What I Ate: November 25, 2010 (Thanksgiving)

Dinner: Since it was just the three of us (Tina, me and Tina's dad), I decided to just cook a couple of turkey thighs instead of a whole bird. (Truthfully, I wasn't even planning on doing a Thanksgiving dinner since I was too busy to even think about Thanksgiving until two days before. Definitely, no time to buy and thaw a turkey, so getting turkey thighs was the best option.) I brined the thighs in a salt solution of 1 gallon water with 1/3 cup salt and a few tablespoons of lime juice for about 10 hours (in the refrigerator). After rinsing, I vacuum sealed the thighs with salt, pepper, thyme, and a tablespoon of butter each. I then cooked them sous vide at 80°C (176#176;F) for five hours to break down as much connective tissue as I could. After that, I took them out of the bag to air dry and poured the resulting liquid into a pan to make into a gravy. The thighs were finished in the convection oven at 500°F (260°C) for about 10 minutes - enough to brown and crisp up the skins.

In addition to the turkey thighs, we steamed the rest of the frozen Alaskan King crab legs we had in the deep freeze.

Tina made a green bean casserole.

I made all butter biscuits (ran out of lard)…

…and a pumpkin pie in a homemade all butter crust using the recipe on the can of Libby's pumpkin that I picked up the night before for this purpose.

Lunch: I picked up a Marie Callendar's Turkey Pot Pie in the frozen section of my grocery store for a quick lunch prior to preparing Thanksgiving dinner.