Just in case you’re still looking for a recipe for tomorrow’s turkey, here’s Stan’s!  I’m adding an ingredient list at the top, but from there on, it’s a literal copy and paste from what he sent me.  Oh, and this turkey is to DIE for.

You’ll need:
Turkey
Digital thermometer
Reynolds turkey sized oven bags
1 cup salt
1 gallon water
Paper towels
4 carrots
1 onion
4 sprigs celery
2 sticks of butter
salt & pepper
V rack and cookie sheet or disposable turkey pan
2 cups chicken broth

Here is that turkey recipe. It takes two days. The MOST IMPORTANT ingredient is a thermometer. Get a good digital one.

Thaw the turkey out for like three or four days in the fridge.

The afternoon of the day before you cook it you brine it. Brining the turkey must be done for it to not dry out during cooking. And for the white meat to taste good and juicy. You can google brining to see how it works, it’s actually quite scientific.

Take two Reynolds turkey sized oven bags and double bag them. Fill the bag with a cup of table salt and a gallon of water. Put the washed off turkey, with the giblets removed, in the bag (there is a bag containing the hearts in the flap of skin where the turkeys neck was and a big neck in the cavity of the turkey. Get them out for sure or yikes!!). Tie it up really good and put it breast side down on a cookie sheet in your fridge. Just make sure it is the breasts that are being soaked.

The next morning take the turkey out of the brine. Rinse it off with water. Put it on a cookie sheet breast side up. Dry the whole turkey off, including the bottom and inside, with paper towels. Put it in the fridge and let it dry out for at least six hours. This drying step makes the skin brown evenly and become crispy.

The turkey is ready to cook now. It takes three to four hours to cook based on the size (an hour for every five pounds is good). Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put the oven racks so the turkey will be on the second to lowest rack.

Cut up four carrots, an onion, and four sprigs of celery. Put this in a large bowl. Melt two sticks of butter and mix half of the butter into the vegetables. Put a V-rack on a cookie sheet or large disposable aluminum turkey pan (from the store, this is best since you can just toss it and there’s no clean up). Fill the cavity of the turkey with the buttery vegetables and cover all sides of the turkey with the other half of the butter. Salt and pepper all sides of the turkey liberally. Now place the rest of the buttery vegetables in the cookie sheet and put the turkey on the V-Rack BREAST side DOWN.  Fill the cookie sheet with two cups of chicken broth.

So now in all you should have a cookie sheet filled with a bunch of buttery vegetables and chicken broth, a V-rack set within that, with a turkey filled with veges and rubbed with butter and salt and pepper upside down on that v-rack.

Put it in the oven.

After an hour and a half, flip the turkey over. Continue cooking for another hour and a half. Only baste it two times per side. It’s really unnecessary.

If the broth in the pan gets too thick add water.

This technique does two things. The v-rack method cooks the turkey in and out in a very fragrant environment. The broth fills the oven with steam that makes the turkey crazy juicy. Cooking it upside down keeps the breasts from overlooking and self-bastes the breasts the whole time.

Thats about it. Take it out when the thermometer stuck into the deepest part of the breast, by the leg, reads 160. Take it out and put it in another cookie sheet covered in foil and tent the whole turkey in foil. This helps if you are eating in half an hour. It really helps the juices settle. You can cook everything else during this half an hour. It makes the skin soggy though so if you want to eat it immediately you can just eat it and the skin will be unbelievable.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.  Romans 8:28

I had been clinging to those words…  whispering them to myself on harder nights.

Last fall, John was beginning the last year of his course work at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, TX.  He had been taking double loads, trying to finish out his doctorate at Paige Patterson’s request.  Dr. Patterson had promised John a position at SWBTS after he had reached ABD (all but dissertation) status.  We were both so very excited–the completion of John’s doctorate brought the possibility of more family time, and we had been building our dreams around John’s future job at the seminary.

So, as that particular semester began, John excitedly began the process of securing his promised position at the seminary.  He began by scheduling a meeting with the Dean of the Department of Music, and this spiraled into several other meetings.  These meetings had a very disappointing and painful conclusion.

Dr. Patterson had discovered a tidbit about my past that disqualified John from teaching–I am divorced. John is my second husband.  My history which is fraught with pain, heartache, and survival was again haunting us.  Please hear this and understand this: because John married me, he had been disqualified from teaching at SWBTS.  How horrifying it was to be the very thing that prevented my husband from achieving his dreams.  In that moment, I saw myself as horribly selfish for having even married John.  I wondered if my death would be more helpful… if he would be able to escape the chains of my past through my passing.  The pain was overwhelming.

John’s response was simple: “I wouldn’t have been the same person had I not married you.  They would have never even considered me for the job in the first place.”  In a moment when he could have rightly felt bitterness and anger towards me, he simply extended grace and love.  This was, to say the least, a defining moment in our marriage.

So we picked up the pieces and kept hobbling forward.  We were both deeply wounded, but we also didn’t want to strike out in anger.  We had so many questions.  Why?  Why have we been doing this?  John had been taking a DOUBLE LOAD to finish in the time frame Dr. Patterson had desired.  This meant long nights of homework and reading for John and single-motherhood for me.  We had been barely surviving, but we kept reminding ourselves that we had a purpose.  So now what?

I clung to Romans 8:28.  This would not be in vain.  There was a purpose that would be accomplished through this difficult season.

This year, we’ve healed.  We’ve survived the disillusionment.  And now, as our limp is just starting to become less noticeable…

John has accepted a position at Cameron University in Lawton, OK (which is home for us.)  He wouldn’t have even been qualified for this position if he hadn’t reached ABD status in May.  John’s parents’ rent house became vacant a week or two before John accepted the position, and our house went under contract within 24 hours of placing a “For Sale” sign in the yard.  (Edit: that contract fell through and the house sold later.  To read about how God worked in that situation, click here.)  To top it off, we are going in view of a call to New Hope Baptist Church (Duncan, OK) on August 19th.

God’s fingerprints have been all over this move.  It’s absolutely amazing to see God’s blessings as clearly as we have this last month.  Honestly, I feel like I’m living inside a miracle.  We are so thankful…  for our learning experience, and for the clear outpouring we’ve received.

How have you witnessed God’s blessings recently?