Gobble, Gobble, Gobble...

I am not the Queen of cooking Turkey, but I do love to eat it. And my Man's Boss gave him one for Thanksgiving which is a really really nice gift. This one is a 20 pounder! Isn't she pretty all wrapped up like this? I can handle this part.

I can even manage to get it thawed out... however between the time it thaws, and the time it goes in the oven... That is the hardest part for me.

No pictures please, my attention must be on figuring out which end they put that baggie stuff, and then carefully with the tongs pulling out that gross useless goober they call the neck, rinsing it down, tweezing out those gross hair things they always miss getting some pulled out, and flopping all that dead weight into a pan.

You've seen the commercial of the lady wrestling with the turkey and it flips and flops, the dead weight nearly taking her down, and eventually slips through her hands onto the floor with a resounding thump... well that is me, minus all the touching of the turkey I guess I have to add.... that would be me with 3 sets of tongs.

This year, I decided to try Pioneer Woman's Recipe and brine her.

I told you no pictures of raw turkey meat... that is not a memory I want to hold on to. But here she is in her brine juice (I made up my own version of spices... hope it works), in a bag, in a bucket, in the cooler. Yea, I have trust issues with 2 and a half gallons of brine juice in a bag with raw turkey meat.

In the process of learning this new recipe, I took pieces of all the advice of everyone I talked to this week about cooking a turkey. Just because of my lack of experience in this area. And a really good tip was to cook the turkey upside down in the oven and all the juices will flow into the white meat and keep it really moist. So after a few flips and flops and running back and forth to the Internet to determine which side was the top and which side was the bottom... I flipped a coin, and I think I got it right. It worked well for me, but this method tends to pull the meat down off the bone more, so if you want to present your turkey on a platter, on the table and carve it up to your guests... this might not be the tip for you. So here she is out of the oven... isn't she a beauty?

After my next least favorite thing... pulling the cooked meat off the bones and making sure there are no "golly wobbles" left on the meat, and precisely separating the white and dark meat so they don't touch (I love my Man, but he is very picky about his meat) we ended up with allot of Turkey. Sometime today when the boys come home from their hunting and football games, we will have a mini feast and be GrateFULL!