The First Time Back

This past weekend marked a milestone I wasn’t sure I’d reach: I was back in the kitchen, really back, cooking alongside my husband Cody for the first time since my accident.

For six months, I’ve been healing. For six months, Cody has been our sole chef. But finally, I can stand for about an hour to an hour and a half at a time—enough to reclaim my place in our kitchen, enough to feel that creative spark returning.

We don’t just cook meals in our house. We create feasts on weekends that become the foundation for our entire week’s eating. It’s our ritual, our creative outlet, and honestly, one of the most loving ways we spend time together. We’ll put on a funny movie or dance around to music, transforming raw ingredients into something that sustains us for days.

This weekend, we decided it was time to tackle one of the turkeys from our freezer.

The Art of Planning Ahead

Here’s something most people don’t realize about cooking from scratch: the meal you eat on Saturday actually starts the Sunday before. Real food, like real business success, requires forethought and systematic execution.

The Timeline:

• Previous Sunday: Turkey came out of the deep freeze into the fridge to begin its slow thaw
• Thursday: Mixed up our brine (we used Meat Church’s chicken brine this time—sometimes we make our own, but this bagged version is both tasty and efficient)
• Thursday-Saturday: Turkey luxuriated in its brine bath in the fridge
• Saturday: Cooking day
• Sunday: Bread baking day (more on that timing mishap later)

The turkey wasn’t even fully thawed when we started the brine—the gizzards were still frozen solid in the center. No problem. Into the brine it went, gizzards and all.

The Main Event: Smoked Spatchcock Turkey

Saturday morning, we pulled that bird from its brine bath, gave it a good rinse, and finally extracted those now-thawed gizzards. The cat and dog scored with some raw liver (they think cooking day is the best day), while the rest went into the freezer for future stock-making.

Since the gizzards had been brined, we decided to skip traditional gravy this time. We also kept it simple with just the brine—no butter injection this round. Sometimes simplicity wins.

The Smoking Process:

1. Spatchcocked the turkey (removed the backbone and flattened it) for more even cooking on our Kamado Joe ceramic smoker
2. Coated in honey barbecue rub with dried honey, paprika, and warming spices
3. Rested in the fridge for a few hours to let those flavors penetrate
4. Smoked with fresh hickory chunks from my dad’s woodworking scraps (he cuts them into perfect 2×4-inch pieces for us)
5. Started low and slow to maximize smoke penetration, about 4-5 hours total

When Cody went to carve that turkey, the back leg literally fell off the bone. The breast meat was dripping juices all over the pan. After years of smoking turkeys, this was his masterpiece.

The Supporting Cast

Elevated Mashed Potatoes

Thanks to Instagram inspiration, we weren’t settling for basic mashed potatoes. Using actual Idaho potatoes from my cousin’s garden (yes, real Idaho potatoes from Idaho!), we created a two-texture masterpiece:

• Creamy cheddar mashed potatoes as the base
• Topped with thinly sliced scalloped potatoes
• Finished in the oven for that perfect crunchy-creamy contrast
• All the cheesy, garlicky goodness you could want

The Focaccia Experiment

I couldn’t just make bread. I had to experiment. So I made one batch of dough but split it to test two versions:

Traditional Sourdough Focaccia – Classic, reliable, delicious

Pumpkin Guinness Focaccia – Because apparently I saw a recipe that replaced water with Guinness and added pumpkin, and thought “fall flavors!”

Both topped with:

• Maple-glazed roasted garlic (four whole heads roasted in olive oil, maple syrup, chili flakes, salt, and pepper, basted every 15 minutes)
• Local goat cheese (a harder variety called Mentango from our local dairy—absolutely fantastic)
• Fresh herbs from the garden (oregano and thyme)
• Generous olive oil (always generous)

Pro tip: The pumpkin version needed extra proofing time due to the additional ingredients, so both loaves ended up being baked Sunday instead of Saturday. Sometimes timing doesn’t go as planned, and that’s okay.

The Week of Plenty

That feast became the foundation for our entire week:

• Saturday night: Small portions of everything (we were full from “tasting” all day and snacking on sourdough toast with a Parmesan-herb-chili oil mixture)
• Sunday-Tuesday: Turkey sandwiches on focaccia with lettuce, onions, and avocado
• Wednesday: Salad with the last of our garden’s blackberries and lettuce, purple basil, homemade blackberry vinaigrette, and turkey
• Thursday: The last of the dark meat headed to the freezer for future pot pies

We even gave away some of the breast meat because when you cook a whole turkey for two people, abundance is guaranteed.

The Business of Cooking (Or Is It the Cooking of Business?)

Here’s what struck me as I stood in that kitchen, kneading dough while my mind wandered through client problems: This is exactly how business should work.

You want amazing results?

• Start planning a week before
• Build in buffer time for the unexpected
• Follow a systematic process
• Use quality ingredients (or in business, quality foundations)
• Don’t rush what needs time to develop
• Plan for how you’ll use the results long-term

That turkey didn’t just happen. It was a week of planning, three days of prep, a full day of cooking, and it fed us beautifully for an entire week. One day of intensive effort created seven days of value.

Your business systems work the same way. The effort you put into building them properly—not rushing, not cutting corners, using quality “ingredients”—determines how well they’ll sustain you.

More Than a Meal

Standing in that kitchen, working alongside Cody, dancing to music while smoke curled from the Kamado Joe, I realized this was about more than food. This was about reclaiming pieces of myself I thought I’d lost. It was about creating instead of just surviving. It was about building something from scratch that would sustain us.

Six months ago, I couldn’t stand long enough to scramble eggs.

This weekend, I made two kinds of focaccia, helped prep a feast, and remembered why we do things from scratch—in cooking and in business. It’s not just about the end result. It’s about the process, the planning, the patience, and the deep satisfaction of creating something real with your own hands.

Even if those hands need to take breaks every hour.

Even if the timing isn’t perfect.

Even if you’re relearning how to do everything.

The feast was delicious. But the real nourishment? That came from being back in my kitchen, creating something from nothing, building foundations that last.

Just like in business. Just like in recovery. Just like in life.

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What’s your favorite from-scratch creation that takes patience but pays off for days? I’d love to hear about your kitchen victories (or experiments gone interesting!) in the comments below.