The Practice Bird

This year I have volunteered myself to make the Thanksgiving turkey.  I've been pretty nervous about screwing up the main entree at our turkey day feast, so I elected to make a "practice" turkey.  Some friends of ours had an extra turkey laying around, so they graciously supplied it for us.  As it turns out, our little practice run weighed TWENTY-TWO POUNDS.  :)  I took advice from my Mom, Pam, and this website.  Amazingly, the bird turned out great.  I learned a lot!

1. When you clean out a turkey, look twice -- they frequently pack those things into any hole they can find.
2. Figure out how long you'll need to cook your turkey and then count backwards to your start time.  I made the mistake of just putting it in the oven when it was convenient for me, which resulted in me waking up at 4 a.m., 5 a.m., and 6 a.m. to check the turkey breast temperature.  Whoops.
3. The more butter, the mo' better.
4. It takes longer than you think to carve the meat off of the bird.  And it pretty much can't be done with an 18-month-old begging to be in your lap.

For fun, we had a trial Thanksgiving dinner tonight.  I made gravy from the turkey drippings and it turned out pretty good.  Ledger ate his weight in mashed potatoes.  Chris pretty much paid me the best compliment I've ever gotten on my cooking -- he said that it tastes like his usual Thanksgiving dinner.  WOOHOO!!  That's exactly what I was going for.

As I was prepping my first turkey dinner, it started snowing HUGE, beautiful, wet flakes.  The first snow of the season.  It didn't stick, but it was pretty.

If you've made it this far through the post, I'll reward you with a few photos of my favorite kid.