made another stock with the turkey. Of course, the leftovers made PLENTY of turkey and stuffing sandwiches. My wife isn't a fan of leftovers so I am still trying to consume as much of it as I can by myself. It's pretty difficult. I feel like I've gained 20lbs already. 

 

I also broke out the Apple Pie Ale, as well. It came out great! I don't really have any complaints about it thus far. Very well rounded and delicious. I can't wait to do it again! Cheers!

Food: Chicken Thanksgiving Pre-Game

This year, we are hosting Thanksgiving. We hosted it a couple of years ago and were pretty successful. My wife blogged about it and you can read it here. We looked around for the recipe we used and we could not find it anywhere. Oh no. So what do I do? I bought a chicken to practice a random recipe that I came up with and I can say it came out extremely delicious.

I did a nice brine for a little over 24 hours. Pretty simple. Salt, sugar, olive oil and water. It definitely helped in the juiciness of the chicken. I would've liked to do it for a little longer but didn't have enough time. Unfortunately, I don't think I will be able to do it for Thanksgiving because the thought of leaving a turkey in a bucket in our basement brining freaks my wife out. We won't have enough room in the refrigerator.

With it I also cut up some fingerling potatoes with some salt, pepper, paprika, garlic and olive oil. They came out extremely delicious as well!

I'm not 100% sure the measurements for the chicken as far as seasoning, but I can tell you what I put on it! I call it the Duffy mixture because I pretty much use it on everything. It is a mixture of salt, pepper, paprika, adobo, sazon, and garlic. I can't wait to make the turkey for Thanksgiving! Next year I got approval to actually go to a farm and pick out my turkey. 

After the delicious meal I went to my buddies house for a beer tasting. It was a night filled with extremely weird beers. We had: 

• Lagunitas Brewing Company - A Little Sumpin' Wild Ale 
• De Proefbrouwerij - Long of Tooth
• Two Roads Brewing Company - Route of All Evil
• Freigeist Bierkultur - Abraxxxas
• Tröegs Brewing Company - Blizzard of Hops
• Freigeist Bierkultur - Geisterzug Gose Rhubarb
• Nikenjayamochi Kadoya Honten Co. - Ise Kadoya Genmai (Brown Rice)
• Maine Beer Company / Half Acre Beer Company - Sapping Mammoth IPA
• Tree House Brewing Company - Good Morning
• Ourbeer Brewing Company - Hoppy Brown (Disaster)

Some were gross, some were okay, and some were just mind blowing. Two that stood out the most to me were Good Morning (American Imperial/Double Stout) by Tree House and Abraxxxas (Smoked Lichtenhainer Weisse) by Freigeist Bierkultur.