Thanksgiving in Retrospect....

I suspect there were others in the world who were stressed out on Thanksgiving...well... I am sure I wasn't alone. I don't know what came over me--I really started out the whole holiday in a tizzy. And honestly, it really began days before...when I realized that I was truly in charge of making the main-dish-- The Ultimate Dish of Thanksgiving--the TURKEY. Usually my mom does this. But in some bout of insanity I agreed to take it on. I consider myself an able cook, so I figured--heck, it can't be THAT hard. There was some humble-pie coming my way fast. My first stress--I started defrosting it three days too late (it was 20 lbs!!!). The defrosting of a humongous ice-encrusted bird is a huge undertaking and not for the faint of heart. I took it out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator on Monday...night. Oops. Then on Tuesday night, I realized it had not defrosted at ALL! So, I broke all the defrosting rules (per my mom's advice) and wrapped the dang bird (pardon my language--haha) in a large bath towel and put him in a dry bathtub. By Wednesday night I was getting a bit nervous...it was still frozen as solid as the day I got it. And, to make matters more exciting, both my children had been sick with some sort of flu or cold or something all week...and I was catching it and felt awful! I toyed with the idea of cooking the turkey on a low heat overnight (not too low, people--I didn't feel like giving people botulism or salmonella or whatever you can get from luke-warm festering turkey--ewwww). But, after like a million phone calls to my mom I decided to let it sit overnight in the tub and just see what happened in the morning. By 5:30 the next morning, I felt like I had slept with one eye open and had been grinding my teeth all night. The turkey finally was starting to defrost--YAY--I could feel like 1/4th an inch of non-frozen exterior. BUT, time was not on my side and it was time to put'er in the oven. For the sake of not boring you all to death, I seasoned the heck out of that turkey, stuck it in the oven and about 7 hours later, after a few moments of freaking out that it would never cook (and one moment of thinking my oven was burning down because smoke was coming out at such a steady pace I couldn't figure out what was wrong--I realized my mom had put masking tape on the bottom of the roaster pan and it was melting into disgusting plastic smoke fumes!), and then finally in a TRUE THANKSGIVING MIRACLE: The Turkey Was Cooked. Oh, and actually, I wasn't the one to discover the miracle--I actually gave up after the seven hours, drove it to my sister's house where everyone was ready to eat, and truly thought I was bringing a raw Turkey. But, my mom took one look at it and said--"This Turkey's practically DONE!!" and cooked it a few minutes longer and VOILA! We had a scrumptious Turkey dinner--one of which many people said was their best EVER! And so, the moral of the story is: DON'T FREAK OUT!!! It'll PROBABLY (probably being a key word) WORK OUT! Uh oh, Everett's crying--pictures later....