Friday, December 25, 2009

Christmas Day

HO HO HO!!! We have my dad's favorite Christmas tree up and all are ready for the day!!! :)
Cooking a turkey dinner, Dana style...

First things first, sleep in!!!

Then when you wake up and realize it is 11:30, throw the covers off at lightning speed as if the house is on fire, jump out of bed and race for the shower because I am now way behind schedule and I need to be clean to cook this grand meal!!

Cooking a turkey dinner is not only challenging because I have never tried before, but I have a weird thing with raw meat. I really have an issue with touching it!! I purposely only buy meat that is fork manageable size. If it is too heavy to be picked up by a fork, I don't buy it.

BUT Turkey is too big, so I must get my hands in this one...
Whew... I survived that step, now it's time to read the directions...
OK- Note to Turkey wrapper- when you pack the directions inside the turkey, they get wet!! That makes them fall apart and tough to read.

So that led me to the phone...
Hey, mom, what do I do with this thing?
Rub it with butter and salt and stuff it. Easy...

Then she flies into high gear and spills out the tips from her 30 years experience in cooking turkeys and making stuffing...

To her, this is like brushing your hair, but for me, who is not auditory, it was turning into a foreign language at a rapid rate.

Rub this, season that, toast the bread, mix this than that but not before this and add the butter here, but pour it there...

Huh?

I could handle steps like toasting the bread...
and chopping the bread...
and dumping the bread...
but moistening the bread was where I hit a hmmm... moment.
At this point is where my mom gave a key cooking tip...

"It's just intuitive."

Hmmm... so how do you measure intuitive? I guess I'll dump in the whole can of broth and add some water. I think it's moist alright!

We now had enough soup/bread/stuffing to fill all the turkeys in the neighborhood. I guess my loaf of bread was extra large.

Stuffing requires my next least favorite item to deal with in the kitchen...
Onions!!!

But not to worry, because my dad opened the pantry full of infomercial items and low and behold, there lies the slicer dicer...
tears be gone!!

Open up, honey, it's time for some new innards...
Notice I'm touching the turkey again. BIG STEP!!!!

Oooooo... There she goes....
But the meat man at the grocery store lied because he said there was pop-up thing that said when the turkey was done and there wasn't.

It was mid-day on Christmas and the stores are closed, but good ole dad had that stash of infomercial items...

After digging through the pantry full, out came the electric meat thermometer that is big enough to get the temperature of an entire cow.

While I was working on this masterpiece, my dad worked very hard on his latest project...
You see, my dad is an engineer and his mind and fingers are never idle. He is always working on creating something new or making something that already exists easier to use...
This is an electric bike so the motor can assist you peddling and give you that extra oomph up hills, and if you get tired, you don't have to peddle at all.

He was so excited to test drive this latest project, so once the finishing touches were on, guess what we did with our turkey cooking time?
Brought smiles to everyone in the neighborhood!!!

He's off...
It works!!!
WOO HOO...


At this point, my dad said, "Well, it worked so let's go to the park about 3 miles down the road."
The facial expressions on the other bikers on the sidewalk were priceless! This, my friends, is a great lesson in not giving a crap about what others think of you.
Dad's turn...

He's off...

Homeward bound...


And now you get to see the close-ups of this creation...

The handle bars include everything you might find on the front of a car. Starting on the right- side mirror, amp meter ( this allows you to see the amount of power you are using and how much power is left), the speedometer, one fancy headlight, another amp meter, and more side mirrors.
This is the battery that powers the whole thing with a custom circuit board on top. Notice the computer fans to keep the board cool.

Here, you can see the battery, circuit board on top, and the motor on bottom. The motor is the black thing at the bottom right.

The kick stand didn't hold the bike up, so he had to extend it with a piece of wood wired on. There is one thing missing in these pictures. He took off his cargo holders for the test drive, but those get mounted on either side of the bowling bag and are made of high quality plastic trash cans.
Gosh, I love my dad!! Didn't he do a great job!! How many 67-year-old men do you know that are building electric bikes from scratch to ride to work? He is a-one-of-a-kind!!!

Now that we got our semi-workout, it's time to eat my dinner...

With a few finishing touches...
the turkey dinner is complete...

Isn't she a beauty!?!

Let's eat!!!
Oh, one last touch. Everything my dad has in the kitchen is electric, down to the wine bottle opener, so using the electric turkey knife was a must!!!

One of the moments in our Christmas family history that is now something we look back at and laugh, was when my dad decided to help make my mom's cooking life easier.

She was complaining that cooking was taking too long and she needed his help. SO rather than get jewelry or clothes or spa treatments for Christmas, he got her an electric carrot scraper, electric can opener, and a Rotato to peel potatoes quickly!

His name was mud for a while, but then it became something we laughed about.

I hope your Christmas was an enjoyable one!!!

Our meal turned out fantastic!! The turkey was moist and the rest of the food was delicious!!!

It has been so great to be here with my dad and have some time for us. He really is a unique treasure and I appreciate him more and more the older I get!!!

3 comments:

  1. Dana glad you are having such a great time. We hope you have a very safe trip for the rest of your travels.
    Glad you are feeling better also. Take care of yourself.HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY NEW YEAR See you when you get back to SPOKANE..Love ya, KATHY& DAVE

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  2. Thank you so much!!! I'll start the adventure towards home on Monday. Look forward to seeing you soon :)
    Love ya too :)

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  3. Without question the journey of a lifetime! I love the pictures and the story about the old man behind the counter lol
    JC

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