Turkey feast

I was always a bit envious of the Americans who have their turkey at Thanksgiving as I come from a traditional Christmas ham eating family, and I was desperately looking for a date to have our turkey dinner for years but not until arriving in Finland I got the perfect date, the Finnish Independence day on December 6^th.

And so it was yesterday time for out annual turkey feast once again. This year I had decided to document the cooking and the dinner preparations normally going on from the day before the Independence Day, but once again found out I had forgotten about it. It was not until the turkey was carved and most of it eaten I came to think about getting my precious dear camera into the shrine of cooking, which was too late of course. Now there is only the left overs to photograph, but they can sometimes be more thrilling to work with as you have to be creative in more than just the one single way.

Anyway, by the time the turkey was ready to be taken out of the oven and to be carved it was all too dark to take any photos in nature’s own light anyway so I will seriously have to consider acquiring additional lights in order to be able to shoot the photos I want of food, at least this time of the year, until it once again turns into lighter on December 21^st. Being very disappointed about forgetting to take my photos I was very pleased with the outcome of the bird though, it was delicious. But so it has been every year, and this time I had a different stuffing with the gravy turning out absolutely superb. I could have spooned just gravy all day so nothing would have been left until dinner time!

Cranberry sauce is one thing we only serve with the annual Independence Day turkey, and with the recipe I have it turns a really dark fuchsia colour. The cranberry sauce served with orange carrots, roasted potatoes, orange sweet potato gratin, brown gravy, white turkey meat and either green peas or haricots verts is a colour clash screaming at you on your plate when eating it, but tastes delicious.

Anyway, I feel bad for the citizens of the town of Nokia with no potable water in their taps, must have been quite a sad way to celebrate the 90^th Independence Day with the army been called to help distribute fresh drinking water for the town inhabitants to collect. Now there has even been found Salmonella together with other as virulent bacteria in the water.

Even more sad for the person who opened a valve thus poisoning the whole town doing so by mistake, what feelings of guilt and regret. The Finnish Criminal Police are investigating the incident and it seems that the possibility of polluted waste water getting into fresh cleaned tap water is supposed to be impossible as a safety precaution and a faulty construction is suspected. Now all municipalities are encouraged to see over their water facilities in order to avoid other such incidents.