Turkey Brine 2025

Two days to go to Thanksgiving and my preparations are underway.

I have the pot full of my brine mixture on the burner heading toward a boil.

I was consulting this blog from when I barbecued a turkey last year and I found I had left some information out. Specifically, I had questions about the brining that I had not made note of last year.

Let’s start with the basics. Into the pot goes two gallons of water, three cups of apple cider, the peel of three large oranges, a cup and a half of kosher salt, two cups of brown sugar, 5 bay leaves, 4 tablespoons of fresh rosemary, 5 minced garlic cloves, and three tablespoons of peppercorns.

Susan bought fresh rosemary but I used the stuff in the spice rack. Oops! For garlic, we have a little jar of minced garlic and I put in a couple of spoons full. I used the apple cider I made the other day for the apple juice.

I’m boiling up the brine in the pot I use to brew beer. Once it boils, I am to let it cool completely before sticking the turkey in it. The turkey is to soak for 16 to 24 hours. My plan is the soak the bird in the brew pot. I hope it fits.

It took about 45 minutes to come to a boil. I let it go another 5 minutes just to ensure it was a brisk boil.

It is now cooling. I’m going to set the pot out on the deck to hasten the cooling process. It’s about 30 degrees out there.

In the meantime, I’m going to sit back, read the morning paper and enjoy a nice hot cup of homemade cider. It’s really good.

1:45PM: The brine is still cooling. I was hoping to have the turkey in the brine by now but I’m still okay. Even if I get the bird in the brine by 4:00, I’ll still get a good 17 hour soak out of it. That’s assuming I start cooking tomorrow at 9:00. I will probably end up starting later.

3:36PM: The turkey is in the brine. It’s going to be in there for at least 18 hours which will be plenty of brine time.

Okay we will be picking up the continuation of this marvelous story tomorrow.

Homemade Apple Cider

I’m barbecuing the Thanksgiving turkey this year. Here it is, the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and I am already prepping.

Today, I am making Apple Cider, which will be used for the brine for the bird…and a little left over for us to enjoy.

This recipe is pretty basic, which I like. It comes from the website, www.allrecipes.com. The ingredients are as follows:

10 apples - quartered with core and peel. (I’m going to cut my apples with an apple corer so I’ll get eight apple pieces per apple.

Place in large pot and cover with water, add about 2 inch coverage.

1 Tablespoon of ground cinnamon

1 Tablespoon of ground allspice.

3/4 cup white sugar

Boil for one hour, simmer for 2 more hours. Strain out fruit. Probably best to strain twice.

Can be refrigerated and kept for one week.

Okay, here goes.

I’ve got 10 apples that I got from my friend, Mark. I don’t know what kind they are but they taste pretty good, pretty sweet.

They are all cut up and put in the pot along with all spices, sugar and water. I put in 1 gallon of water.

It’s just now starting to boil so we have about three hours to go.

We’re about 15 minutes into the boil and the room is starting to smell of apples. It adds a nice autumn ambiance with a hint of cimanon to the kitchen. (Yeah, I know I misspelled cinnamon.)

I just had a little taste and as expected, it’s pretty weak. It has a hint of apple in there but I’m tasting cinnamon more than anything.

We have made it through the hour long boil and it’s time to simmer down now. The flavor is building but it’s not there yet. I’ll be back in two hours.

The simmer is over and we have apple cider. I had to strain out all the apples and then I strained it again through a mesh bag I use for brewing beer.

I got just over half a gallon. I need three cups for the brine recipe so we don’t have much to drink beyond the recipe.

I guess I’m going to have to make some more.

20 Year Old Time Capsule

I was cleaning out one of my dresser drawers and I came across this old receipt from 2005.

I’m not sure what the total of this order would be today, but I know an Ultimate Cheeseburger is about eight bucks today.

I just thought this was an interesting little time capsule to get out there.

Dump Run

We spent Saturday and Sunday working the front yard. We had a lot of leaves fall this week after several days of rain. Susan raked and I used the blower.

We have a crap load of leaves to take to the dump. I estimate we harvested about 40 bushels yesterday and probably an equal amount on Saturday.

We ended up with a pretty good system to get the leaves into a pile, then into a bag and finally into the truck.

I bought a box of construction grade leaf bags. These are thicker than the standard garbage bag and therefore reusable. I think the last time I bought bags was about three years ago.

The bags get placed in a garbage can and fastened tight around the top. I used a snow shovel to load leaves and Susan used the claws.

Getting the bag out of the garbage can was difficult. We had to put the can on its side while both of us pulled a groin muscle to get the bag out. Then we put it the bag on a hand truck and wheeled it over to the truck. We had a couple of milk crates stacked by the tailgate, which allowed us to lift the bag on top of the milk crates, and then the rest of the way to the truck bed.

It worked great for us two old people who have trouble lifting that much weight.

2:04PM: We have just returned from the Waste to Energy Plant,  otherwise known as the Town Dump. When we pulled into the gate, we discovered a line all the way back to the entrance. This was going to take some time.

It ended up taking about 17 minutes to get to the scale and another ten before we started unloading. It probably took us ten minutes to dump about 15 bags of leaves.

I apologize for not getting the focus better. It’s hard with the iPad when you get up close.

The grand total was $23.24 for 580 pounds.The dump fee was $20.75 and then they added on $2.50 which was designated as a “Transaction Fee”. I’ll bet a tenth of that weight was water.

Wine Update

I'm clearly doing a horrible job of updating the progress of the wine.

We ran all the grapes skins through the fruit press last weekend and ended up just short of six gallons of must. It continued to ferment through the last week and it appears to be complete. There is no action going on in the vapor lock.

I will be checking it out, getting a gravity reading and we will probably rack the must (wine) to a clean fermenter. At that point, we need to figure out if we should add wood chips for aging and flavor.

More to come. 

Halloween 2025

We have survived another Halloween and we are again asking ourselves why we put ourselves through this. It’s a lot of work and money. 

While we put out some lights and a few decorations prior to the 31st, the bulk of our decorations go out on Halloween and get torn down once we run out of candy…or choose to shut down, whichever comes first.

Generally, we’re all pretty tired by 8:30 and ready to call it.

Between 3:30 and 8:30, we had an estimated 1,500 Trick or Treaters. My main complaint this year, as last, is that there are some really old people out for candy. If you facial hair, you are too old.

But, we had a good night and we are glad it’s over and behind us. The rest of the Holiday season is going to be a breeze.

Cab Franc Day Four

The wine is churning away and we’re loosing some juice. The vessel we are using is a se7en gallon bucket. I wish it was eight gallons.

Above is a picture of the cap the must produces as the yeast is working. It pushes the grape skins up and they form a cap that I punch down several times a day.

Once I punch it down, it’s very foamy and the yeast continues its work. I’ll be back later to do it again.

Grapes and Pumkins

We have returned from our trip to Prosser, WA to get grapes and taste  some wine.

We got 100 pounds of Cabernet Franc grapes. It cost $115.00.

We crushed them yesterday and they are sitting in the Carriage House awaiting the pitching of the yeast. I’ll probably do that tomorrow.

It is also that spooky time of year as Halloween approaches. We have been decorating the house over the last couple of weeks and more stuff comes out every day.

The additional fun Halloween activity we have done is our annual entry into the Hub Tavern Pumpkin Coloring Contest.

Here are our entries. Susan’s is on the left and mine is on the right. We’re just sitting around now waiting for the awards.

ALCS Championship Final Game

The ALCS series went to seven games.  The Mariner’s won the first two games in Toronto. The Blue Jays won the next two games in Seattle. Last Friday night, the Mariner’s won Game 5 to send the series back to Toronto. The Blue Jays won Sunday night. Here it is Monday and the final game. The winner goes to the World Series.

I have been saying that I want to see the Mariner’s in the World Series before I die. Well, I get to live for another year.

The Mariner’s lost 4 to 3.

Fall Rain and Fall Classic

Up until yesterday, we’ve had a wonderful Fall. It’s really been more like Summer. But that has all come to an end and it’s been quite rainy the last couple of days.

And that has prompted me to Pyromancy. Is that a word? Doesn’t matter. Cuz I’ve lit a fire. And I did it in the fireplace, so it’s seems appropriate.

Now, I’ll just sit back and enjoy the afternoon until the Mariner’s play Tonto at five.

It seems so strange to be talking about the Mariner’s playing baseball in October. That hasn’t happened in many a year. Here’s to hoping for good ⚾️ juju in the coming days for Seattle.

Mariners in October?

We have just returned from the Hub Tavern where we watched a marathon baseball game between the Detroit Tigers and the Seattle Mariners. It was the deciding game five of the American League Division Series and it took 15 innings. That’s almost two baseball games.

In the end, the Mariners prevailed when Jorge Polonco fired a nice base hit into right field to drive home the winning run from third base. Final score, 3-2. 

The folks in the Hub went nuts. It was really fun and a very joyous occasion.

Now they move on to the American League Championship against the Toronto Blue Jays. I don’t know much about Toronto but they are favored in the seven game series.

I say, Go Mariners!!!

The Boiler Game 2025

For those of you playing the Boiler Game this year, I’m afraid I have some disappointing news. 

I don’t care.

I turned on the heat last Wednesday night as it felt like a chilly evening and my old bones don’t like to shiver.

Since that night, I haven’t had to heat things up but the switch to the boiler is in the “ON” position. It felt quite nice when I came downstairs this morning and felt the heat.

So, I guess if you picked October First, you win. However the prize money is not available because I want to buy an e-bike.

There are other things going on today. Mark is coming over shortly to help me put the air conditioners away. I also have purchased a door knob set for the hall closet (that used to be the back stairwell) that has been knobless since we moved in.

So, I’m going to get to work on getting the a.c. units out of the windows and ready for storage.

6:44PM: I managed to get the door knob onto the door. It’s not pretty. It’s still not quite right. But, the door now has a knob to open it and it closes and stays closed.

Spokane Interstate Fair 2025 Results

We have retrieved all our booty from the fair. We got our Third Place winning bottles of wine along with the First Place winning label that Ellen designed.

We also picked up Ellen’s wine, which got a Blue Ribbon and the label bottle that Susan designed that got Reserved Grand Champion.

This year, Susan designed Ellen’s label and Ellen designed our label. Susan believes that the label judge has something against Susan. She has never designed a label the judge liked, let alone be awarded Reserve Grand Champion.

I think her theory has proved correct. 

I can only hope the Judge doesn’t see this Blog, realize the deception we pulled off and recall our awards.

Trip to the Fair

One of the signs of Fall is a trip to the County Fair. We went on Friday because we had a couple of discount passes and then we went again today because it was Senior Day.

They are charging ten bucks just for parking but today, we got a 50% discount. We found a spot in the handicap section and I took the walker with me because i wanted to have a ready seat whenever I wanted it. It was also very convenient to carry water, and other crap we picked up at the fair.

We ended up spending six hours there. We were joined by Mark and Jim and Jill Cathey.

I started with $52.00 and I think I've still got about 20. Susan and I both made a couple of poor food choices. I got the deep fried Mac n' Cheese balls (with bacon) and Susan got a Cheese Steak from the Longhorn. Mac n' Cheese Balls just weren't that good. The Cheese Steak was bad because they poured crappy melted cheese sauce over the cheese steak. Nothing sucks for than cheese from a ladel.

Susan entered one of her water colors in the fair and won a ribbon for "Best Depiction of Fair Theme". The fair theme is "Discover the Fun". Her painting was of her nephew Neil as a young kid playing in the rain.

Our wine didn't fare as well. We got a Third Place ribbon for the Wine but I think we did better with the Label. Maybe Reserve Grand Champion. We won't find out until next week when we pick everything up. 

Anyway, another fair is in the books and out of the way.