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Pre-Event


We cooked 45 kilo of corned beef yesterday. Today we sliced it. Interestingly, we seem to have gotten two different cuts of beef. One was a softer grain, while the other had a tighter grain. It will be interesting to see if anyone notices the difference.


We arose and got started at 7:15am this morning preparing stuffings. We have eight birds this year and so we made eight different stuffings. The list included:

  1. Creamed corn stuffing
  2. Sun Dried Tomato stuffing
  3. Pesto and Black olive stuffing
  4. Celery and Thyme stuffing
  5. Mushroom stuffing
  6. Orange Rice stuffing
  7. Rosemary stuffing
The accompanying picture shows the birds as they were prepped for the ovens.  We use baking bags for the birds, not because it makes them taste better, but because it reduces the mess.  We don't have even a single oven big enough for these birds, so we borrow ovens from our friends.  Each bird generates a very healthy amount of liquid which is nicely captured by the oven bags. 

The birds went in the ovens between 9:15 and 9:45 am.  I checked them all around noon and they were cooking nicely.  I'll retrieve them all at 2pm and take them to the hall to sit and cool for two hours before the carving crew arrives.

I took the turkey necks from the birds last night and simmered them overnight to make a stock.  That stock enhanced with vegetables and herbs make the moistener for the stuffings and will also serve as the base for the gravy which is currently simmering away.

So far so good.
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