I promised I'd give an update on the Thanksgiving turkey and so here goes. I have to say that I did my absolute best to cook this stubborn bird but let's just say it weren't no Butterball!After a crazy mixup about where we could actually cook the turkey, I finally decided to use my school's oven in the cooking room. (Mind you, they never once mentioned the school had an oven the whole time I was ordering my turkey, talking about not having an oven, brainstorming ideas on where to cook it, etc) That would be too easy! But after some help from another coteacher, I got set up at about 3:30 in the afternoon on the Monday night we had our Thanksgiving celebration. I washed, coated in butter, added salt and pepper, stuffed the insides with onion, apples, celery and poured chicken broth, apple juice and water over it and put it in the oven. I was doing just about every substitution I could find to make this all work.
I sat at the computer and caught up on "The Office" (with my boyfriend Dwight Shrute) in between taking the turkey out and basting every half hour or so. The party was supposed to start at 7:00 and I knew we'd be cutting it close but I was determined that we were gonna have turkey on Thanksgiving!
After 1 and a half hours, didn't seem like we were making much headway. I had followed the directions as best as I could, converted the oven temp to celsius and didn't know what the problem was so I prayed and just keep cooking. At the 2 and a half hour point, I only had one hour left to cook, clean up the room and take the turkey in a taxi over to Kayleigh's house. Time was running out! Finally at about the 3 hour and 15 minute mark, I felt like we could be quite sure it was done. I was working without the luxury of a meat thermometer so I just went on instinct alone! It looked right, smelled right and I hoped for the best.
Well, I hadn't planned out very well how I was going to execute my next step. Phase 3, delivery! The turkey was covered in foil, but still extremely hot and I had a lot of equipment to carry as well. All the teachers were already gone for the day but luckily a few students were still milling around. I thankfully ran across a student who is in my top English class and asked her if she could call me a taxi. She was happy to but didn't have her cell phone and as luck would have it, my cell phone minutes had just run out the night before so I couldn't make outgoing calls either. She ran off and tracked down another phone, called me a cab and then helped me carry everything out to the front road near my school. I was very indebted to Lucy at this point!
I got in the cab very carefully and held onto that bird for dear life. Taxi drivers are not well known for their smooth, peaceful rides and this was no exception. As he sped off, I could feel that the turkey juices were precariously close to tipping out the sides and all over the taxi floor. I pulled the foil as close as possible and prayed for the quickest drive ever. Kayleigh happens to live at the top of a giant hill and her school has several speedbumps in the parking lot. Well, we went over the first and I knew I was in serious trouble. The juices had sloshed over the sides and I caught it with my lap, desperate to save the taxi, not knowing how I would explain to him or apologize for making his car smell like poultry. I had him pull over even before we reached her house. I was getting out of there as fast as possible.
Right as I exited the cab, Kayleigh called me cause of course, I was running late at this point but I couldn't set the turkey down and hand the driver money and answer my phone all at the same time. So I missed her call and unloaded my stuff. I still had about a 3 or 4 minute walk to get to her house and really wanted some help to carry everything but of course, I couldn't make any phone calls. I walked with everything as far as I could, arms burning and muscles aching, until I had to set the turkey down in the grass on the side and make 2 trips. When I finally got everything into the house, I was so exhausted and smelled like turkey juices, it took some time to pep back up and get into the swing of the party.
I set a guy to work on carving and helped Kayleigh get the rest of the food on the table. We let him go at it, but despite our best efforts, the turkey was pretty chewy and there actually wasn't that much meat on it. However, everyone was very gracious and so thankful to have turkey at our Thanksgiving feast. We all got a little bit and had plenty of other goods to keep us full and satisfied. It was a great party with about 16 other foreigners and tons of food! I was thankful for many things that night but probably most of all that I never had to even think about another turkey for at least a year! I will not be volunteering for that again anytime soon!
Christmas posts are coming soon! Stay tuned!
