Thanksgiving Post – A Recap AKA How to Not Cook a Turkey

As I told you, The Hubs and I bought this super-fancy infrared turkey fryer to cook a big 20lb bird for Thanksgiving. Long story short, it’s an awfully good thing that my mom cooked a turkey too, because the whole turkey fryer thing was a bit of a debacle. Here is a nice little story in pictures that will tell you all about it.

cleaning out the cavity
cleaning out the cavity

Touching raw meat is seriously creepy, and to prepare a store-bought turkey you have to clean the whole thing out…which means handling it.  Running the water up into the “cavity” of the bird was a little traumatic for me.  Probably even more traumatic for the boidy.

To make the boidy taste good, you have to use the spices
To make the boidy taste good, you have to use the spices
rubbed and spiced up...and still seriously creepy
rubbed and spiced up...and still seriously creepy
really?
really?
tg6
mostly assembled pieces...sha.
other pieces that are not much assembled
other pieces that are not much assembled
checking back with the instructions
checking back with the instructions
tg9
lucky I had help! Turkey cooker is assembled!

turkey in the cooker.  but that's not the end of the story...
turkey in the cooker. but that's not the end of the story...

There are no “after” pictures and I’ll tell you why.  The turkey took FOREVER to cook.  By the time dinner was over it was pitch black outside.  So dark, in fact, that we couldn’t read the meat thermometer while it was still stuck into the turkey.  So, we pulled out the thermometer and RAN over to the light to see if it was where it was supposed to be.  It was one degree off.  So, we picked up the turkey fryer, placed it into the bed of Hubs’s truck, carried it into the house, and then attempted to get the thing out of the inner cage.

Or, I should say, I attempted to get the thing out.  The little wings and legs were sticking out all willy nilly and I darn near sent the thing sliding across the room a few times.  I finally got it carved and onto a plate.

So then what happened?  How did it taste?  Good questions, all.  Nobody would eat it.  Because the meat thermometer had a dubious reading, and because the turkey rode open-aired in the back of the truck nobody would touch it.  I tasted a bit, and it was good, but it was a total waste of a 20 lb turkey.  So sad, I know.  It does help that the turkey was a gift.

At one point during the whole ordeal I was upset and ranting at The Hubs and accidentally pronounced “turkey” as “tourkey.”  That has been the takeaway from the experience.  I don’t think The Hubs has pronounced “turkey” regularly since then.

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I Have No Excuse – Also, My Opinion on That “Kid Stuck Behind The Couch” Video

I have no excuse as to why it has been so long since I’ve updated my poor, neglected blog.  Maybe it was the 20-plus page papers I had to write to finish out my first semester of graduate school.  Maybe it is the entire month’s worth of work that I neglected while I was writing said papers.  Maybe it’s because I have felt VERY uninteresting lately and haven’t wanted to bore you.

Obviously I have gotten over the last one.

As a writer, I prowl around the internet looking for interesting things to write about.  Aol is a surprisingly great source for some of the blogs I write for, as well as some entertaining nonsense that amuses me.  I ran across this opinion piece and figured you shouldn’t be deprived of MY opinion on the subject.

So there’s been this video zinging around the internet of a little kid who is stuck behind the family couch.  This article that I linked to above denounces the parents in the video for recording their kid’s discomfort for a few minutes before getting him out from behind the couch.  If that’s not bad enough, between the crazy amount of spam comments on the post, there are people sniping back and forth about how this is “child abuse” and one person even shares their personal tragedy of their parents taking a picture of them when they had bad poison ivy.  Others talk about how “real” fear involves the child being beaten, and that people really need to find a better way to spend their time than denouncing some parents who want to share a cute family moment with the entire world-wide internet.

Here is the video.  See for yourself.

I realize that I promised to share MY opinion on the subject – something well within my rights since this is, after all, my blog.  The problem is that people are so lame and stupid that it practically takes all the fight out of me.  It makes me want to throw up my hands and burrow down into the couch cushions.  Do I think it’s OK for people to put their personal family videos on the internet?  Yeah.  That’s kind of their prerogative.  Do I think that they have a right to put videos of their kids on the internet?  Again, that is their prerogative, as long as it is wholesome and all that.  Some of my favorite stuff on the internet involves cute kids saying cute things or cute cats with stupid captions.  In that way I am like 90% of the internet population.

So, sorry about me.  I don’t think the kid in the video above is in real distress.  I don’t think he’ll be traumatized by this event, nor do I think that his parents are bad parents for pausing to record a funny moment with their kid and to teach him to tell the truth when he gets into a sticky situation.

That’s what I think, Folks.  What do you think?

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What a World – I Heart Margaret Hamilton

photo by Loren Javier
photo by Loren Javier

On the way to school yesterday I heard that Wicked is coming to the Landmark. I’ve never seen the show, but I read the book (and all his other ones except the newest one) and liked them.

So, since I heard that radio commercial yesterday, I dreamed about Margaret Hamilton all night last night. I was running a bit of a temperature, so I basically dreamed the whole book Wicked with Margaret Hamilton as Elphaba. There wasn’t any singing in my dream, except for the occasional background music of “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen.

This is a test shot I found on YouTube. Margaret Hamilton is testing out facial expressions in the green makeup to make sure they show up on film. She gets tickled at herself, breaking into a lovely smile at the end. This is why I love the YouTubes.

Good times.

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