(no subject)
Just Close Your Eyes and Think of England
Today's post is a special post. I recognize I won't be posting this week if I don't post today. Because that very special holiday is coming up where you're supposed to think to youself that, no matter where you are, and no matter what you're doing, you should be grateful. With that in mind, I'm not going to opine on this holiday. No hating it, no loving it, no expressing whatever on it. Nope, I'm not here to post about that, not to spread cheer or jeer on any of this. No sir.
Instead I want to post about the dumbest animal in the whole of the kingdom. The one that can drown merely by looking up at the rain with its stupid mouth agape. The one that is famous in psychological experiments for being turned on by the mere presence of a female's neck. Not her body. Just a decapitated head. (I'm sure it's an attractive neck though. With...um... really hot clavicles.) I want to talk about the creature unlucky enough to be a physical embodiment of gratitude this holiday in the most ironic fashion possible.
Dear reader, let's talk turkey.
Yes, let's talk about that symbolic corpse that looks really really good between the jullienned carrots and the big old heap of steaming corn, smack in the middle of the table. While every year in my family we've had at least one of these unfortunately tasty creatures on the table, I let my parents handle the turkey cooking. I calmly peel potatoes, shred carrots, arrange napkins, or just watch hour after hour of quality football programming against my will. I ignored turkey preparation in the past and I hope to in the future.
The only clue I ever had that turkeys arrived in a less neatly carved form was the time the family dog got his head caught on the carcass while he was trying to raid the trash can. The dog was a poodle. The turkey was bigger than he was. And even after shampooing him, he smelt faintly of turkey for a week. It's not nearly as funny as it sounds.
Anyhow, I'd managed to block the dreaded turkey bird out of my consciousness until last year, when these three lovely young women I knew were snowed in one day - and I was snowed in with them - and there, on the 20th floor of a Manhattan high-rise, decided that the time had come to cook the turkey in the freezer.
"Why do you have a turkey in the freezer?"
"Buy enough groceries, they said 'free turkey or ham.' Which would you pick?"
Right.
However, none of us had any idea how to actually roast a stuffed turkey. And it wasn't Thanksgiving when they up and decided to make this bird, so it wasn't like we could call the 1-800-TURKEYS hotline numbers. So we opted for the internet, which never lies. Eventually, we selected from the wide list of choices the classic 'oven-roasting method,' passing over the quicker though less conventional microwaving method.
Although the internet told us that you 'remove the neck' and the 'giblet bag' from the turkey's cavities, that's much too clean-sounding for what amounts to a very thorough search of the private places of the bird for illegal drugs. In my family, the task falls to my father, and each year, he'll walk out of the kitchen with the smell of hand soap postiviely emanating from him, informing us that he just 'finished violating the bird.*' Eventually, one of the three ladies did, in fact, violate the bird, the whole time shouting "I'm not thinking of this as I'm doing it! No no no no oh my GOD this is SO NASTY!"
It's like the first time someone who has no idea what's going on has sex. Like, wait, you're going to put your what where? Ew! And you do what? And you want to do that? In the name of God, why? According to Shoulder Angel, her grandmother's advice to her mother about married life was simply the words: "Just close your eyes and think of England." It's clear to me that someone had something against England if that's what you're going to associate it with. But even armed with these words of wisdom, I don't think it would've helped my brave friend much.
Anyhow, eventually, this brave girl who prepped the bird also got to be the one who stuffed the bird, despite the fact that we hadn't realized what a huge health hazard stuffing birds can be. While she stuffed it I recounted the story to her of the last time I had heard of someone getting bored and deciding to roast a turkey. The poor fellow didn't realize he had to cook the rice for rice stuffing before managing to pack in a whole 3 pound bag of rice. As most people know, rice expands as it gets moist, to two and a half times its regular volume. Since you have to sow the turkeys flaps shut, and bind the legs, something has to give when there's that much pressure inside the turkey.
About two hours into the roasting, a propulsion missile made purely of meat and powered solely by rice shooting out of its rear launched itself out of the oven - if I remember the legend properly purportedly ripping the oven door off its hinges - before detonating in the poor fellow's kitchen.
Did I mention we used bread crumbs and celery? Our turkey stayed still.
The stuffing being the part that my friends were most proud of, we discovered that a large part of the turkey recipe is left out, even on the internet. It doesn't talk about all that time you spend, every ten minutes, poking the bird, trying to figure out if its done, having a drink, wondering if now, is the turkey done. I went home and changed, came back, had another drink, and checked the bird again. "Should I eat it if it's pink?" one of my friends asked. The answer was, we all agreed, probably not.
But eventually, the meal was ready, though the little lifeless bastard roasted for about nine hours instead of the prescribed five, but objective achieved. Instant mashed potatoes, roast turkey, several bottles of wine, and an actual buttload of stuffing. But while we waited for the turkey to cool, it occurred to us that there was far more bird than there was appetite. We hadn't even started and we were already thinking leftovers. What to do with all that bird? The internet was there to save us again, not that I cared as it wasn't my kitchen. I can't really recommend any of these recipes, but I can hardly restrain myself from finding a used turkey right now and making myself some hot carcass soup. Mmm mmm good. Why isn't that Campbell's flavor?
Anyhow, stick a fork in it, we were done. We ate it along with some sacreligious instant gravy, while secretly suspecting we were going to get food poisoning and die, since, well, we'd never done it before and a bird is hard work. Fortunately, we didn't. And we were all very grateful. I was extremely grateful. Very grateful that I never had to do that kind of crap myself. Turkey's are far more effort than they're worth. Which is why you should get a turkey, roast the turkey, and eat your turkey. Lots of it. Because they deserve it.
Stupid birds.
*Actually, the bird gets named every year, as he hates this task so much. I believe last year the bird was called Thaddeus.
originally posted by pressedflat on November 24, 2004