Did you brine your Thanksgiving Turkey?

Many, many thanks to MaVieRose for being so knowledgeable on brining that big bird!!!! We brined ours - a 14 pounder. We put the turkey in a heavy duty XL Ziplock Bag (w/handles), added the brine (water, salt, sugar only), put bag in an ice chest, and put 1 7# bag of ice (still in its bag) on top of the turkey which was breast side down. It stayed in the chest from Tuesday am, the melted ice water poured off and replaced w/ another sack of ice until Thursday am at which time we took out the bird, washed it thoroughly, dried it well and stuck it in the refrigerator until it was time to stuff and cook it. (It was stuffed w/chicken flavored Stove Top to which I added chopped giblets, thyme, butter and part water, part pkgd. chicken broth. The stuffing was put in a "sock" made of a double thickness of Cheese Cloth tied at each end w/all cotton kitchen twine and inserted in the bird and so is then easy to remove for serving.) At 1:00 pm the thing was then put on a Pam sprayed trivet on a 1-1/2" high sided non-stick cookie sheet, breast side down for one hour in my convection oven at 300*. In an hour we turned the bird over, breast side up, put a small amt of melted butter on the exposed portion of the bird, inserted probes from two electronic thermometers. (Available at Walmart) One of the probes were put in the thigh and the thermometer set to alarm at 180* and the second was put into the center of the stuffing set to alarm at 163*. At 4:45 pm both alarms went off simultaneously. It was done! We took it out of the oven, put it on a carving board (available at Linens 'n Things), removed the stuffing bag, then tented the turkey w/regular foil for 40 minutes while we did some other things. The drippings were degreased and added to the other half of the giblets which were cooked in 1 qt. of pkgd. chicken broth (Swanson reduced sodium) w/celery, onion, black pepper and thyme which we had heating in my big crockpot and slightly thickened w/Wondra flour. I first took off the leg & thigh and the wing. After taking the meat off the thigh and putting it on a platter and adding the whole drumstick to the platter, I took off that side of the breast by cutting along the breast bone and down the sides and bottom and sliced that from one end to the other - about 7-8 slices. These slices went on another platter w/the wing - tip cut off- and the other two pieces of wing cut apart. I did the other side of the bird the same way. There were two platters: one for white meat and one for dark. Usually, the dark meat goes first because the white meat is too dry for most people. This time, tho, the 14 people here ate both and there was nothing left but the legs, the 4 pcs of wing and the carcass because I hid them so I would have some leftovers for lunch and the carcass for soup. Everyone marveled at how moist the white meat was and even the dark meat seemed to be moister and how flavorful it was. Surprisingly, there were less drippings than usual and about 1/2 was fat. The bird seemed to retain the juice but the fat melted into the pan. The turkey was acclaimed the best turkey any of them had ever eaten!!
This method is one that I would heartily recommend to everyone - in fact it should be a punishable crime for anyone NOT to brine their turkey. We were able to get some 10 lb. turkeys at $4.00 apiece and plan to brine those and cook them and freeze them for later use, unstuffed but the drippings saved for gravy. There are 7 turkeys in all so we have our hands full!
I have been explicit in all my facts because I documented all this for my further use and I thought that everyone else could benefit from our experience. Christmas is coming so if you didn't have turkey for Thanksgiving........
Again, thank you so much for all your recipes and comments. You have performed an invaluable service, MaVieRose.

Ann