Turbo Roaster Review

Turbo Roaster Box image from Walmart.com

My husband gifted me a Turbo Roaster for Christmas about two years ago. I like to try something out thoroughly before I write up a review for it. Honestly, I love this thing! I've used it about 5 times so far. The Turbo Roaster has made my holidays so much more enjoyable and cooking so much more efficient!

I cook a turkey for both Thanksgiving and Christmas most years. Typically this entails getting up at the crack of dawn to put the turkey in the oven while everyone is asleep. Finding a way to get it in the oven without waking up my kids on Christmas morning has always been a major hurdle.

No longer! I haven't gotten around to timing the cooking EXACTLY due to various holiday distractions... but I do know that the cooking time is cut in HALF! I no longer wake up at the crack of dawn to prepare my turkey. This year I was up by 8 and the 17lb turkey was done in about two hours! Normally I am finished with all my other cooking and waiting on my turkey to finish so we can eat dinner. This year- my turkey sat cooling while I rushed around to finish the rest of my cooking!

Tony Chachere's Injectable Turkey Marinade
 image from Walmart.com

Most of the time the turkey seasonings you add to the outside only help flavor the top little bit of the turkey meat. I've tried and tried and tried again and no matter how I prepped it my turkey always ended up dry on the inside. Using the Turbo Roaster, along with Tony Chachere's Injectable Turkey Marinade made my turkey come out very juicy and flavorful. Even the cold leftovers were finger licking good!

What is the Turbo Roaster?

Its a glass jar attached to a curvy metal tube with a canning lid and a plastic gasket. You fill the jar with water, attach the lid/tube set up and stick the end of it in the turkey before cooking. The oven heats up the water and causes steam to rise through the tube and cook the turkey from the inside while the oven cooks the turkey from the outside. Thereby cutting cooking time in half.

It does work with a stuffed turkey... just not as well.

Tips on using the Turbo Roaster

-I use a turkey pan rack to elevate my bird so that the jar can sit mostly flat in the oven- this helps.
-Leave the turkey unstuffed for best results (though I have done it both ways)
-Put glass jar directly on stove rack- it does not need a pan under it.

-*DO NOT FILL (even with HOT WATER) until the jar has cooled!

Ok... so for the bad news...

The jar on my turbo roaster smashed this Christmas... my own stupid fault- I forgot to let the jar cool before refilling it with hot water -.-

See... I did know better... the instructions are really rather clear on this point. However, I was battling a sinus infection and apparently my brain was all mush from it. (It even took me three separate tries to figure out how many chairs and plates we needed at the table- that's how bad my head felt.)

And now the jar for my turbo roaster sits on my counter in two pieces. *facepalm!*

So... now for some Real World Speculating

The jar mouth for the turbo roaster is the same size as a regular canning jar. So, I'm wondering if I could just switch out the broken jar with a regular wide mouthed canning jar instead. To know that I needed to look up online as to whether the canning jars could even be put in the oven or not.

That's when I stumbled on this Pie in a Jar recipe:

Single serving pie in a jar recipe

Seriously... even if you don't plan on cooking your pies in a jar, you just HAVE to check out these pictures! Tiny pies! The cuteness!

My favorite is when the blogger slides the baked pie right out of the jar and onto the plate- UBER CUTENESS!

Anyhow... Apparently you CAN put mason jars in the oven.

So next year (or the next time I cook a whole bird) I will swap out the broken jar for an ordinary canning jar and be sure to come back and report the results to you!

If it doesn't work, oh well... I will certainly buy another Turbo Roaster! 

Expanding Your Pool Potential

photo credit: photosbyflick via photopin cc

Ever wanted to learn how to play pool? This handy piece of technology actually helps show and thereby teach you all the numerous angles and trajectories needed in order to make the perfect shot at the pool table! Not only do you get to play the game but you can show others how you made the shot too!

There was a scene on Star Trek once (I believe) where Spock had managed to send every ball to their pockets all in one shot- because he knew the geometry and the angles needed. I've always wondered if this was actually possible!

Post by Willy Foo - Photographer, Marketer, Technopreneur.

Wrapping Oddly Shaped Presents And Expanding Your Mind

photo credit: Randy Auschrat via photopin cc

You are on your own if you try to wrap a guinea pig!

What better way to exercise your brain and increase your own human potential than to learn some new origami this holiday season! I know how to make an origami frog, which comes in handy when trying to entertain your little kiddos, but this is really useful! Want to wrap that really odd shaped present?

Like, maybe you are that super cool parent that got their kid a model Millennium Falcon for Christmas! (yeah, we know you really bought it so you could play with it too!)

 Look what I found on! The Meredith Vieira Show  This is an awesome way to solve this problem!

Post by The Meredith Vieira Show.

Book Drive! Books Needed!

Hey everyone! I've got some exciting news to share with you today! PDMI Publishing LLC has just opened their very own bookstore in Albertville Alabama. They are the only bookstore in town and the only bookstore in a 30 mile radius! Now... for the news YOU will like! They are looking for donations of NEW and Gently used books... Do you have a bookshelf full of books you'd like to unload? You'll need more space to put all of your brand new books from Christmas after all!

Are you an author wanting to expand your reach and wouldn't mind donating a book to help start up this independent bookstore?

Please send your donated books to:

 PDMI Publishing, LLC
7032 Hwy 431
Albertville Alabama 35950

Reviewing Jasmines Got Talent

Book Description:

Jasmine the miniature-schnauzer returns in another dreamy adventure! In this one, she's going to show off her talent and maybe win a prize! Join her as she takes the stage in third Jasmine Dreams book.

***** 5 Stars! Perfectly Delightful! *****

I give Jasmine's Got Talent 5 stars for quality, entertainment, and adorable illustrations!
Jasmine's Got Talent is a charming and delightful story written for young children by author Maria Rochelle. This book features awesome 'squeal worthy' illustrations by illustrator Jo Linsdell. My favorite of the characters was the cat, Diamond! Jasmine will surely inspire your little ones to want to be the star of the show too!



Find out more here!

Kindle http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PO3Y3JM

Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23593299-jasmine-s-got-talent

Author website: http://writermariarochelle.blogspot.com

Illustrator website: http://www.JoLinsdell.com

Rounding Up 150 Children With Math

Children chart

Who's up for another fan extra?
I'm working on a sequel to The Alien Mind, but in order to do so I needed to back track some math to try to figure out how many kids are on the scene, how many are needing to be found, and which ones are available to be rounded up from other scenes. This got so complicated I needed two sheets of notes and three tally mark charts; talk about some writer problems! It was so confusing pulling this all together that I thought you all might enjoy a bit of a peek!


In The Alien Mind an alien group called the Aruk kidnap 150 children originally. During the original captivity and before the Aunantet rescue the children a girl is killed during when her and Rivi are trying to escape, leaving 149 children (including Rivi). At the beginning of the book we find that these 149 children are now being raised by the Aunantet. (You can find out more about the book as well as some fan extras here!)

When Aun is attacked the Children are sent off to safety in 10 ships each with a 20 person capacity. 50 Aunantet join them.

 Because Rivi and Ankh stay behind on Aun to make sure the children's ships get off the planet safely  that leaves 148 children to be divided among the 10 ships with two seats empty.

8 of the ships  are filled with 15 Kids and 5 Aunantet

2 of the ships are filled with 14 kids and 5 Aunantet

One of the ships of 14 kids and 5 Aunantet ends up destroyed (any more information here would be a *spoiler*) 

                           

 Which leaves 127 kids and 45 Aunantet

Later the book says the children and Aunantet decide to split up into 45 smaller groups to better evade the Aruk.

20 of those groups are found and Rivi  is put in charge of relocating 15 of those groups- 30 children of which decide to join some of Earth's new planetary colonies. Rivi then takes 15 of the youngest to the mars colony. However the book never really states how many kids (exactly) are found and how many decide to stay on Aun . (Which is important to me if they are going to be in the second book.)

It does say 75 of the kids are left to be found.

So in order to get a better picture... I ended up breaking out the old pen and paper and drew out the above chart. Separated evenly into 45 groups you get:

12 of the groups have 3 kids to 1 Aunantet
8 of the groups have 2 kids to 1 Aunantet

So working backwards... if you take the 75 kids out of the picture first and leave the 20 groups that end up found you get 52 kids. Rivi is put in charge of relocating 15 of those groups (so 42 kids out of the 52) and we are also told that 30 of her children decide to go to the other colonies. I'm assuming here that the Aunantet took charge of relocating most of the youngest ones thereby deciding to send them to Mars. So with 30 of Rivi's group gone to the other colonies that leaves 5 that were Rivi's (out of those youngest 15) that go to mars and 7 of Rivi's end up staying on Aun!

So... what trouble can I get these children into now?
If you'd like to see me finish this second book so you can find out what happens next, comment in the blog comments with #finishthatstory !

Have any questions? You can ask those in the comments too ;)

Rivi Sets Up Her First Christmas Tree- Short Story.

V.L. Jennings' Christmas Tree Angel

Well, it took some doing but I finally got Rivi all untangled from the Christmas light disaster. I rolled the lights up neatly around a piece of cardboard, thanks to the idea sent to us by Honi Drown, and went to fetch a chair from the kitchen so I could hang them.

"V.L. do you want me to put your tree together while you are climbing over that mountain of junk?" Rivi called from the living room.

I groaned inwardly, my dining room is stuffed with the contents from our old house's shed and it is begging to be emptied. I'd already missed Thanksgiving dinner with my in-laws because we didn't have room for everyone, and I felt terrible! I resolved then to get the new shed cleaned out and to make room for all this stuff before Christmas.

"Sure Rivi, don't bother with connecting the lights though, I'll do that when I put the angel on top."

I made my way over the mountain of shed stuff with my folding chairs and entered the living room to find Rivi levitating the middle section of the tree very carefully over the lower section. She also managed to hold all the branches into their folded position so she could set the section pole down into the pole from the first section without the branches blocking her view. The third and final part of the tree went up just as easily.

Rivi made a few motions with her hands then held them wide and I watched in amazement as the whole tree unfolded itself and the branches reached out gracefully! She'd managed to fluff the whole tree in mere seconds!

"Ok, that was awesome! Fluffing the tree alone would have taken me a bit over an hour or so!" I exclaimed.

"That's what its called! Fluffing!" Rivi laughed. "Now what do we do?"

"I'll climb up there and connect the angel and all the light strands together. Now where's that angel box?" I said.

"Here you go," Rivi answered passing the angel box over to me.

For those of you who haven't heard about my angel, she was passed down to me from my parents. For years she sat neglected on the mantel (I say neglected, but only because I really wanted to see her on the tree). When they sent her to me she was in need of a good washing and my grandmother recommended vinegar which did the trick in no time! She looks white and new once more! Now, every year I wrap her inside a plastic trash bag and then place her carefully in her own box to keep the moths from infesting her and the dust from yellowing her again. Pulling her out of her plastic bag is always a bitter sweet moment for me. I sat there for a moment remembering Christmases gone past before I reached up to put the angel on the tree.

Rivi noticed the reminiscing vibe and quietly set to work finding space on the shelf across my living room for the various snowmen I seem to have accumulated somehow. I had just found the last light connection in the tree and caused the whole tree to light up when my three year old squealed in delight over the sight. I laughed.

"Just wait till you see what it looks like decorated!" I said to my son before looking over to see what Rivi was doing over at my bookshelf.

"Wow, there's more? I thought the tree looks nice as it is." Rivi said moving to block my view of what she was working on.

"Just wait! You'll see!" I answered.

Just then we heard a knock at the door. My cats hurried over to entangle themselves around my feet as I tried to let our new visitor in. 

"Daddy's home?" My youngest called out.

"No, shouldn't be." I answered.

Feeling suddenly shy he hid behind Rivi's skirt. Rivi picked him up and tickled him instead.

I laughed at their antics but gasped as I opened the door to find none other than Laurie Kingston on my doorstep!

***

Question for you all... should Laurie be afraid of cats or would she like cats? (The thought goes through my mind every time I have a new visitor at the door simply because I have had some visitors freak out pretty badly.) Answer in blog comments section please :)

Also... if you would be interested in reading a sequel to The Alien Mind , please comment write #finishthatstory in the blog comments... I'm trying to decide whether I should give this up and try something new or continue writing the second book ;) 

***

Find The Alien Mind on Amazon!

Did you like this post? If so you might enjoy my book!

For adults and teens alike, it is truly a science fiction adventure for the whole family!

If you'd prefer an autographed copy straight from the author you can buy one here as well!
Autographed Copy:$13.00 + Shipping