A Girl and This Turkey-The Finale

            Incredibly bleary and with a bit of a white-flag “we’ll get the rest done in the morning,” the husband and I got ready for bed on Christmas Eve. “What do you need me to do for the turkey in the morning? My mom used to get up at the crack of dawn to make the turkey, and I know I’ll wake up before you will,” he kindly offered. I asked him merely to set the bird out to come to room temperature. “As long as I have it in the oven by nine a.m., we’ll be just fine,” I said with all the assurance of someone exhausted who has been shown their deliciously fluffy pillow for the night. And if you are just counting prep and cook time, I was right. Completely right.

            But I was wrong. I was wrong, because I forgot to calculate on the sideshow of errors that inevitably ensued. Now, lest you get anxious, dear reader, I reassure you: Christmas dinner was only twenty minutes later than I thought it would be. The lateness was not even noticed. But the errors are worth the telling. 

            I rose to slather the turkey: Butter, poultry seasoning (eternally useful), pepper, salt, and additional rosemary were my choices. But as I went to take the giblets out of the cavity, there was ice. ICE! I was indignant. I knew I had consulted the Butterball website correctly for the proper refrigeration defrost time. It was like a slap in the face, like I’d been irresponsible or something. I imperiously commanded my husband to get the blue bowl out of the dishwasher; I was going to fill it and the turkey with warm water while I prepped the spices. He pulled out a clean but shallow serving bowl, claiming that he could not find the mixing bowl. I frantically gazed around the kitchen… nothing. Looking again, he pulled out the required bowl. As the water warmed, my hand froze, pulling out frozen ice chunks, giblets, and the neck. GROSS! (I also got the gravy bag out of the other side, Cousin Brenda; thanks!) I begged for a moment of warm water for my hand while he cleaned out a side of the sink (I told you we left some things for morning, right?), I can’t remember the last time any part of me was as cold as that hand drawn from the turkey. Jim reminded me that he likes to keep our fridge very cold, “And you’ve even warmed it some since you moved in!” And then I remembered all the weeks of frozen salad and greens during my newlywed days. I HAD warmed up the temp of the fridge, but it obviously is still very cold, exhibit A: the turkey, exhibit B: the condensation the underside of a container lid that I pulled out today, total ice. 

            At any rate, I was exonerated in my mind from having been ill prepared. An outrageously cold refrigerator means I did defrost according to the directions I was given. 

            As the hot water mixing bowl was asked to do its magic, I blended the spices into the butter. I finished preparing the trimmings I would add for flavor: To celery and carrots, I added onion and sliced apples. A perfect flavor profile! I got the roasting pan ready to go. 

            Drying the turkey, slathering it, stuffing it, and then nestling it on its bed of remaining vegetables and fruit went well. However, as I placed the turkey in the oven, the turkey bag was bumping the top rack, which I had moved to the top possible point, I worried that the bag would burst. With kindness and might, Jim removed the 325-degree top rack to the back porch for a couple of hours until it was needed for the side dishes. By that time, the trimmings were cooked down enough that the turkey did not bump. 

            As I drew the turkey out of the oven, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the butter had browned the skin even though it was in a bag. I resolved to do a more thorough buttering if I use this method or ever cook a whole turkey again. 

            I must now take a break to confide in you. I am basically a three-year-old when it comes to how finicky I am about food. I don’t like to eat meat with bones in it; I prefer never to see a bone. In my soul, I am probably vegetarian. I definitely choose to act like meat is not an animal but rather some kind of exotic root vegetable you can make gravy from. 

            So the turkey rests, sitting ominously on the stove until the fated time has come to pass: time to carve the turk. Neither Jim nor I had ever carved a turkey before. I had watched a video on how to carve a spatchcocked turkey, but it’s different with the backbone still intact. 

            Well. There are no words. For this bone loathing vegetarian-at-heart, it was a macabre dismemberment. I functioned as the (not-too-sharp) brains, and Jim as the brawn as we hacked our way to Christmas dinner. I know at one point we mangled a thigh not only beyond recognition, but also in a way that we never really found it again. I wondered how I would ever be able to eat that bird! I hope that in the end, all I remember is to have the turkey show you where its joints are and then make the cuts at those points, rather than trying pre-feast orthopedic surgery. 

            But here is the great and wonderful joke of it all: I have dreaded making a full turkey my entire life. I only set out on this adventure to give my eldest stepson the validation of having brought a man-sized provision home from his first man-job. And it worked!!! Despite all of the misadventures, all of the freezing and mangling, the turkey was incredibly tender and almost, I say almost, delightfully flavorful! 

            I am so grateful that this turkey turned out well. I am thankful to my kind, patient, and brawny husband (we really showed that thigh, didn’t we???), and I am so grateful to be able to give. To give what effort I can into the life of the man-child who I love so much. 

            And in giving, I received. It’s a great blessing to be useful, to give flavor and nourishment, to give a feast. Merry Christmas to all!

            And God bless us, every one. 

A Girl and This Turkey: Difficult, Fiddly Bird

            My life took a break for some kind of double-punch upper respiratory thing that made me want to die. Blech. It’s Christmas Eve now, I feel I’ve turned a corner, so its time for me to get back to my turkeysicle in the fridge. 

            When I read the recommended Bobby Flay recipe, I adored the flavor profile; parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. But I could see immediately from the amount of broth used in cooking that this is not a recipe compatible with a turkey bag. I’m enough of a foodie that someday I probably will devote a day to basting, but this is not that year. My husband only has one day off work, one shot at actual Christmas, and it won’t do to have all my time, attention, and anxiety inside an oven. 

            How to keep the flavor profile, but not baste? I’ve read dozens of recipes and vacillated between ideas, and here’s the thing: Everyone has their strategy. Everyone gives helpful ideas. This is because turkey is an awful meat! It’s a difficult, fiddly bird that has the propensity to both dry out AND be flavorless. Everyone has their fool-proof method as to how to solve this problem, but the true fools are us, the ones who continue to try to cook this meat year after year. People have struggled with it for generations, and here’s the proof: poultry seasoning! When I went to my cupboard, I realized the answer to parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme is poultry seasoning. Turkey has plagued home chefs for so long that this is just a standard seasoning. 

            So, I have decided to bow to the wisdom of my elders and use butter, salt, pepper, poultry seasoning, carrot, celery, onion, and maybe even an apple for taste. 

            However, in my research, two methods have come to the fore: a turkey bag (I thought over using a paper bag, as friend suggested, but the Reynolds bag was already in the online shopping cart, so there you go). I also have been pondering spatchcocking. 

            Spatchcocking is taking the wishbone and backbone out of a turkey, laying it flat, and roasting. Advantages: It takes less time to cook, and the skin will turn out much more browned and crispy than can ever happen in a bag. Disadvantages: It takes up more room in the oven, obliterating my hope of making Curried Fruit, and let’s face it: I’ve never done a full turkey before. Spatchcocking at this point seems a little too AP, getting above my station, risky. 

            I have until tomorrow morning to keep researching, reconsidering. The amount of thought I have already put into this bird could power a few tiny towns throughout the Christmas break, I’m sure. 

            Until then, I will work on the pies and the sides, plotting my own fool-proof recipe for this unworthy, fiddly bird. 

A Girl and This Turkey: Commitment

I got married for the first time at the ripe old age of forty-one. I make commitments, but slowly, methodically. 

            There’s this turkey. My stepson has brought it. My husband wonders if I will roast it for Christmas dinner. And I want to, I really do have the desire to make it happen. But desire and commitment have nothing to do with each other. Ask my mid-30s self! 

            I polled my teaching colleagues on the playground: Turkey? How hard is it? Easy, they said. You can do this, they said. Use a turkey bag, Katherine said. They make the turkey self-basting. Use Bobby Flay’s recipe, Lori said. It’s amazingly delicious! Turkey is not my favorite thing: it can be bland and the danger of it being dry seems high. Combining the recommended recipe with a turkey bag seems the way to go. 

            Yesterday, I got my Christmas shopping and shipping done. Ready or not, it’s time to make the Christmas menu and shopping list. 

I know nothing about roasting turkey, and I know nothing about THIS turkey. Okay. So, time to get acquainted, to see if I can commit to it. 

I do know that the defrosting and roasting time of a turkey all depend upon how many pounds the turkey is. The packaging the turkey is in gives no clues to the poundage. 

So this morning, I do it. I get out the bathroom scale. I weigh myself. 

Weighing oneself before preparing a holiday dinner seems counterintuitive, if not downright masochistic, right??? Thanksgiving has already happened! I’m in the midst of the fattest season of the year! The indignity. No one tells you in Home Ec in junior high that cooking will involve such debasement, but there it is. 

I weigh myself in order to get to know my turkey better: I know of no other way to find out how much heweighs than to weigh myself and then weigh myself with him. Math will light the way. Subtraction. 

He’s fifteen pounds, my turkey is. I quickly look up defrosting times on the Butterball website: Do I have time for a full refrigerator defrost? YES! From Friday morning to Tuesday will give me the time he needs to thaw. 

I grab the jellyroll pan, place him breast side up on it in the fridge. 

A fifteen-pound defrosting turkey is a serious thing. A poultry iceberg is changing states. There’s no turning back. There’s no time for hemming and hawing anymore. The desire has become commitment. The commitment has been made. 

This turkey will be the centerpiece of our Christmas feast. 

             

A Girl and This Turkey: The Beginning

            One of the many dubious accomplishments of my life thus far is that I have managed to not have to roast an actual turkey. Turkey breast, I can do. I prep it with white wine, garlic, butter, and broth; I cook it in the crock-pot. Tender, flavorful… safe. No bones. No giblets. It works for me!

            On Thanksgiving, my oldest stepson walked through the front door with an honest-to-God full turkey. Frozen. With bones. With giblets (I assume). He got it at his manufacturing job as a Thanksgiving gift. Job well done! 

            About a week ago, while I was still in the throes of getting grade cards finished and entertaining first graders peacefully until break, my husband asked me if I was planning to make this turkey for Christmas. Christmas, of all things! The Super Bowl of dinners, the biggest (or maybe second-biggest) meal of the year. Only Thanksgiving competes, when I have cleverly crabstepped my way out of real turkey for years. 

            Here’s the thing: I’m terrified. I’ve read so much about all the different ways to cook turkey, all the opinions. The brining. The deep frying. The basting. The palette of which spices should be used. One of my favorite seasonal children’s books is Thanksgiving at the Tappletons, which highlights a turkey disaster involving skidding across the floor and into a lightly frozen pond. A Christmas Story, another holiday favorite, ends with a turkey calamity involving joyfully slavering hounds.

            But I dearly love my stepson. As scared as I am, I want this for him. If I can get out of the way of my fear, it will be the first time that his provision has created a festive meal. He’s come a long way lately. He’s growing by leaps and bounds. If he can manage to earn a turkey, I will do this. I will make him The Founder of the Feast this year. 

            And so, I begin. 

Time, Incarnate: A Musing on Food

            This week, I have not cooked as much, nor felt like I had as much time or energy. In this, I realize that part of what I like about cooking is the time it takes and the locationality it requires. 

You can’t cook a good meal while you are driving down Kellogg with your hair on fire to do 10,000 errands. Cooking takes the time it will take. Cooking is a scientific endeavor; cutting foods and heating them in various ways to certain temperatures, carmelization, the blending together of flavors… the science demands the time for the process to occur. 

Cooking also requires so much equipment, SO many different things that it can’t be done on the fly. It has to be done in a certain space, and it helps to have that space be one that is fully stocked with all the equipment needed. Home. 

Cooking requires time and home-ness. 

I love and need time and home-ness. This is part of what cooking gives me. This is part of what I loved so very much about making the mujadara; it took excessive amounts of time to cook that many onions down into a caramelized thing of beauty that just sang. 

I loved the mujadara because of the adventure of trying to cook something new, the comforting blend of sweet and salty flavors, and the process it took to get the onions, lentils, and rice to make their beautiful symphony. 

Cooking is time, incarnate. 

This is part of the heresy of convenience foods. People always complain about fast food and convenience food because of the amount of sodium or lack of vitamins, the sheer amount of fat and sugar that it takes to keep modern American tastebuds coming back for more. And those are all valid criticisms. 

But an even more egregious offense of the modern food industry—just the phrase “food industry” says it—is that it removes us from the scientific time it takes to prepare nourishment, and it removes us from home, or gives us less requisite time there. 

I have not spent enough time at home, cooking, to begin to explore the myriad gifts that I believe are here for me, for anyone who will take the interior journey. But I believe there are gifts to be had. 

As the winter begins, the dark and cold call me to shelter. May I spend this winter taking time in my home, making it my primary locationality, cooking. May I begin to find the gifts of time, incarnate.