I'm almost finished with winterizing the deck, just a few more things to store today; all in its proper time. First I had to drain the hose and put out the heated birdbath, install the squirrel resistant cage around the rhododendron Percy Wiseman (tasty flower buds) and start protecting a few shrubs before the ground freezes so I can't put a stake in. This was the first morning with temperatures below freezing and my heated birdbath failed! It may be just the GFI - I reset it and we'll see tonight. I had to break ice and refill all of the birdbaths, to the great relief of the turkeys that were clustered around the frozen baths when I looked out this morning. The row in the back is turkeys bellied up to the water bar. I saw an article in the Cape Cod Times online today about Birders wonder if snowy owls will return to Cape. Apparently they're beginning to trickle down to New England. Claire This post was edited by claire on Sat, Nov 15, 14 at 10:50

I might be bringing on some wrath here, but there simply is no known insect or bug called a "turkey mite". These are immature ticks, plain and simple. A hatch will sit on a leaf or other surface and stay together until disturbed. Literally hundreds (thousands?) of these baby ticks will disburse on your body. You can't feel them crawling, they're simply too small. So small, in fact, that they can easily pass through your socks or almost any fabric. They tend to burrow into your skin like chiggers. They have a powerful itch which does leave a welt and usually a tiny pus-filled spot on the top which itching busts open and a scab develops. These are usually in woods-to-field areas, hanging on low brush or in tall grass. One good thing to know is they do not like rainy days, so a rainy day is a good day to get out in the woods if you have to. If you get an infestation, it's due to ticks laying eggs repeatedly in your environment. If you keep getting them, chances are you have not sprayed your shoes because this is a favorite trick of a hatch. You can get repeated bites from the hatch getting into shoes, cars, sleeping bags, couches, etc... Yes, they are pure hell to deal with. Around here we simply stay out of the woods from July 1st until after the first frost. We have created large, mowed grass paths to get around the property. And when I say mowed, I mean about 1 inch tall grass. Southern Indiana is rife with these and it's not uncommon to see people here with several bites on their legs from these demons, usually around the ankles and knees. As far as being related to turkey populations, I have had these for over 30 years on my place, since purchasing it. We used to have almost zero turkeys here and in the last decade the population of turkeys has increased dramatically, but the rate of tick larva has been about the same since the start. I've asked two entomologists about "turkey mites" and they both said "No such thing exits" and said they were tick larvae. I realize the pain and suffering and insane itching (having experienced it firsthand) does make you think this is a completely separate species, but it's not.

Last night was my experiment. I fully preheated the oven to 500 deg. I prepared my chicken - rinse, dry, salt, pepper, into a #7 Griswold pan - and let it sit at room temp for a good half hour while the oven preheated. Put it in the oven on the second lowest rack. That's all there is to it, right? When the breast was a beautiful golden brown I checked the temp. The breast was already at 180. I poked at the thighs a bit and found areas as cool as 140. Clearly it needed more time in the oven despite the breast already being overcooked. After another fifteen minutes or so (I wasn't paying attention to the clock during any of this) the thighs were just barely approaching 165 so I pulled it out of the oven. Immediately after setting it on my counter I noticed that while the top of the drumsticks were nice and brown like the breast, the majority was a flabby pale beige. Same for the entire thighs and most of the wings. While carving the chicken I took a bite of the breast. Predictably it was dry, but my wife seemed to enjoy it nonetheless. I chose to eat the dark meat and sadly peeled off the skin. It was flavorful and extremely juicy if somewhat undercooked for my taste. In hindsight I know I made one mistake. I put the chicken in head first, whereas the instructions make a point of saying legs should face the back. Given this, I will give the method another shot even though being in the back didn't help the wings out any. On a positive note, I'm convinced of the small-pan tip. The oven didn't smoke at all, and the splatters on the wall were minimal. Who'da thunk, "place in pan and throw in oven" could yield such varied results.

Report: The Beijing duck was very tasty but I did too much glazing during roasting, so the skin looked and tasted good but was not crispy. My friend salvaged it with a torch. The sous vide duck was tasty but just a little not right. I think 36 hours was too much, the texture was too soft - but now I know that another 36 hours will probably produce duck pate. The dry brined, slow cooked, deep fried pork cubes with gravy were really quite good. But how can you go wrong with that. The smoked turkey that my friends brought was great. Woodstock Wine & Deli smokes about 30 turkeys for Thanksgiving and I'm told you need to be friends with the owner to get one. This couple also brought a magnum of wine and butternut squash soup. We served the soup first with each guest's initials drawn on the surface with piped-on cranberry sauce. The roast turkey that my other friend brought was good. Roasting doesn't produce as flavorful meat as smoking, I think, but he did a good job and the breast was nicely moist. The sous vide roasted garlic mashed potatoes was not great. DD says I didn't cook the potatoes long enough so they mashed poorly. I say there wasn't enough butter and cream. I do prefer French style, very soft mashed potatoes. The horseradish mashed potatoes was good. My friend with the blowtorch brought these. The creamed spinach was fine. I cheat big time here, simply melt a stick of cream cheese into a potful of spinach along with a little bit of garlic and onion. Sometimes I add cream and Amaretto, didn't this time. The sweet potato with marshmallows was, well, not how I personally would eat sweet potatoes but it is a traditional Thanksgiving meal chez SWMBO so that's that I did not try any of the pies or desserts. I'm told SWMBO pumpkin pie was a hit. There was beet argula salad, kale salad, fried rice, and a couple other dishes. I didn't try any of that. We really had too many people. It ended up being 24, because of a couple of last minute invites and one guest of a guest who I'd forgotten about. We had to pull in a third table and moving around was tricky. But people had a good time. Cleanup was a trip to the bad old years (2012-2017?) when I didn't have a working dishwasher. We used fancy china and glassware with gold accents and rims, and it all had to be washed by hand. I've gotten used to being able to wash up a big dinner party in less than an hour, with Hobart the Magic Dishwasher. No such luck, we were up until 1 am washing and then I had to finish the rest this morning, after getting up at 5 am to take Kate to the airport for her short trip to Berkeley. Actually we have just finished getting the house back together - it is dinnertime Friday now. It's been a nice day though, with napping and low key cooking interspersed with cleaning and putting away. I made stock with all the roast duck remains, and used that for a duck-mushroom-tomato-kale soup that we are having for dinner. DS has a (edit: cold, not child) and made chicken noodle soup for our lunch. It's been a liquid diet kind of day. I was going to post a picture of DD helping in the kitchen, but we were both too busy. Before she started cooking, she worked on a painting in the foyer. I took a photo of her painting. Well, actually she'd left by the time I took the picture. So just imagine DD sitting in this blanket nest, painting.