After Action Report

It was cold and gray, and it had been raining since dawn. I was nervous about the bird. I briefly considered resorting to the oven. I checked the index of Cooks to see what they said about rain. On the subject of grilling in the rain, Cooks is silent.

Cooks does recommend cooking the turkey upside-down for the first half hour. This charred the turkey skin badly, but otherwise the turkey turned out very nicely indeed -- and right on time. (The turkey has been running late for years, but this year's fire was hot, lest it sputter out in the rain entirely.)

I stuffed this year's turkey with a quartered onion, a quartered apple, and a quartered lime in place of the conventional orange. It worked well. Kathryn used limes, too, and had the clever idea of tracking the turkey tag for flickr through the course of the day!

• cheese and paté (Lustau dry oloroso sherry)
• grill-roasted turkey (brined, organic, free-range)
• salt-roasted sweet potatoes
• Rootmus Rotmos (sp? no corrections last year. I know Swedes and Norwegians read this. Email me..)(Thanks, Petter Jönhagen, for the spelling typ)
• green beans
• fresh cranberry orange relish (which we forgot to serve. oops!)
• stuffing (with fennel, and the last of the good chicken stock)
• Chard Farms Finla Mor Pinot Noir (very, very nice, and folkloric: see below)
• apple pie (the new Joy of Cooking flaky crust wins applause) (Pindar Cabernet port)

We followed up with The Fellowship of the Ring.