Turkey Day 2008 is finally here, and that means one thing: FOOD! Ok, so it means a lot more than just food, but that was the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving Pregame the day before Turkey Day.
Josh and I have been planning to cook some deep fried turkeys for a few weeks now. Josh took the day off work and so it began!
Things technically kicked off Tuesday night / Wednesday morning. Jared’s mom was nice enough to cook us a pecan pie. This is the first homemade pecan pie I have had (that I recall) and I must say, it was phenomenal! A big thanks goes out to Jared and his mom for the delicious pie.
After doing some last-minute shopping for fresh turkeys and some fire extinguishers, we decided to call it a night at 4:30 am. But we were up bright and early (1:45 pm-ish) on Wednesday to get things started.
A deep fried turkey, much like any other turkey, deserves a good dose of seasoning. Josh picked up three different flavors of injectable turkey marinade for us to try. After it’s all said and done, we will have made five turkeys, so we needed plenty of seasoning.
Here is the deep fryer of choice. Josh selected this one over a propane fryer for safety reasons. This unit operates indoors and is extremely safe compared to traditional fryer setups.
We decided to first cook a turkey breast, which doesn’t have drumsticks, wings, etc. We figured this would be a good test subject. It is shown above after injecting and seasoning rub.
The oil took about an hour to heat, and once it reached 400 degrees, our bird was ready for action.
Strangely enough, the instruction manual directed us to cook the turkey breast, roughly 8 pounds, for much longer than a regular (and larger) bird would cook. We couldn’t figure out the logic behind this, but went ahead and followed the directions like any good chef would.
In the meantime, we tossed this blackberry cobbler in the oven for dessert. With vanilla ice cream in the freezer, this was sure to make a great finish to our meal, which also consisted of some Stove Top stuffing. I never realized how quick and simple that stuff is to make.
After cooking for nearly an hour, the bird was done! Yes, it looks a little crispy, but hopefully the meat would still be good.
My first helping of deep fried turkey for the year!
While the turkey was good, it didn’t live up to its full potential. We made two mistakes on our first try.
We overcooked the turkey. Our next turkey will be cooked per online instructions - 3 minutes per pound plus an additional 5 minutes. Our second mistake was not injecting enough seasoning into the turkey. We only used one plunger full of marinade which clearly wasn’t enough. Good thing we have several more turkeys to fry!
Even though the turkey wasn’t perfect, that didn’t stop Josh, his dad and myself from finishing off the turkey breast!
Mmm, dessert looks good to me!
We ate our dinner and dessert while watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles, a Thanksgiving movie classic. If you haven’t seen this film, do yourself a favor and go pick it up today. It’s beyond hilarious.
And that pretty much wraps up our Thanksgiving Pregame. It’s time for me to hit the bed and get ready for tomorrow - the main course! Check back for another complete update soon!
Houston Nutt, that is. The new Ole Miss football coach kicked things off in style Saturday night against the local rival Memphis Tigers. I have been looking forward to the start of college football season… oh, about 8-9 months now! 2008 looks to be the year that Ole Miss turns things around with a new head coach, a new quarterback in Texas transfer Jevan Sneed as well as a fine supporting cast on both the offense and defense.
Josh and I took the hour-long trip to Oxford to check out the season opener. As anticipated, Nutt’s Ole Miss team put a hurting on the lowly Tigers, resulting in a 41-24 win for the Rebs. Below are a few photos and videos from the game.
Memphis trying to execute a trick play.
The new 6 million dollar video screen, the largest true HD screen in the SEC.
Looks even better at night!
For reference, the old screen. Talk about a major improvement!
Keith, Matt and I went out to the Memphis Motorsports Park last night. Since Matt’s visit back in March, he has added a few more upgrades and we were all curious to see how his car was going to run.
His first two runs were all-motor, with a best of 12.33 @ 111.19 MPH. On his last run, he sprayed a baby 65 shot of nitrous which made a huge difference. See the video below…
Keith and I took a trip out to meet up with my brother today to check out his new Dodge Challenger. Dodge recently released their remake of the classic Challenger from the muscle car era, and FINALLY, someone got a remake right! This car is absolutely gorgeous! With 425 HP and gobs of torque, it certainly puts you back in the seat. Below are some pics and a video that we made earlier today.
Another month, another UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) Pay Per View event. Instead of going to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch this event like we usually do, we decided to just invite everyone over to my new place and order the fight. We ended up with nine people total, and charged $10 per person to cover food, drinks and the price of the PPV.
By sheer coincidence, I ended up with three full size couches the day of the event - talk about good timing! Keith’s boss was selling two nice couches (not thrilled about the color but they are in great shape and very comfortable) so we picked those up earlier in the day. After that, it was time to hit the store and get snacks and such for the evening.
Yeah… so we went a bit overboard at the store and doubled our original food / drink budget. I think the problem was, we were in the mindset of shopping for a LAN party, which is typically 24 hours or more, and not a 3 hour UFC event. Oh well lol…
At least the food was a big hit - and props to Josh for making some killer Rotel!
Don’t think Jacinta liked people food too much.
Kinda weird, half of the room was hot and the other half was freezing cold!
Still eating! She def. got her money’s worth hah!
Somehow I ended up braiding Astrid’s hair… although I didn’t do a good job.
Overall, a pretty successful night. I think most everyone enjoyed this more than going to Buffalo Wild Wings. The atmosphere was much more laid back and comfortable and you could actually talk to everyone, not just those sitting beside you. I’m game to give it another try but not buy near as much food lol.
As for the event itself, I was satisfied. Brock Lesnar completely dominated his fight, only his 3rd ever MMA bout. Georges St. Pierre retained his title by pretty much battering Jon Fitch for five rounds. Good fight, good night!
As some of you know, today was my birthday. I didn’t really do a whole lot out of the ordinary for most of the day. I started the day off by spending a few hours doing some random website work, then Keith and Airica came by to hang out for a few hours. After they left, Astrid and her cousin Dinorah decided to stop by to check out the new pad. Around that time, I got a call from Molly so I invited her over as well. Then, Sarah was in the neighborhood and came by too.
We spent some time playing with Jacinta who was a big hit.
For someone that claims to be allergic to cats, Astrid didn’t shy away from playing either!
I’m usually not one to make a big deal out of my birthday, but Molly wanted to take Stephanie and I out for dinner (Steph’s birthday is Friday). We eventually decided on Logan’s Roadhouse. On the way there, I got a call from Josh so I invited him as well. I originally thought it was just going to be the three of us (Steph, Molly and I), so I didn’t invite the whole gang - my bad.
You can’t go to a steakhouse without ordering a nice steak, which is exactly what I did. This 12 oz. Rib Eye was delicious, as was the mac n cheese!
Don’t you just hate those embarrassing birthday dinners where everyone comes out and sings to you? I know I sure do.
All of us, sans Josh who was taking the picture.
After dinner, Josh, Astrid, Dinorah and I went to Baskin Robbins (with Jacinta lol) for dessert then back to my place to hang out a bit longer.
Overall, a nice birthday spent with some great friends. Thanks to everyone for everything, and to Molly for picking up my tab at Logan’s
I ended up staying with Adam and Kiwi while they were house sitting this weekend and as luck would have it, the place we were at had a nice pool and hot tub. Kiwi had to work both days so it was just Adam and I. The hot tub had a built-in CD player, so we got some music going and hung out poolside.
I love hot tubs, but I think I took it a bit overboard. It was already 90+ F outside, so it probably wasn’t too smart to stay in there most of the time, but that is exactly what I did on Saturday. By Sunday, I already had a decent sunburn on my shoulders but got right back in the hot tub. After a while, I switched to the pool and lounged in one of those floaty chair things. It was nice to just chill, but that resulted in even worse sunburns on my shoulders and now my chest. Two days later, my shoulders are still hurting but everything else is fine.
I thought it would be pretty cool to try out some cool dunk pics so that is what we did. I had an idea of what I wanted the end result to be, and it came out pretty much exactly as I envisioned.
I set the camera up on a tripod, set it for multiple shot mode, then held down the shutter button as Adam ran, jumped and dunked. The camera snapped pics the entire time. Afterwards, I one of the pics in Photoshop, then brought in another photo on top of it and “erased” his body into the original image. Repeat this process until you have every body shot in place and merge it all together. I could have done a better and more careful job with the eraser, but the errors aren’t too noticeable.
Overall we had a lot of fun. It was really fun to just relax for a change and not do much of anything productive… although I could have done without the killer sunburns on my shoulders!
I have been looking forward to UFC 86: Jackson vs. Griffin for a few months, and that time finally arrived Saturday night. Instead of paying $40.00 for the event on Pay-Per-View, I decided it would be cheaper and more fun to watch it for free at Buffalo Wild Wings.
It wouldn’t be much fun to go with just a few friends, so I invited a bunch of friends - we ended up with nine people showing up, not bad! It took a bit to get our seats, but once Tiffany arrived, she got everything taken care of with the quickness! Way to take charge and get what you want!
The night was going well and I had accurately predicted the winner of every fight up to the main event, which is what everyone was there to see. I had my money on Rampage by KO early on, but that wasn’t to be. The fight actually went the full five rounds and went to the judge’s scorecards for a decision. Both Josh and I had the fight scored 3 rounds to 2 for Rampage, but apparently the judges saw it differently. They scored a unanimous decision for Forrest Griffin! What?!
I recorded the fight on my camcorder and ended up watching it again later that night. The fight was actually closer than I originally thought, but I still think they got the decision wrong. The only thing Griffin had going for him was the fact that he was pressing the action and he had some nice leg kicks in the earlier round that clearly injured Rampage. Had he stayed with those kicks, I have little doubt he would have taken the leg out completely.
On the other hand, Rampage was clearly the more powerful fighter and got the better of the exchanges. He rocked Griffin twice, nearly power slammed him to break out of a triangle choke (the only reason it wasn’t really a slam is because Griffin let go of the choke just before he got slammed) and left him with some nice cuts and bruising all over his face. Rampage didn’t have a scratch on him.
Anyway, below are the results from the TV card, as well as some random photos of everyone.
Sarah and THE WORLD FAMOUS.
Kiwi and Adam.
Astrid and I.
Tiffany and Sarah
Airica and Keith - yeah, I kinda caught him off guard hah.
Adam, Kiwi, Sarah, Astrid and I decided to check out the fireworks display once again in Memphis. We got there about an hour or so early and decided to try a different location to view the fireworks. Last year, we sat right on the banks of the river and had a great view but it seemed like we were almost “too close”. This year, we tried our luck on top of the bluff across from Riverside Dr.
While there was more scenery to photograph while waiting for the show to begin, I don’t really think this was the best location for actual firework photos.
I was able to get some decent shots, but not really as good as last year’s efforts. Oh well, we still had fun and I even had Astrid film the fireworks. I’ll upload a clip once I go through the rest of the weekend pics.
I had originally planned to start my 4th of July weekend on Friday, but Keith suggested I head up Thursday instead, so hey, why not?
We got back to town around 3:30 p.m. and met up with my friend Stephanie for lunch at Steak and Shake. It had been a while since I last hung out with her, so we ended up staying and chatting for probably 1 1/2 hrs after we finished eating. I was hoping to invite her out Saturday night but her and her hubby will be heading to Arkansas for the weekend.
After lunch, we came back to Keith’s place and checked out his new HDTV (aka played some games). That was the plan for the rest of the evening, but Josh gave me a ring and wanted to go see a movie, Wanted. Adam called around the same time so I invited him and Kiwi to tag along.
As for the movie, it was pretty decent. I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll just give it a score of 8 out of 10 and say it’s probably worth checking out if you like a decent action flick… and Angelina Jolie.
Afterwards, we were all pretty hungry so our next stop was iHop. Always delicious, yet not really nutritious… oh well.
Josh had recently picked up Wii Fit for the Nintendo Wii, so he invited us over to check it out. I hadn’t laughed that hard in a while - good stuff! But I can see where the game would actually be fun and help you get into better shape.
I didn’t bring my camera bag with me to Josh’s, or else I would have had some pics and incredibly funny videos to post. Expect plenty pics on my next update… granted the fireworks don’t get rained out tonight.
