I'm not planning on company for Thanksgiving so no serious menu planning here, but I'm enjoying watching some of the shows on the Food Network. I record them and watch with half an eye in case there are some new ideas. I know many of you are going to say 'oh, I never watch TV. I'm too high-minded reading great literature and exercising.' Well, I'm watching it for you and reporting.

This year's trend in turkey prep appears to be slathering the outside of the turkey with strongly flavored ingredients like yellow mustard combined with chopped onion and a lot of garlic, covering it with plastic wrap and letting it sit overnight. On another show Bobby Flay had another recipe that involved plastering the outside of the bird with something, but I didn't catch what it was. A lot of his recipes had chipotles and other hot peppers in them and one of the buffets in Las Vegas is serving chipotle-seasoned sweet potatoes, so there's another trend that's been around for awhile.

The show I'm watching right has just caught my whole attention and I'm going to have to back it up to get it figured out. It's called "Mom's Three Meat Stuffing." I missed what the three meats were, but two of them were ground beef and ground pork and some other meat (maybe veal) ground three times so it is very fine.

You brown the meats in a stick of butter. Set aside.
Melt another stick of butter in the same large oven-proof pan (one of those big oval Le Creuset roasters). Add chopped onions, four bunches of scallions chopped, five stalks of celery chopped, 1 red and 1 green bell pepper diced, 7 cloves garlic finely minced, and a 6 oz can of tomato paste. Soak 5 slices of white bread in 1/3 cup milk until soggy. Cut up: 10 hard boiled eggs, 1 pound cooked sweet Italian sausage. She dipped the knife in water while cutting up the eggs into eighths 'so they will cut up nicer' (but they're in with all this glop getting mushed around). Now, 1 cup of pimiento stuffed olives, drained (but left whole). 1 cup dark raisins. Take the soppy bread and tear it apart into the pan - gummy little wads of bread. Now chop some flat leaf parsley and throw it in there. Stir in the cooked ground meat. Put the whole thing in the refrigerator overnight. Then the next day bake it in the oven separate from the turkey at 350 until heated through. She says 20 minutes, I'm thinking longer because it's so dense and right out of the refrigerator.

When time to cook it, get the turkey out of the refrigerator and let it sit for about an hour. Pour a bottle of a soft drink called Malta (Latin American) over the top of the turkey. While the turkey is cooking at 400 degrees for about 3 hours, baste it every 30 minutes with more mustard marinade and Malta.

The oven temperature seems high, but I'm waiting to see how it looks coming out of the oven. Meantime we're making cranberry sauce with frozen passion fruit pulp in it. Cook fresh cranberries together with sugar and the pulp.

Looks like the turkey comes out nice and brown and not black like I expected. I suppose this is due to no sugar in the marinade.

I'll let you know if I decide to make this stuffing recipe. It sounds like one of those things that sounds awful but might be really good.

They served red wine with it in case you're wondering, and no idea what was for dessert. Maybe more stuffing.