I have once again absconded with my wife's blog to bring you Turkey Day Greetings! In our case, Chicken Day Greetings. Last Thursday marked Lana and My second thanksgiving together. I always have to count. Our first Thanksgiving was spent hours apart - I barely knew her then. That was two years ago. Last Turkey Day, We were able to host our first Turkey Day with our respective parents - and a very un-cooperative Turducken.
This year was a new one. We have so much to be thankful for, and so many thanks to give. We are thankful for our soon-to-be newborn baby, this house, our friends and family, Generous Electric, and each other!
Life is Good!
Anyway, you are probably wondering why we celebrated "Chicken Day", instead of with the traditional turkey or ham. Well, we plain just didn't wanna. We had talked about making a turkey, but we were both enjoying our four-day weekend together, and just didn't think spending hours basting an unwilling bird sounded like much fun.
We had recently found a taste-alike recipe for KFC's 11 herb and spices chicken. In hindsight, it wasn't a taste-alike, but it was darn tootin' tasty. Ours had fourteen herbs and spices, and smelled wonderful. Who would have thought about putting brown sugar in a chicken breading? Anyway, we prepared the chicken pieces 'n parts in an "Alton Brown"-inspired manner. Cut the chicken into nugget-sized pieces, allow to air-dry to a sticky goodness, coat with the fourteen herb and spices, some egg, and good ole breadcrumbs. Shallow-fry in 350-degree F peanut oil, and cook to a golden brown. Labor intensive, but very yummy.
Served on the side was a quickly whipped up batch of homemade creamed peas, and fresh candied Yams - straight from the can (and modified a lil-bit).
And, of course, we had a dessert. More on that later...
Lana worked on decorating the table while I supervised the last of the creamed peas, and we had Thanksgiving.
We finally sat down, still somewhat exhausted, but very thankful. Dinner was good, very filling - and we had enough for the typical Turk- err - Chicken-Day Leftovers. And then there was Dessert. It was also fabulous. Lana and I seem to have a tradition of never leaving a recipe well enough alone.
We had some apples to spare. We quickly agreed to some kind of apple thing for dessert. Lana is well known - at least around here - for some amazing pie crusts. So we made one of those, but instead of her typical apple pie filling that she makes, topped with a crumbly oatmeal topping. This time, we used an apple-turnover filling that I had, topped with another pie crust (with sugar and cinnamon, of course). The pie was amazing. A little wet, but very good.
Chicken-Day was amazing, and we had fun making it amazing.
Happy Chicken-Day Everyone!
-Matt
2 comments:
Sounds Fabulous!
Besides, you don't have to eat turkey if you don't want to. This is still America!
Love your table decorations. I love Nandina at Thanksgiving - so festive, and the shrub really does all the work - so many colors and textures, and all we have to do is cut it and put it on the table.
Of course you all know that Ben Franklin proposed that the national bird be the wild turkey. Fortunately he did not prevail, but what if he had? Someone on the radio pointed out that in such a case, the highest rank a Boy Scout could achieve would be Turkey Scout.
And - when the Apollo mission touched down on the moon, the astronauts would have announced to Houston that the Turkey had landed. Ben, dude, you were so wrong. . .
Sounds like a great day! Looking forward to celebrating with you this weekend.
Sue, last year, Austin's teacher taught him about Ben Franklin wanting the turkey for the national bird. All he took away from that was her off handed comment of "they are dumb birds" She doesn't even remember saying it! :)
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