Turkey

How often do people actually cook a giant ass turkey as a meal? Most likely you're thinking Christmas and Thanksgiving which is pretty standard. Now how often do people decide to cook a turkey for the sole purpose of making leftover sandwiches because it was  free and a vegetarian suggested it? On top of that how often do they decide it was a good idea to do so at nine o'clock at night? When it comes to bad ideas, I'm just glad that for a change this one can't be pinned on me. (Although I didn't recognize it as a bad idea at the time, so...)

For the past month me, my younger sister, and her boyfriend have been staying at my grandmother's house in the middle of nowhere with absolutely nobody else were related to being there. Along with being one of the most surreal living arrangements I have ever dealt with, it has led to a lot of absurdities (see A Crazies Free Crazy Christmas). One of the most absurd of these absurdities after the demon cat and flood would be the turkey.

For whatever reason, since we've arrived at Florissant House my younger sister has been suggesting that we cook the giant freaking turkey that was left in the deep freeze. She claimed that this was a suggestion from our parents and while that may be the case at first, I am far more certain that it was more of a devious plot to test both mine and her boyfriend's manliness. I'm quite certain neither of us passed. 

Something I truly should've realized is that when a vegetarian tells you to cook a giant ass turkey, something suspicious is going on. Yesterday when my sister had us pull the turkey out of the deep freeze because it would make for great sandwiches for the drive home, I managed to see her logic. Who the hell doesn't love a left over turkey sandwich? (Vegetarians and vegans are disqualified from answering this question.) So we were pretty gung-ho. 

This evening however is when things got interesting. We spent all day running around and seemed to forget about the fact that a giant ass turkey takes like four hours to cook. So instead of participating in the use of our brains we listened to my sister when she said that we should make it when we get back to the house this evening. Never! And I mean never! Trust a vegetarian advocating for the cooking of a turkey! After dinner with a friend, we get back to the house in the middle of nowhere around 9:00pm and my sister promptly reminds me and her boyfriend that we need to cook the turkey before we leave in the morning. Telling us to get to it since we were the ones eating it, my sister sat back and enjoyed the show.

A very true fact is that we didn't have the slightest idea how the heck you cook a turkey apart from you need a giant roasting pan, which thank the universe we had. That was the easy part. Then there was the next part actually opening the turkey package. It was already leaking slight turkey juices from thawing and we weren't exactly enjoying that part, but when we actually had to start touching the meat we realized quite thoroughly that we are the equivalent of cliche teenage girls.

The funniest parts about this to me is that literally a week ago we had no issue cutting up chicken breast to make dinner, I actually loved dissection days in science classes, and have done far grosser things that dress a freaking turkey (see Balls!).  My sister's boyfriend at least had the excuse that he couldn't do dissections in science class and that this was the grossest thing he'd ever done. Why we didn't enjoy all the leaking juices of the turkey, or the texture of the skin, or the little baggies of chicken giblets, what really got us was the neck that we had to take out from inside the turkey. Like seriously what purpose could there possibly be for leaving that in there? Do people actually use it for something? And if so, gross!

My sister had just been watching this the entire time. I have never seen a vegetarian more entertained in the presence of raw meat. She was enjoying the hell out of our ews and gagging, but when it got time to remove the neck from the turkey she was so far past entertained she was probably on a magical level of ecstatic reserved for people who win highly honorable rewards.

Me and my sister's boyfriend could not bring ourselves to pull the neck out of the turkey. The thought of touching it was making us gag and anytime we got close there was some dry heaving. Finally when my younger vegetarian sister stuck her hand in there and just pulled it out like it was no big deal we had to actually exit the kitchen to avoid returning that nice dinner we had to the outside world. It was seriously that gross and I am quite sad to admit that the vegetarian out manned the meat eaters ten fold.

Pulling all the gross shit out was the hard part after that it was just figuring out what the hell you actually do to cook the turkey. I'm quite certain it may have been easier to learn the basics of rocket science for us. My sister however had this shit down (which again should have made me really suspicious). Even though we used the power of google to make sure, she pretty much knew what was up with cooking a turkey and it was mostly used to prove her right and forever solidify her bragging rights ensuring neither me or her boyfriend we ever forget the time a vegetarian beat us in the face of a turkey. 

An hour from the turkey prep starting point and about two hours after we'd had a conversation about dead and rotting things and the vegetarian was complaining about feeling nauseous, we actually managed to get it in the oven properly prepared because the vegetarian knew what the hell she was doing. It was ten at night and we had just put a turkey in the oven. Thinking may have been a good idea at the start of this expedition, but for some unexplained reason that I will never understand, we listened to the vegetarian without question. (In short we are dumb.)

The waiting game ensued. My sister went upstairs to assume her pumpkiness because it was about an hour past the official striking of the clock and me and her boyfriend sat up working on packing things and cleaning things in preparation of our departure. Then eventually he joined my sister in pumpkiness I was left waiting for a turkey to cook. Four and a half hours later the turkey is finished and hopefully edible. The saddest part of the entire thing is that it likely will be because the vegetarian knew what the hell she was doing.