Turkey Day!

Around Thanksgiving time turkeys were on sale for pretty cheap (odd, I know), so we bought one and stuck it in our freezer thinking it would be fun to make our own turkey dinner sometime.

Well that time arrived this weekend. And oh, what a disaster that turned out to be.

First of all, if you have never trussed a turkey before (or even baked one period -- as was the case with us) I strongly suggest you don't start with a 21-pound heifer (aka, giant turkey in Melinda language) that you can hardly pick up.

The eHow video clearly stated numerous times that looping it around as demonstrated would hold everything tightly together, let's just say it did not work, despite Corbin's best coaching efforts. "Mom, it says go around where the neck was and over the legs." For some reason he was fascinated with the whole process and watched the instructional video over and over again. After loosing my stuffing a million times, I gave up on the proper two-surgeon-knot truss and simply started tying random appendages together with numerous double knots.

However, before we were even able to tie the darn thing up though, we first had to clean it. If you know me AT ALL... enough said.

Then we decided to prepare a brine turkey (Caleb's family tradition) and soak it in salt water over night. So we filled up the cooler and took our giant, raw turkey and proceeded to ease it into the water. And by we, I clearly mean Caleb alone, as I stood back offering oh so helpful management advice.

Somehow the bird's wing popped out and was caught on the edge of the cooler and since holding the slippery 21-pound beast was starting to get difficult for Caleb, I increased the volume and frequency of my helpful tidbits (because naturally I was not about to touch that thing anymore than necessary).

Apparently my verbal management skills were not enough, because next thing we knew, the dumb turkey slipped and cannonballed into the water, splashing gallons of putrid, nasty water all over (including Caleb's mouth, which was in the processes of telling me to come grab the wing before it was too late).

We nearly died laughing... what on earth possessed us to ever think this was going to be a fun idea? I believe we will continue to be guests at Thanksgiving dinner, contributing our harmless side dish for as long as we can manage.

Despite our complete lack of know-how and inability to follow the easy instructions clearly stated on the world wide web, we did end up with a pretty nice looking, and more importantly, yummy tasting bird -- that was most definitely NOT worth all the effort :)