Christmas in July - stuffed turkey breast dinner

Photo credit: Mosquito Beachwear (here)

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned that our family has a regularly scheduled date night with our good friends, Gord and Carolyn (G&C). Every Friday night we alternate who's house dinner is at and we all like to try out new recipes on these nights. I know that it's completely sacrilegious to try out a new recipe when you have company coming but G&C have truly become some of my best guinea pigs when trying something new. 

Last night, we celebrated Christmas in July. Everyone wore green or red and we had a mini Christmas tree in the backyard complete with twinkle lights outside. The idea came about when Mum and I were going through our extensive napkin collection and we found that we had an absolute abundance of Christmas napkins. Thus we decided that a Christmas in July party would allow us to make use of some of these napkins to make room for the new ones we just got. 

I'm sure I've talked about how our family usually strays from 'typical' holiday dinners of turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce but every once in a while I get a horrible craving for it. So, we figured why not make a 'traditional Christmas-y dinner' too. Really, for 5 of us, a whole turkey would have been WAAAAAAY too much so we decided on a turkey breast. We were going to stuff it by simply slitting a hole in the turkey and making a bit of a pocket that could be stuffed. We then thought that may take too long and it was suggested to Mum by her delightful culinary goddess of a friend, Dina (hi Dina!) that maybe we should pound it flat and then fill it with stuffing and then roll it all up. And as I'm sure you all know, when a culinary goddess speaks, you listen! 

And so began the pounding... The meat was pounded (stop giggling!) into absolute submission until it was nice and flat. I will confess, we didn't make out own stuffing as we truly didn't have the time however I did make sure to add about 1 1/4 cups dried cranberries to the stuffing to make it that much more delish! Once stuffed, we trussed the roast so that all of the stuffing goodness wouldn't fall out while cooking. We sprinkled some olive oil on top and some spices too (really, just go through whatever is in your cupboards). 

Now here's where things got fun. Instead of going the typical route of baking, we decided to throw this bad boy on the BBQ (on a baking sheet). Can I tell you, this was the greatest idea EVER!?!?!? Look what came off the grill:

This is only half of it... Look how perfectly pretty it turned out? Now are you ready for the next best thing? Are you sitting down? I strongly recommend that you sit down :P... Hello delightfully delicious stuffed turkey!!!

Are you in love? I am! I must admit, I did replace the traditional cranberry sauce with some lingonberry sauce instead (you know what lingonberry sauce is... it's the divine sauce that Ikea gives you when you order meatballs in their restaurant... Now you know what I'm talking about!!!). We served this up with some roasted veggies as well as some salad and called it a night. Give something like this a shot! It's so worth the effort and you can really release some anger while pounding out the turkey breast (god knows, I did !!!!). 

I hope you all are doing well and I'm sorry for being away so long! 

Keep cooking! 

tamara