Turducken review

Christmas has come and gone and I remembered that I owed my blog a review of the Turducken we had for the Miller family Christmas dinner. We had 15 folks all told.

I got it via Cajun Grocer and went with the cornbread stuffing. Perhaps another time I may get the seafood jambalaya stuffing.

Directions had us defrosting 2 days before the event in the refrigerator. I think it should have been 3 days. We had to do an overnight cold water defrost to speed things up a bit. Worked out O.K.

Preparation and cooking was a snap. Just needed to get it in an appropriate sized pan. The aroma in the house was fantastic after about an hour. The different spices on top of the cooking turkey, chicken and duck let everyone in the house know there was some serious bird in the oven.

It was done when we needed it to be done. Carving up the bird was a little challenge because I didn't know exactly what the layout was under the skin. When I and my brother-in-law got the Turducken out of the cooking pan a portion of it broke off but it was no big deal.

Carving was simple. Other than the legs on the turkey it's essentially boneless. I used an electric knife so I was able to get enough meat on the platter in a short period of time while it was still warm and juicy.

And it tasted wonderful. The cajun spices made themselves known but it wasn't overpowering. It was delicious, and having the same spices interacting with different types of meat made it like a mini buffet.

Got lots of compliments from the family and they were surprised at how good it was.

We will Turducken again in the future.

Christmas list

This is a place marker to remind me that I need to make out my Christmas list for the Michael Conners Gift Headquarters.

Hamster update

Last time I updated the hamster situation, Hammy was leaping from the second story of his cage.

He's still doing that, and he's not dead yet. I can, however, see the day that he jumps and breaks a leg and I will end up having to push him in some sort of hamster wheelchair.

So, what's the update for, Mike?

Well, Hammy now has yet another house.

We're visiting the in-laws and Hammy is coming with us and he needed a portable habitat.

And we didn't buy this one. No, no, no. I had to make it out of a Sterilite container and hand tools. Drill holes in it (not too many... maybe not enough... hee hee... just kidding, kids), and a place for the water bottle to hang down from.

It was not easy, and I cracked some of the plastic in the process. Ever wonder what kind of plastic is immune from Krazy Glue? It's the kind that this container is made from, of course.

I'm published!

Well, kinda published. A buddy (Ted) liked a portion of a stream of consciousness email I wrote and he posted it.

I don't know what counts as published any more with the Internet.

Heck, Rap music is legitimate these days.

Patter of little feet

This past Friday I received a plaintive call from my 5yo daughter, breathlessly asking if we could go to the pet store and look at hamsters.

So we did, and $60 later we brought home a male hamster.

The first cage we purchased ended up being mis-used by the hamster. The exercise wheel is up on a rotating 2nd level and he ended up using it as a sleeping nest, spraying seeds and hamster urine over the area.

Second cage is working out better.

First day in the house, the girls were loving the hamster a bit too much and he sunk his teeth into our oldest daughter's index finger. Drew blood and everything. She hates seeing her own blood so it was bedlam for a few minutes.

Second night in the house the 5yo (instigator of the hamster) didn't close the cage door well enough and we had a situation that my wife feared most: a hamster jailbreak.

We started around the cage and eventually found him in the kid's playroom - 15 fear-filled (for my wife) minutes all told.

And today, Sunday, the hamster took a nip at the 5yo.

So far:

Hamster: 2 nips, 1 escape
Humans: 0