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While watching Illinois embarrass Northwestern’s run defense Saturday, I cooked my first turkey at home. (Technically, it was a turkey breast, but it was still delicious.) Since my oven doesn’t has never worked, I roasted it on the grill, which I’ve not seen anyone in my family do before. Of course I also had to make stuffing and mashed potatoes, too.

After thawing the turkey in the fridge for a couple days, I prepared it with an herb rub from Ina Garten, with lots of thyme, rosemary, and sage. (This was actually probably the weakest part of the dinner—I thought the herbs overpowered the turkey.) After applying the rub, I ran the turkey through with four skewers, in order to successfully place it on the grill. My grill surface is set up such that I would not have been able to collect the drippings if I had just placed the turkey on the grill, so I removed the middle grate and placed a homemade drip pan in its place. Then I rolled up some aluminum foil to lift the skewer base up a little bit, and lit the flames for preheating. I only lit the outer two flames because I wanted indirect heat for the bird.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, not least because of the delicious traditional Thanksgiving dinner (Mmm, turkey…) and the fact that there are no gifts one has to pretend to enjoy (I kid…). This year’s celebration of thanks was indeed lovely, and I enjoyed seeing family, eating too much, and watching college basketball.