Diary of a Christmas Dinner

December 16, 2012 – We’ve been discussing what to have for our Christmas dinner. John thinks a ham with fresh bread or rolls and some fixings would be good. I’d like a sit down dinner. Of course, we’re not sure just how many people will be around our table.

Eventually, from the living room I hear, “Why don’t we do the Morton Thompson turkey?”  Discussion and agreement ensues… we’re going to do the Morton Thompson turkey for Christmas dinner. We’ve decided that John will cook, I will document and blog about it.

Look it up.

A little bit of history

The Morton Thompson turkey makes an appearance in a cookbook by Pierre Berton, “Pierre & Janet Berton’s Canadian Food Guide”, as well as “The Berton Family Cookbook”. Apparently, this turkey has been a tradition in the Berton family for many years. Pierre Berton was a Canadian journalist and author, well known for numerous historical books, as well as a Canadian children’s book, “The Secret World of Og”, a book I’m sure most Canadian students are familiar with.

John’s father was also a newspaper man in the same era as Pierre Berton and they often found themselves at conventions together. Over the years, John’s parents exchanged Christmas cards and letters; John still has most of the Christmas cards his family received from the Berton’s and we pull them out almost yearly. The Berton cookbooks are special to John and, interestingly, his boss gave him her copy of the book last summer. We now have two copies of their “Canadian Food Guide” and both hold a special place on our cookbook shelf.

And almost yearly, we toss around the temptation of cooking the Morton Thompson turkey, as presented in the Berton cookbooks. We never have. This year, we’ve decided it’s time.

We’ve also decided to document the entire process, with pictures. This could be interesting!

December 18, 2012 – John’s ordered the turkey. The recipe specifies that the turkey be from 16-25 lbs. Apparently, the one we’ve ordered is about 18-19 lbs. Do you know how much turkey that is? There had better be someone else here, willing to eat turkey! Lots of it! We’ll be eating leftovers until the summer!