I Made a Turkey

This was my first Thanksgiving where I cooked the meal. I actually did half the meal, with my neighbor Krista pulling the other half through with flying colors. It was a first for both of us, to be the ones creating the Thanksgiving feast. For a total of five participants to our Misfits Thanksgiving celebration, Krista made twice-baked sweet yams and vegetarian goulash. Guests brought an apple pie, stuffing, and some other snacks. My contribution to the ginormous spread was another homemade apple pie (fresh crust and all), corn on the cob, more stuffing, roasted potatoes, a huge green salad, and...THE TURKEY. Yes, I did it. I made the holy grail of Thanksgiving foods...the mythologized and cannonized Thanksgiving turkey. In my kitchen. With my bare hands. My turkey-cooking hands that will never be the same again, for they have known what it is like to successfully and deliciously master the perfection of the fabled bird.

To be fair, Krista is the one who bought the thing (a 10 lb bird, we thought would be plenty to feed the four or five people expected for dinner) and marinated it in a simple red wine marinade. Around 2:30 today she brought over the now-purple fowl, and I gave him a nice massage with an entire stick of butter, a process that made Krista a little queasy. I had no problem rubbing butter all over the raw turkey, even shoving my bare hands between the skin and the meat to put pats of butter thoughout the bird. And into the oven he went, seasoned with little more than butter, salt, pepper, and the red wine marinade.

Three and a half hours later, and after I added roasting potatoes and stuffing the cavity halfway through the cooking process, we had a perfectly done, tender and juicy turkey that was more incredible than anything Krista and I expected. For two people who have NEVER cooked a turkey before, we ended up with something so spectacular that our guests were seeking seconds and packing Tupperware containers for their lunches tomorrow. It was juicy...it was tender...it was so incredibly awesome that Martha Stewart herself would have wept, with fat tears of joy streaming down her proud face.

And I did it. I scored a 3-pointer at the buzzer. I kicked the game-winning field goal with 5 seconds left in the game. I stole home. I cooked the Thanksgiving Turkey and I did a DAMN fine job of it. The pie wasn't bad either. I'm in such a soporific state right now, I'm going to pass out and leave a keyboard imprint on the side of my face. Ohh, holy tryptophan. I can't believe it. I made the turkey.