Four cooks and a turkey

For many years we spent Thanksgiving with friends, spending the long weekend cooking, eating, and hanging out with good friends. We all shared in the cooking, even the cleaning. For the most part the menu stayed the same, with a few twists and turns, but Laura, my friend from college always cooked the turkey, always. Neither Todd nor I have ever cooked a turkey.

This year we spent Thanksgiving in Kentucky with Todd's cousin Craig and his wife Meg and their two daughters, Sophie Jane (who turns three today) and Isabel, two months. Craig spent Thursday morning at practice (he coaches women's volleyball at UK) so the cooking was left to Meg, Todd and I, with four kids to semi-watch in between. Come to find out that NONE of us had a clue how to cook a turkey. We called Laura, called Todd's mom, looked in cookbooks and even asked the neighbor. All had differing opinions so we figured what the hell, let's give it a shot.

Todd cleaned the turkey and we lined the pan with carrots, onions and celery (idea from a cookbook) to put the turkey on. We even added leftover bacon from breakfast to the pan, to "enhance the flavor." Yes, we had no idea what we were doing. A little bacon grease couldn't hurt, right? We rubbed the turkey with olive oil, butter and some herbs, stuffed it with homemade stuffing and off we went. The oven was a bit testy and took a while to get going, but after a while the turkey started cooking. We let Mr. Tom the Turkey brown up on top and then covered him up, all along basting him and waiting for the thingie to pop.

Craig comes home from practice and chimes in, offering his meat thermometer from the grill to check Mr. Tom. He scrubs the thermometer and sticks it in the turkey (after a debate on where to stick him). It registers at 140 ish, about 25 degrees lower than it should be. By this time the turkey had been baking for a few hours and we thought the thingie would have popped by now, so the boys decide to give it 30 more minutes and then we'd give it a shot.

So here comes 4:00, the thingie NEVER popped and the turkey comes out of the oven, all ready to go. We were a bit nervous (at least I was) that it would be ok. The boys plunged a knife into Mr. Tom at various points to see if it looked done and after they deemed it done, we got ready to eat.

Drumroll please............................. Mr. Tom was delicious. Moist. Juicy. Tender. Yummy.

Needless to say we were all a bit pleased. Dinner was fabulous, except for Riley's meltdown (she gets a bath at 5:30 and hits the sack at 6:00, we sat down to eat at 5:00- so she was a bit testy). I finished my dinner cold, but it was still yummy.

Kentucky was awesome, the kids all got along, unless they wanted the same toy, then they got physical, but kids will be kids right? We were able to see Craig's girls play their final game and unfortunately they lost, but still made the NCAA tournament (GO CATS!).

All in all it was a great trip. We now know how to cook a turkey.

Until next time...