Day: November 27, 2014

Smoked Turkey Thanksgiving Feast

Smoked Turkey Thanksgiving Feast

Today’s Thanksgiving feast was a centered around a delicious smoked turkey by Chef Chris. The shrimp platter in the foreground was prepared by Chef Miranda who also baked what might have been the best pumpkin pie we have ever had.

Other desserts were a homemade apple pie by Mrs. Chef Bill Sr. along with a chocolate roll and lemon bars also prepared by Mrs. Chef Bill Sr.

The wine was a homemade Merlot.

And we must not forget to include the pierogies and kielbasa acquired from the Polish bakery in Booths Corner. Thank you Catherine.

And of course, Chef Bill Sr.’s  fruit salad with winter watermelon and cantaloupe, purchased from Gentile’s Market in Newtown Square.

Smoked Turkey Thanksgiving Feast

NFL Playoff Probability

The Eagles play the Dallas Cowboys at 4:30 this afternoon. Both teams have 8-3 records.

Since 2002 when the NFL expanded to 32 teams, six of the 144 playoff contestants reached the post season with but eight wins. As there have been  47 teams that finished the year 8-8 or 8-7-1 — that would be you Green Bay — the Birds would have about a 13 percent chance of making the playoffs if they don’t win another game.

If they just win another game that increases their chances to 42 percent as 16 of the 38 teams that wound up with nine regular season wins went to the playoffs in the last 11 years.

If they win 10 they have a 84 percent chance of making it  since 37 of 44 such teams did since the expansion.

It they win 11 it goes up to just under 97 percent chance. Only the 2008 New England Patriots, of the thirty 11-win teams failed to make the playoffs.

Every team with 12, 13, 14 or 15 wins made the playoffs as did obviously the regular-season undefeated 2007 New England Patriots.

The 2010 Seattle Seahawks made the post season with a 7-9 record. One could argue that that means there is a 2 percent chance of a seven-win team making it — there have been 39 seven-game winners since 2002– but as Seattle was the only  team in the league’s 93-year-history to reach the post-season with a losing record, we will suggest it is much less.

The NFL went to a 16-game schedule in 1978. Five years later, it expanded from 28 to 30 teams then to 31 in 1999 before reaching its present status.

It began having a 12 team playoff in 1990.

NFL Playoff Probability

NFL Playoff Probability

Happy Thanksgiving 2014

Happy Thanksgiving 2014

The poem below, Landing Of The Pilgrim Fathers, was written by Felicia Hemans, an Englishwoman who lived from 1793 to 1835. Happy Thanksgiving 2014. 

Landing Of The Pilgrim Fathers

The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky
Their giant branches tossed;

And the heavy night hung dark,
The hills and waters o’er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.

Not as the conqueror comes,
They, the true-hearted came;
Not with the roll of the stirring drums,
And the trumpet that sings of fame;

Not as the flying come,
In silence and in fear;
They shook the depths of the desert gloom
With their hymns of lofty cheer.

Amidst the storm they sang,
And the stars heard, and the sea;
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
To the anthem of the free.

The ocean eagle soared
From his nest by the white wave’s foam;
And the rocking pines of the forest roared–
This was their welcome home.

There were men with hoary hair
Amidst the pilgrim band:
Why had they come to wither there,
Away from their childhood’s land?

There was woman’s fearless eye,
Lit by her deep love’s truth;
There was manhood’s brow, serenely high,
And the fiery heart of youth.

What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine?
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?
They sought a faith’s pure shrine!

Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They have left unstained what there they found —
Freedom to worship God.

Happy Thanksgiving 2014