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Here it is…our official Toikey Day menu for this year.  You can click the image to see bigger, it should open in a new tab/window.

All of the shopping is done. I hope I didn’t forget anything; I’d rather travel all the way to Texas and have dental work done, hold the Novocaine, at the best implant dentist Plano has to offer, than have to go into a supermarket in the few days that precede Toikey Day.  Seriously, that is how bad the supermarkets are in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, Sunday is really the last day to go, while it’s still reasonably sane.

First of all, if you like this menu template shown here, you can download it and other cool holiday templates for free HERE.  This includes the one I used last year.  I chose to use this one, this year, because the text that I wanted to use didn’t fit on last year’s template.  And yeah, it’s not true to color, the color cartridge in my printer is going, I need to replace it soon.

So now, let’s talk about the food.  The first course is a twist on the one from last year.  Instead of serving the Old Sturbridge Village Gourd Soup in small bowls, I’m doing a fancy restaurant thing and serving it as shots.  Only I don’t own any actual shot glasses, so old tasting glasses from the Maine Brewers Festival will have to do.  So that makes it a bit more than a shot, but who cares?

You can find the recipe for this here:  Butternut Squash Soup Shots with Candied Bacon.  It includes a recipe for the squash soup which is slightly different from the OSV one, but I’m sticking to the recipe I love best.   I just wanted the recipe for the candied bacon.  Ooooohhh….BACON!

Recipezaar is a great site, in part in that it helps take the guesswork out of reducing or increasing a recipe.  Twelve soup shots are definitely too much for the two of us.

As for the turkey, gravy and stuffing, you may be asking, “what’s a Märzen?”  Well, it’s a German/Oktoberfest style beer, and there are many to choose from, as you can see HERE.  Consult this list if you can’t find the Flying Dog beer where you are, if you want a good alternative.  I chose this one from the Flying Dog Brewery, simply because I saw it at Bert’s Better Beers on Saturday, I like the way the label looked, so I said, what the hell?  This beer has won several awards, and you can learn more about it HERE.

I got the idea to do this, from this article on HopPress.com.    Now, I like the way this Mario Rubio dude thinks!  You need at least three bottles of the Märzen of choice…the first you pop open, pour into your favorite glass, and drink while you cook.  The second bottle goes into the roasting pan with the turkey, and the third is for the gravy.  Having more than three bottles, of course, would be good, as you might want to drink them with the meal!   And, as Mario suggests, you may also want to use this same beer to moisten your stuffing.

Use your favorite turkey/gravy/stuffing recipes for this.  This year, I’m keeping it relatively simple…the roast turkey and gravy from Julia Child’s The Way To Cook, using the beer where wine or stock is called for.  For the past few years, I’ve used Alton Brown’s Good Eats Roast Turkey recipe, complete with the brine, and it’s excellent.  But Julia’s recipe is simpler, and as for brining, I’m just going to use a plain water/salt/sugar brine.  I really want the flavor of the beer to come through, and not fight with any additional brine flavorings.  Just a warning – if you buy a Kosher turkey, or a Butterball® one, do not brine it at all, these already come brined.  If you buy a cheap frozen one for 47¢ a pound (as I did, from Shaw’s), definitely brine it.  It really does make a difference!

The stuffing recipe I’m using is a very basic, New England traditional one, using Bell’s Seasoning.  You’ve probably seen the stuff in the spice section of the store, it’s the one with a picture of a turkey on the box.  See it, right over there?  The stuffing recipe is on the back of the box, but you can also find it HERE.  This makes enough to stuff a 5-pound bird, you can double or even triple it if you need more.  We don’t stuff the turkey anyway, we just bake it up in a casserole dish.  The amount given in this recipe will be plenty for the two of us.

I’m tweaking it in two ways…instead of sauteeing the onions and celery in butter, I’m going to render some bacon fat, and use that, reserving the bacon.  Then when I mix it all together, I’ll add the crumbled cooked bacon.

In keeping with the beer theme, I’m going with this recipe for Roasted Garlic IPA Mashed Potatoes.  This was linked to in the article about beer and turkey that I linked to above.

For this recipe, I am choosing to go with Gritty McDuff’s 21 IPA.  IPAs (India Pal Ale) are hoppy and on the bitter side, and not to everyone’s taste, for sure.  But this recipe only uses a few spoonfuls, too much would certainly overpower the dish.  And since it only uses a few spoonfuls, guess who gets to drink the rest?

There are many great IPAs out there.  I went with Gritty’s 21 because I’d had some at both the Maine and New Hampshire Brewers Festivals, and I really liked it.  It’s a bit hard to find near where I live, but I did find it on our visit to the aforementioned Bert’s Better Beers.

The Brussels Sprouts with Sweet & Sour Bacon Dressing is a repeat from last year.  And butternut squash makes an encore appearance, in this simple Baked Butternut Squash.  Click on the links to access these recipes.  As for the rest of the menu, the cranberry sauce is out of a can, and the pumpkin pie was store-bought.  I’m just not too good at making pies!

But, speaking of pumpkins, one of the stars of the show promises to be Pugsley’s Signature Series Smashed Pumpkin Ale, a very special seasonal brew from Alan Pugsley, the brewmaster of Shipyard Brewing Company up in Portland, Maine.  I could not wait to try this once it first came out, as I LOVE pumpkin ales.  I had it for the first time, on tap at the Great Lost Bear up in Portland over Labor Day weekend, and was NOT disappointed.

This is sold in 22 ounce bottles, and has been flying off the shelves.  I had heard that Shipyard’s retail store had sold out, but on the way home from Labor Day weekend in Maine, I did find exactly two bottles in Federal Jack’s retail store, in Kennebunk.  The Shipyard store has since restocked, and so has Federal Jack’s, and you can bet I stocked up, before it’s gone for the season.  Also, I saw a decent amount of it at Bert’s Better Beers, in Hooksett, NH, the other day.

Who needs homemade pumpkin pie?  This is better!

Happy Toikey Day to all! :D