Whew! I survived yet another family-filled holiday. And my family survived my cooking. The whole Thanksgiving four-day event began with me making my best effort to poison my family. I bought a 20-lb. bird. Placed said bird in the fridge Monday morning to thaw. On Wednesday morning, said bird was still pretty darned frozen. So, I fell back on the tried-and-true thawing method recommended by Ladies Home Journal and the ultimate turkey guru, butterball.com. I placed the turkey in my bathtub, filled with cold water. Might I add here that, if you've never thawed a turkey this way, it's pretty ridiculous looking. I offered the boys $5 if they would put on their swim suits, sit in the tub with the turkey and let me take their picture, but they both declined. Harumph. I left the turkey to thaw thusly, after carefully calculating thawing time per pound. Add the pounds, subtract the 7, carry the nine .... um .... ten p.m.!The first thing I noticed when I got up on Thursday morning and stumbled to the bathroom was, yes, my turkey STILL swimming around in my tub. Crapola! Well, maybe it stayed cold enough? When I picked it up, it made a horrible sloshing noise. No, not water sloshing. This sloshing was coming from inside the sealed packaging. It sounded as if the turkey itself had started to liquefy. Well, that can't be good!
Quickly called the grocery store and determined that they do, in fact, have thawed turkeys ready and waiting. Yay! (Obviously, I'm not the only one that's ever needed a last-minute turkey.) Sent Steve running off to the store and started the other preparations. Family began arriving in the afternoon and we were having a fine visit. Time to check the turkey. Leg temperature read 170-degrees. Thanksgiving law says to took it to 180-degrees. Dotti, who was eagerly awaiting the oven to cook her sweet potato casserole, assured me this would be fine. Set the turkey aside to let it "set". I'm told they'll continue to cook so I assumed it would be okay. About half an hour later, Steve began to carve, checking the meat and it all appeared to be cooked well. But what's this? Its little plug hasn't popped. Ut-oh. But look! The meat looks done! That was, until he got down into the middle. I just don't think that turkey meat is supposed to be pink. *sigh* So we carved around the edges of this stupid bird and put the middle bits back into the oven.
I'm happy to report that no one died.
Oh, but this wasn't the end of the holiday! Had company for a while on Friday and then started getting things ready for our next foray into family festivities. Spent the weekend with the Russells. Their turkey was completely done, which was good. Everyone played nicely together, which was good. PSIL behaved almost normally, which was great! (Although that left me without my normal post-PSIL visit blogging fuel.) The pride of survival there comes from having endured 87.5 hours of football in two days (I'm not sure what it is but the laws of TV physics cease to exist at mom-in-law's house, at least as relates to sports viewing), being "cosy" with 12 people, one of which was a nearly one year-old, in one small room for an entire weekend and not having my own coffee/bed/internet. But we made it.
I also survived turning 44 yesterday. Except that I've decided I'm going to write it as .44. As in caliber. As in magnum. Just sounds better somehow. Lane thinks I'm an idiot.
