Crispy spring rolls, egg rolls or imperial rolls, whatever you call them, it's cha gio in Vietnamese. My mom's cha gio was one of my favorite things to eat growing up. Nothing compares to my mom's crispy spring rolls. I know I say that about all of her cooking, but I really mean it. When I was younger and attended a lot of Viet gatherings and parties, I would always leave thinking my mom's cooking was better.

Cha gio comes in many different sizes and can be made with spring roll wrappers or rice paper. Traditionally, rice paper is used in Vietnam, but my mom has been using spring roll wrappers for as long as I can remember, so I'm partial to them. I grew up on pork and shrimp cha gio, but a few years ago, my dad became a pescetarian. So last month when I visited my parents, my mom made shrimp and crab rolls.

Another Thanksgiving, another feast in San Francisco. All of us SNDsters are transplants from the East coast or Midwest and we avoid traveling during Thanksgiving. Instead, we celebrate Turkey Day by hanging out and cooking at Jane and Mark's place. It's typically an eclectic pot luck with friends who also don't have family in the Bay Area.

This year there were 14 of us and the food was more traditional and less of an East meets West affair. Dinner consisted of...

Savory Dishes

• Deep-Fried Turkey - brined, dry rubbed and fried (Garry/Chuck)
• Gravy - made from pan drippings and turkey stock from a roasted turkey wing (Jane/Chuck)
• Uncooked Cranberry and Orange Relish - chopped raw cranberries and oranges (Stacy)
• Spicy Artichoke Dip - jalapeno, cream cheese, sour cream, mayonnaise and other heart clogging ingredients (Stacy)
• Mashed Potatoes and Parsnips - potatoes, parsnips and chives mashed using a potato ricer - (Jane)
• Cornbread Stuffing with Sausage - sage, thyme, fresh corn, buttermilk cornbread and hot Italian sausage (Chuck)
• Brussels Sprouts Lardons - brussels sprouts and bacon (Stacy)
• Chinese Sticky Rice - sticky rice, Chinese sausage and BBQ pork, shiitakes, oyster sauce, green onions and cilantro (Hungry Bear)
• Spanish Seafood Salad - shrimp, squid, chorizo, sun-dried tomatoes and butter beans on frisée (Garry)
• Three-Seed Dinner Rolls - poppy seeds, fennel seeds and course sea salt (Karen)

Dessert

• Fruit Salad - cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon, pineapple, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, kiwis, persimmons and mandarin oranges (Hungry Bear)
• Yogurt - fresh homemade (Sukhchander)
• Apple Pie - deep dish pie with pink lady apples (Stacy)
• Pecan Pie - from Bakesale Betty in Oakland (Ajita)
• Pumpkin Pie - from Bakesale Betty (Ajita)
• Chocolate Bouchons - small chocolate brownies (Chuck)

Hungry Bear and I did the majority of our cooking at home. It's more fun cooking together at Jane's place, but it's also more difficult with only one stove top and oven. When we arrived at Jane's, there was a buzz of activity in the kitchen as Stacy, Jane, Garry and Karen were prepping and cooking.

I wrote this article for another blog last year. I thought it would be interesting for anyone thinking about deep-frying a turkey. I made a few minor updates to the article. After this Thanksgiving, I'll post about our turkey day festivities.

Every Thanksgiving, we get together at Jane and Mark's place and cook a big feast. It's usually an East meets West affair, with a combination of traditional turkey day favorites along with a variety of Asian dishes. Over the years, we've had roasted turkeys the conventional way, brined and even a Peking turkey, which is a turkey prepared Peking duck style. Several years ago, we deep-fried a turkey and it was spectacular. Now it's our preferred turkey cooking method.

Most of us are dark meat people and think white meat is dry when roasted in the oven. The white meat of a deep-fried turkey is the juiciest white meat we've ever had, and it's not greasy at all. Even better, you don't have to slave over the oven for a couple of hours. It takes less than 50 minutes (3.5 minutes per pound) to fry a 14 lb turkey. There's no way we would go back to roasting a turkey in the oven again.

If you are apprehensive about deep-frying a turkey, it's most likely due to health concerns and/or the potential fire danger. Prior to having deep-fried turkey, I thought the meat would be on the greasy side, which is not the case at all. From an article previously on Epicurious...

Today, though everyone from Martha to Emeril has gotten in the act, fried turkey is still a foreign concept to many, who think of it as a comically large, batter-fried, dripping-with-grease bird. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. When dropped in a vat of boiling peanut oil, the turkey becomes a crispy amber beacon of juicy deliciousness — to put it in technical terms. "The hot oil has a flash-frying effect on the turkey, which seals the skin and all the moisture in it," says Aricka Westbrooks, owner of Jive Turkey, a fried turkey restaurant and distributor in Brooklyn, New York, of all places. Since the high temperature of the oil seals the skin, the result is moist, juicy meat with what Westbrooks describes as a velvety texture.

The high temperature keeps it from absorbing much oil — some studies claim a whole turkey absorbs less than a tablespoon. The key is to keep the oil above 340°F. According to the National Turkey Federation, a 5.9-ounce serving of fried turkey prepared with a dry rub has approximately 383 calories and 21 grams of fat. Compare that to roast turkey's 362 calories and 16 grams of fat. (Calories and fat grams of roast turkey vary according to preparation.)