Mary Christmas

I am so blessed. Yesterday Mark Anthony cleaned up my kitchen which includes refrigerator! What a wonderful thing for him to do. I hope he does not feel this menial labor to pay for us space on my floor that is currently using. I truly have loved having him here the past two nights and he will be here again tonight. He left early this morning before 7 AM to go over to help with Christmas at his home in Daybreak. I don't know what I was thinking I knew this was going to happen but still I played with the idea of him being around for Christmas dinner. Be that as it may I had Christmas dinner anyway and the dinner was wonderful if only to me.

I learned a lot this Christmas dinner. I thought I was being so brilliant in buying a turkey breast instead of the whole turkey. I was even excited when I saw in the fresh meat section a set of turkey legs. Since I use a bag to roast my meats in I thought great all just include everything in the bag. Closing the bag with little weird zip tie provided by the bag people but I've finally accomplished the task of closing the turkey and closed in the bag. I enjoyed the smell of the cooking bird which filled my apartment. I even peeled and boiled potatoes to mash which I did. I mourned the fact I did not prepare dressing. I mean I know how to make dressing that's not stuffed in the turkey but still ends up tasting like it was. I even would've liked to a gotten stovetop dressing. Stovetop is great it certainly renders the illusion of dressing. I even thought for a moment or two this morning saddling up and going across the street to the market which I'm sure was open and getting a box of stovetop but was afraid of the rocking wear and tear on my butt. I thoroughly enjoyed mashing the potatoes. I thought they turned out great I used a little milk and butter and whipped the Tatars up good.

After a couple of hours the turkey breast is done, the little red button was popped up in the bag was filled with turkey drippings. It is always a challenge for me to remove a cooked anything from the oven. Turkeys and baked chicken's are really challenging. The turkey parts in the bag were totally cooked. There must've been a cup and a half to 2 cups of rendered drippings/juices. What my oven is quite awkward. The oven is low and very difficult for me to try to remove anything especially hot. So I let the fowl rest and cool down a bit before I attempted to withdraw the bird. I then basically grabbed hold of the bag. I almost made it actually. The bag and maintained itself there been no dripping outside the bag. But however there were sharp pieces of bone which had been exposed as the meat shrunk on the turkey legs from cooking one of these bone shards glanced inside the bag. There was no gush of drippings but there is certainly drips. I quickly lifted the pan the beast had been roasted in and then lifted the roast beast into the pan on my shelf and processed enough meat for my Christmas lunch.

The gravy was not nearly as simple. I know how to make gravy from scratch, I have made gravy from scratch. However I don't know what happened but instead is separate if you drippings out putting them in the frying pan mixing in some flour then adding water or milk stirring all the time until boiling I just used the deep frying pan and use all the drippings kept adding flour and stirring until I had a tasty paste which tasted kind of like gravy but was better than nothing to put on potatoes.I swear next turkey will be better especially the gravy.

I couldn't just stop there I decided to bake a pie. And I did I still had a can of pumpkin left over from Thanksgiving and a shell from Thanksgiving as well. Again this is not the world's best pie the leak enough for me for Christmas 2017. My butt hurts today which worries me other than that this is been a pretty good Christmas. Best wishes to all and to all a good night