What time do people start cooking their Thanksgiving turkeys?
This question has been foremost on my mind because today, Thanksgiving Day, I am supposed to produce a wonderfully-cooked (or, at the very least, edible) roast turkey for a group of five. I volunteered to do the turkey for a simple reason: Hackley offered us free turkeys and those things are expensive! This is only my third Thanksgiving celebration and my first ever roast turkey, so here's to hoping! I've been studying the Food Network; this bird's mentor is
Alton Brown. I've certainly had an easy time starting lunch and dinner conversations recently: all I have to do is mention that I'm planning to cook a turkey
for the first time and everybody over the age of 22 (which is pretty much all the faculty and staff at the school at which I work) jumps alive, whether they've cooked a turkey or not. One of the liveliest debates revolved around what to do if the turkeys that the school gave out (on Tuesday afternoon) were frozen solid, as they have been in past years. One suggestion had me taking a bow and arrow and hunting for wild turkey just off the Saw Mill River Parkway. I didn't realize that a frozen turkey could take days to thaw out! Luckily for me, they turned out to be fresh!
Of course, making the bird wasn't enough challenge for me: I am not only roasting the turkey for the first time, but I am roasting the turkey for a dinner that isn't actually at my house. So I have to travel – by train – with said turkey. Since I didn't want it to get cold and icky after it was cooked, and since I worry about the possibility of bacterial infection, I have decided to travel – by train – with said turkey, in brine. (
In brine being a more elegant way of saying "in a bucket full of ice water, salt, and vegetable stock." See attached photo.) JStant suggests that the MTA may consider it the makings of an incendiary device. While my cooking certainly has the potential to be incendiary, I certainly hope I won't be arrested on Thanksgiving! I'll cover the bucket and hope for the best. Send me good wishes, please!
If I'm to go by recent events, this turkey is a toss-up for going well: I've managed to burn myself twice in the past month and a half, once on an iron and once on a hot water pipe (yes, seriously. Don't ask). I also managed to lose my keys for an hour this morning in my (70% clean!) bedroom. On the other hand, I have managed to finally establish a reasonable rapport with my twelves; my recent evaluation by my department chair went well. I've also managed to catch up with some Jamaican friends in the area, including one who saw me on a train platform and came over, indignant that I had walked past her without noticing. I hadn't seen her since sixth grade and didn't know she was in the area, to be fair, but we had a great conversation and exchanged numbers so that we can meet up again. I suppose that this is one thing I do love about New York: there are always new people to see. It's like Homecoming every week. (And, while I again apologize for falling asleep ridiculously early both nights of Homecoming weekend, all you Amherst folks should take heart -- I stayed up two hours later than my average bedtime, which is quite a feat, considering I fell asleep on a date last Wednesday, both going to and coming back from the restaurant, at 8:40 on a Friday night. Yes, yes. I know. Shockingly, the guy still seems to like me...)
And with that, I sign off -- got to conserve energy for the rest of the day!
Happy Thanksgiving / regular weekday to all. :)
Love,
Katherine
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