Quick report. Meal was a big hit. But, after the day we'd had, so was bed. Ride started at Welches OR and ended at Government Camp OR, which is about 15 miles east along Hwy 26 if you are sensible, but instead we went in the other direction, north into the National Forest on logging roads, and proceeded to ride all the way around Mount Hood, a sort of clockwise circuit, and reach Government Camp from the opposite side. The 42 miles of twisting roads through the forest were gorgeous, with remarkable views, thankfully much shade, generally decent road surface, and we saw two cars in 8 hours. I enjoyed seeing Mount Hood from the back side, a view that not that many people see. But there was also no potable water, no cellphone coverage, several miles of gravel road, and what seemed like endless climbing. There were short steep descents but you couldn't really bomb down them, because the road did have the occasional monster hole or collapsed area, which might be hidden in a patch of deep shadow. And it was 102F up there, according to someone's fancy bike computer. I ran out of water about fifteen miles from the first civilization in Parkdale, got dehydrated, and despite drinking a ton of water and Gatorade at the little grocery store there, my thighs and calves started cramping up on the next stretch, which was a 10 mile climb to reach Hwy 35. I was in my very lowest gear, trying to turn the pedals with as little force as possible, feeling the muscles get tight. Sometimes I had charley horses that I had to pedal through. A couple times I had to get off the bike and sit down until my muscles stopped seizing up. We got to Hwy 35 with another 20 miles of climbing ahead. This is a pretty desolate two lane highway, with no cellphone coverage for most of the way and, on Saturday around 6 pm, maybe one car every 5 or 10 minutes. Several miles down the highway, one of our group had her rear tire blow out. Not the tube, but the tire casing itself. It had been sliced open on a gravel stretch, back in the forest. Our patch held for 50 miles but now the tire had a pencil sized hole worn in the casing, Mary Jean's bike was unrideable, and the sun was getting low. The other three rode ahead to find a cellphone signal and call AAA to retrieve her, and also call her husband to see if he was close enough to come get her. Rick had ferried our clothes and food to the condo that morning, then returned to Portland, due to return late that night. I stayed with Mary Jean, for entirely selfish motives - I figured that the AAA driver who picked her up would surely give me a ride too. With nothing to do, we tried patching the tire casing again, rode half a mile, blew out the re-patch, and started walking, wondering how many hours the others would have to ride to find cell coverage and how busy AAA was on a Saturday night and when the sun would set. It was getting dusk now. A pickup truck approached and slowed, the driver peered at us, and drove on. Several minutes later the truck returned from the other direction, and he was one of the local AAA drivers, off duty, looking for us on his way home. We arrived at the cabin right when our companions rode up. They had ridden to an area with a single cellphone "bar" about forty minutes after leaving us, spent another 15 minutes trying to explain the situation to AAA over a garbled connection, and the closest AAA truck on duty was busy in Sandy, over an hour away. We'd have been out there after dark. Our driver told us that the area where we had been walking was a sort of local Bermuda Triangle, populated with bear and cougar, where people disappeared mysteriously. Most recently, a father and his adult son, hiking, had never been seen again. The thing is, all the locals agree, a cougar wouldn't take on two adult men. So, as you can see, the dinner that night didn't have to be good to be good, if you see what I mean. But it was good too. No-one was awake enough for the swimming pool or hot tub. The next morning I left the others - they were staying in the condo all weekend - and rode the 15 miles down Hwy 26 to my car in Welches. That was a great descent, curvy two lane highway, all downhill, good pavement. Get in a low tuck and you can hit 60 mph on a road like that, in spots you can actually keep up with cars. I didn't, because I was carrying a bag of clothes over my shoulder. I was dehydrated for a day afterwards and my legs still feel heavy. I have a list of precautions to take if I ever ride in the backcountry again. And I made some new friends. So it was a nice day after all.

"dcarch, would you please share more info re the J. Pippin method. Do you put the whole frozen bird into an oven set at 145? For how long do you cook the bird? I am very interested, because I cook most meat/poultry pieces in a frozen state. Have never cooked a whole chicken or turkey in the frozen state, but am most interested in doing so. Just need more information. Thanks." Jacques Pépin’s (Spellcheck keeps on changing to Pippin ) method is to cut up the turkey, similar to what’s known as spatchcock method. Basically cutting up the turkey in sections to cook, making it easier not to overcook the bird. Safety in cooking is very important. Every year around Thanksgiving and Christmas many people get sick from eating improperly prepared turkey, from thawing to cooking. Many refrigerators are not cold enough to thaw a frozen turkey for a few days, and not using a thermometer is highly questionable. My method requires the use of sous vide cooking equipment, which can heat up food much faster using moving hot water at a precisely digitally controlled temperature. Temperature for cooking using sous vide electronics can be accurate to less than one degrees. This allows the turkey to be thawed and cooked much faster and cooked to known safe temperature inside and out. You cannot try to cook at a low temperature because oven hot air cannot conduct heat as fast as hot circulating water, and oven temperature can be off by as much as 40 degrees. dcarch Guaranteed perfect results for every part of the turkey

Mimi, your pork looks perfect. Neely, I love the look of your tuna salad. So refreshing. Annie, I'm so sorry about your yorkshires. Mine have never flubbed like that. As mentioned, maybe the batter was too cold. We had spaghetti and meatballs yesterday for New Years, and my goal was to have the more "fancy" dinner today. I'm not a clam virgin any longer. I never cook seafood, and today was my first foray cooking clams. I just try not to think of them being alive :-( This is a Portuguese dish, and one that I wanted to christen our new Lodge cast iron skillet, one of or presents to ourselves. Chicken, sausage, potatoes, roasted red peppers, garlic, onions, clams and kale. I used baby kale, and added some white wine for additional flavour. Sopped up with homemade rolls and it's truly a keeper.

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.