Time for Turkey

Hey, anyone can grab a Butterball and shove it in the oven. Here’s how you make a real turkey: first, you brine it. Soak it for 24 hours in enough water to cover, with ½ cup salt and ½ cup sugar for each gallon of water. Take it out, pat dry and rub with olive oil. Add salt, pepper and any other seasonings you like. Put it in a V-shaped rack in a roasting pan, breast side DOWN. Yeah, I know. That’s crazy. But all the juices from the dark meat run down into the breast, making it really, really moist.

In the bottom of the roasting pan, add white wine, water, and roughly chopped celery, carrots and onions. About an hour before it’s done, turn it breast side up to crisp up the skin. Keep adding water, wine or chicken stock to the pan. Strain the juices and thicken with a lightly toasted butter/flour roux for the best gravy you ever had.

Don’t carve the breast by taking thin slices along the length like they always do on TV. Instead, remove the whole breast, then cut thicker slices across the breast. You get little turkey breast steaks, each with a rim of delicious crispy skin.

Or you could go with one of these theme turkeys:

5. The Sarah Palin. The turkey’s free but the dressing costs $150,000.

4. The auto executive. They’ve picked all the meat off the bones and now they’re sitting around the table waiting for the government to fill their plates again.

3. The Clinton. Hope you like lots of leftovers, because this one is never going away.

2. The Dubya. You can turn up the heat and keep sticking forks in it all you want, but it still won’t be done until January 20.

1. The Karen. It’s a Swanson’s frozen turkey dinner, because our kitchen looks like this.



Those are the pieces of our living room sectional, piled up into the kitchen so the living room ceiling and walls can be textured and primed. We were just going to have the popcorn ceiling scraped, but then the contractor said he couldn’t match the existing wall texture on the places that had been patched for moving light switches and putting in the new patio door, so he’d have to texture the walls as well. That meant everything had to come out. Every other room is already stacked to the ceiling with stuff from the kitchen and dining area, so that meant the living room had to move into the kitchen.

So at the top of your list next week, be thankful you have a functioning kitchen. And that your living room furniture is in your living room.

One step forward, two steps back . . .

Everyone who has that awful popcorn stuff on your ceilings, raise your hands. Not too high -- you don't want to touch that horrible crap. We had it in every room, including the dining/living room adjacent to the kitchen. So we thought that as long as we have the big mess anyway, we might as well get the ceilings scraped. I thought that would be one of the first steps in the whole project.

Me, day one: "So you're going to start with the ceiling, right?"
Contractor: "Nah, we'll do plumbing and wiring first."

Me, day two: "So now you're going to do the ceiling, right?"
Contractor: "Nah, we'll do some drywall today."

Day after day they kept putting it off. But last week the ceiling was finally going to get done. Two days. Thursday and Friday. We had to move everything out as best we could and put plastic over what we couldn't move. But it's only for two days, right? Except . . .

They got the popcorn scraped off, sanded and started applying the mud. Which promptly rolled up and fell off. Thus bringing everything to a screeching halt until they could figure out why and what to do about it. Leaving us with a house like this:




Today (Monday) they decided the problem was the 100 tons of very fine dust everywhere, including our new cabinets and appliances, which was why we wanted the ceiling done FIRST. So today they put a coat of primer up. That should give the mud something to bond to. Then tomorrow they can mud, and Wednesday they can put the final coat of texture up. Which means we can finally start cleaning up this disaster area Wednesday or Thursday. If all goes according to plan, but what are the odds of that?

Our four-to-six week renovation project, now in week seven . . .

Let Us Salute a Brave, Brave Man

One of our colleagues, who shall remain nameless for his own protection, recently went above and beyond the call of duty. In the course of testing the ad system on the Ed Schultz website, this brave individual used his own credit card, thus creating a permanent link between this stalwart conservative and the progressive talk show host.

Top five potential consequences of this dangerous act:

5. Getting thrown out of Bill O’Reilly’s “Falafel of the Month” club.

4. An offer from Todd Palin to join him on a nice ride waaaay up into the mountains on his snow machine.

3. Every time you try to tune into Rush, the radio automatically goes to Air America instead.

2. Ending up on Obama’s e-mail list. Don’t open those messages, ‘cause they might infect your system with the insidious “hope” virus.

1. Liberal cooties!

Two friggin WHAT?

We faxed an outline and measurements of our countertop to the granite fabricators months ago. When looking through the slabs, we asked if one slab would be enough. Yup, no problem. The stuff we picked out had two slabs in the lot, one here and one in Idaho Falls. The showroom in Missoula assured us one was plenty. The showroom in Kalispell assured us one was plenty. The fabricators in Kalispell assured us one was plenty. The guy who made the template the other day assured us one was plenty.

The fabricators just called. They need two slabs. They'll get the one from Idaho Falls. In TWO FRIGGIN' WEEKS. They've had all the measurements and the exact slab we want for two months, and just today they realized, "Oh, I guess we do need that other slab they keep asking us about."

I wish I had another huge kitchen to remodel just so I could not do business with these idiots again.

So that means at least two more weeks of washing dishes in the downstairs shower. I'm still trying to pretend we're camping, but it only reminds me of why we never go camping. Because I hate camping. Especially when it's in my house.

On Tuesday, Obama’s victory was cause for celebration. Now it’s Friday and I’ve come to a terrible realization. Starting in January, it’s going to be a hell of a lot harder to toss off a quick Friday 5. Oh Dubya, I miss you already.

But this week our list was inspired by an actual headline from CNN:

Zoo gorilla gets colonoscopy

And you thought your job was tough. Top five jobs that are tougher than yours:

5. Snowplow driver in Bismarck.

4. Prank phone call screener for Sarah Palin.

3. Head writer for SNL, ‘cause now they’ll have to write funny news instead of just reading the real news.

2. Explaining to Bush why he has to move out of the big White House and won’t have the shiny fancy plane to fly around in any more.

1. And, apparently, remodeling my friggin’ kitchen, because this project is lasting longer than the election.

Starting to look kitchen-ish . . .

Most of the cabinets are in. Still need hardware and some trim.



The microwave is in. The range hood is kind of in -- they'll have to figure out how to cut off the top part so it fits under the soffit.

The granite guy made the template for the countertop today. I explained that we wanted a raised glass bartop that would be held up by stainless steel supports, and showed him a picture I had found online.

Granite guy: "Wow, that's really cool."

Me: "So you can do it?"

Granite guy: "Nope. No idea how to do that."

He did say he would ask the guys back at the shop. So he called later and said the shop guys had a brilliant solution: "All ya gotta do is get some steel posts and drill through the granite and through your cabinets down into the floor."

Me: "Uh, the cabinets there have drawers and rollout pantries and things in them."

Granite guy: "Oh, those would have to come out. We need to run these posts right through the cabinets at an angle."

Thus rendering our brand-new cabinets pretty much useless. I've asked every countertop fabricator from Kalispell to Missoula if they can do the glass bartop. Every one says the same thing: "Wow, that's really cool. Nope, can't do it." So we may have to put that part of the project on the back burner. If we had a burner.

Floor & ceiling . . .

We have a complete floor



and a ceiling.



Now we just need something in between. The cabinets are supposed to be delivered tomorrow. Then again, they were supposed to be here last Tuesday. And last Thursday. This Monday at the latest. Did I say Monday? Let's go for Wednesday.