Turkey Day

When I was an intern at ECHO, a friend shared with us how she had a list of things she wanted to do before she was 30. And one of those things was to cook a turkey. I thought that was a swell idea, so I decided to set a similar goal. Another goal of mine is to do less procrastinating, so in order to kill 2 birds with one stone, I cooked a turkey for Thanksgiving, one FULL year before that big birthday milestone. This was a big deal to me since I 1)don't have a lot of confidence in my cooking abilities 2)H-A-T-E touching/cleaning/cooking/eating raw meat and 3)would be feeding a lot of people with this bird. So in order to try to avoid common pitfalls, I chatted with everyone who may have cooked a turkey in their life to learn from their experiences in the weeks leading up to the big day. Some of the common responses included:
* be sure to take the bag of guts out of the turkey before cooking it
* burning it may not look pretty, but will seal the moisture in
* you can never use too much butter

What people didn't tell me was how long it takes a frozen turkey to defrost...5 hours/pound, if you didn't know...that's a long time for a 17lb turkey! Also, the heavy wire that's wrapped around the legs doesn't need to come off before roasting it. And let me tell you, it won't come off short of heavy-duty wire cutters (which I couldn't find laying around anywhere). So I had planned to stuff some herbs, apples, onions and veggies in the cavity, but the cavity was a lot smaller than I imagined it to be. Nevertheless, I rammed as much colorful stuff in there as I could.
My roommates were there for moral support, and we all made multiple calls to our moms for instructions on anything from pie crusts to oven temperatures to how much stuffing it takes to feed 16 people.

The meal turned out gloriously, and we did feed 16 people.