My entire body is hurting and I feel like I'm asleep on my feet. My family left after 9, while Carol's brother and wife stayed way too long until 11:30. It was a great evening. I still don't know what happened, but the turkey got rave reviews for taste and being so moist. Go figure.

I am a bit melancholy, however. My dad, though he really looks pretty good, has been having difficulty eating with something that is almost like acid reflux but isn't. It's making him miserable and he's not eating very much. In fact, because of the reflux or whatever it is, he doesn't eat with the rest of us because he's embarrassed by the food coming up, so he ate in the family room.

The saddest thing of all, however, is knowing that this was the last time my father will be in my house. Soon, he won't be able to travel as the cancer continues to wreak havoc on his body.

What I am thankful for today is that I was able to have my father over for Thanksgiving, and share the turkey that I have cooked, even with something we both enjoy - the skin. I hope he had a good time. I will always remember it.

TLC is running the BBC America's Changing Rooms marathon. It's really odd, though. Changing Rooms is a half-hour show, but TLC has edited together two episodes into an hour show. Weird. Why couldn't they leave the format alone? is it just because Trading Spaces is an hour?

So, Carol's brother Gil and I hit the utility room and start carving the bird. As I'm carving, there's one thing very clear - the bird is moist. There's a lot of juices in there and you can hear it with every cut. It takes about 20 minutes to clean the carcass. We get a full platter of white meat and another of dark. Carol successfully concocts a delicious dinner and we finally all sit down to enjoy it. Finally.

Another check of the temperature shows no change - so that's it. I take the turkey off the grill and bring it inside to my utility room which doubles today as turkey carving central. The washer & dryer is all setup with utensils and platters to help with the carving. The problem is - the turkey is done WAY too early. I grab aluminum foil and basically wrap the bird to keep the heat in. Normally, the turkey would sit about 20-30 minutes to complete cooking before we carve. Now, it's going to sit for about an hour. Hopefully everything will work out.

So, let's see: On the grill at 1:10, off the grill at 3:35, that's 145 minutes for a 16½ pound turkey, or 8 minutes 47 seconds a pound.

OH, CRAP! NOOOOOOOOOO!!! I went out and took the bird's temperature. I'm shooting for 180 degrees in the thigh and 170 degrees in the breast. Check one thigh - it's over 200 degrees!!! I pull the turkey off the grill to get it away from the heat and try it again. It's in the 190's. the other thigh in in the upper 170's, so the heat is uneven. I flip the bird around and leave it in just for a few more minutes, because I'm just not believing the temperature. I can't believe that a 16½ pound turkey would have been done that quickly. It doesn't feel right, but since this was a brand new chimney that holds much more coal, there's a possibility that there was much more heat and it just got done quicker. We'll see.

Check the turkey, just to make sure everything is OK - and it is. Add another chimney of charcoal and more hickory. The bird is getting much darker and you can see that the skin seems to be drier and more "taut". This may cause the bird to "tear" the skin in some places (most likely near the wings, as these are going to get real crispy by the time we're done). Hold off on starting the next chimney of charcoal. We're in the home stretch now, and it's possible that this turkey is going to be done soon.

We're in maintenance mode now - time to check on the turkey. It's looking really nice. Great color - it's gong to get much darker from here. Using a tool of your choice, try to push down the coals that are on either side of the drip pan. This will get rid of any dead ones, push more ash out, and make room for new coals. Add the new charcoal from the chimney buy pouring the charcoal into the holes, as well as on top of the grill near the holes. This is a dangerous time from here on out - anytime you add coal and you have the lid off, you now run the risk of a grease fire from the drip pan. Don't worry about it, but work quickly. Add more handfuls of hickory to the new coals and get the lid covered. This will extinguish any flames. You should see some great smoke pouring out of the lid as the hickey begins to work even harder.

The second chimney is ready, so it's time to make our move. Carol has taken care of the turkey preparation, which is only oiled-up and tressed a bit and placed breast-down in a rack. The bird now goes outside. The second chimney is now poured on top of the other coals on either side of the drip pan. The grill is finally put on the Weber. The orientation is crucial - the handles on the grill (which also have holes around them) should be placed over the coals on each side of the drip pan. This allows you to add more coals later into that space. The rack with the turkey then sits on the grill. Open one of the Ziploc bags and empty the water out of it. Take handfuls of the wood chips and place them on top of the coals on either side. Cover with the lid, and start another chimney of charcoal. So, here we go! The turkey is on the grill at 1:10 - let's see how long it takes!

Hmmm... this is getting hard to actually cook and blog at the same time... the digital photos are taking too much time to setup...
Time to check the chimney and it's ready. First I need to put a drip pan in the grill. I learned the hard way one of the first years we're doing this. We had a grease fire that took off a lot of Carol's hair in the front and singed her eyebrows in a freak accident. So, the drip pan goes in. You can tell the chimney of charcoal is ready when the coal at the top is white. The charcoal is then poured into the spaces between the drip pan at the side of the grill, only along the long sides of the pan. Put the cover back on the Weber, and then start another chimney of charcoal. When this one is ready, it'll be time to start grillin' the bird.

While the first chimney is starting-up, it's time to prep the wood. I use hickory to smoke the turkey while I cook it. Though it does seem to lend a bit of the hickory to the flavor of the meat, the other thing it seems to do (and I have no scientific proof of this at all) is "seal" the skin of the turkey, retaining a lot of the juices. I had this fail only once when we had a bad thermometer to test the bird's temperature and it wound-up being overdone, and thus, dry. Otherwise it's moist.

Since the object of using hickory is for the smoke, you don't want the wood to burn. To make sure that doesn't happen, you have to soak the wood in water for at least an hour. I use Ziploc bags to make sure that all of the wood gets submerged by filling then up and removing the water from them. Now we wait for the first chimney to get finished.

Here's the start of the day for me - starting the first chimney of charcoal. I highly recommend using a chimney to start the coals because NO lighter fluid is used, just newspaper, and the coals are kept in a tight area, so the heat transfer occurs more efficiently and get white-hot quicker. It's very easy to start: 1) get some newspaper - 3 sheets works well and crumble into a ball 2) shove the newspaper underneath the chimney 3) fill the chimney with charcoal (there is a grill separating the area where the newspaper is places and where the charcoal goes. Don't use a chimney that uses flat metal separating the compartments - it just doesn't work) 4) light the newspaper. That's it. The paper will light the bottom coals and, in turn, the entire stack of charcoal.

Every Thanksgiving since we've moved out to Hoffman Estates we've held the family Thanksgiving dinner. At each of those YOUR'S TRULY has cooked the turkey. Actually, barbecued the turkey. On my Weber. Since this is the first year of my Blog, I'm going to Blog my way through the barbecuing!

Here's the subject of today's Thanksgiving dinner:

It's a 16½ pound fresh Butterball. Carol will be preparing everything else for tonight's dinner. This turkey is mine.

I went out to Walgreen's to pick up a pair of 'Ove" Gloves - made of Nomex and Kevlar. I need something to handle the hot stuff around the barbecue and my old gloves are shot. The only other things I need are charcoal, hickory (for smoking) and a charcoal chimney to get the coals going quickly and efficiently.