Are you ready for a whole lot of turkey talk? I ordered two 13 lb turkeys a couple weeks ago from Auchan, a big, French mega-grocery store. My friend, Mandy, and I were slated to cook them for our Thanksgiving gathering of seven or eight American families. I had miscalculated the number of people coming and, panicking, decided to go out and hunt down a couple more turkeys just to be safe. Luckily I found a few smaller ones and my neighborhood grocery store, Cora. It was indeed a Thanksgiving miracle because I have not seen them there before. The big worry the entire time leading up to Thanksgiving, though, was this: "Would even one 13 lb turkey fit in my oven?" Since we now had four turkeys, I knew there would be some serious squishing. I felt like an idiot all day! Next year I will just get the 20 pounder! Here's a 13 lb turkey and a 6 lb turkey wondering how they got put together in this much-too-small roasting pan.
The show must go on! I put the two turkeys into the brine in my cooler and placed them on the porch. A fridge is 40 degrees F and the outdoors were 47 F and eventually 41 F all night. Since the brine included ice cubes, I felt fine about this. Because they for dang sure would not even come close to fitting in my tiny fridge. I was trying to find a home in which to cook the third turkey, but was running out of time so I just shoved it into the brine bath with the others, made more brine, and borrowed my other friend's giant crock pot. Fauxtisserie turkey for bird #3!
At 6 am, this turkey went into the pot.
At 7 am, these turkeys went for a trot! Har har. Adam and I got a sitter and ran 6 miles through beautiful Luxembourg Ville with these fine ladies, Becky and Megan. It was the perfect start to a day of stuffing our pie holes.
At 9:30 am, these two turkeys were giving us a run for our money. Adam and I each tried a variety of techniques to even get these ones to FIT inside the infuriatingly small oven. The winning position was on a cookie sheet with one turkey turned on its side.
Three hours in, there was not much roasting happening. Again: PANIC! I ripped off the foil from the top and cranked up the oven to 400 F. I Googled all sorts of things and ended up scooping some of the vegis out of the cavity so it'd cook faster. This involved much more manhandling of hot meat than I was interested in, but I didn't have a choice. I walked speedily to Cora to buy a digital meat thermometer because this was getting into dire situation territory. The meat thermometer I always have is that sketchy compass dial thing? WORTHLESS. We only had a couple hours left until meal time, and we needed to know a lot more about our meat than just "does this look done." Upon tearing apart the packaging, I handed it over to Adam to check the meat and figure out how to turn the Celsius measurement on the thermometer over to the Fahrenheit measurement I had written down for both the breast and thigh meat. What did people ever do before Google at Thanksgiving? I'll tell you what they did. They lived in America, where turkeys come with bags and built-in thermometers. Those damn American geniuses!
They did all eventually register "done." In fact, they all registered "overdone." Better than raw, I say! We got to work carving with our dull knives, and by the time we were finished, the entire dining table looked like a crime scene.
And voila!
My other contributions: a French silk pie and ginger/garlic green beans.
The meal was a success. Food from the homeland = the ultimate comfort. I was in heaven.
Here are Becky and Nate and Megan.
Matt, Brother Anderson (shoot, he's new and I can't remember his name), and his wife, Jennifer.
Mandy and Taylor and Megan.
Adam and Wendy.
Me and my babe.
Megan, Matt and Matt. (Yes, we now have two Megan and Matt couples.)
The kids ate next!
The original turkeys:
God bless Megan and Matt for hosting 33 people in their house! At one point most of the kids were sitting on their bed upstairs watching Finding Dory. It takes really nice friends to let your kids sit on their bed. It was such a perfect day, we didn't want to leave.
But we had to get back to our crime scene ... and figure out what to do with a whole schload of leftover turkey.
