061224 14:56 by iDRMRSR

I went over to WalMart and they had these things stacked up against the wall. There were so many of them, and so many people were buying them. Must be like 95% of the whole human race out buying these turkeys.

I got mine home and took the cover off to start to thaw it. I noticed that this turkey I bought was first frozen in 2001, but that it had a seven year shelf life, so I was well within that timeframe. I would have liked to have a new turkey this Xmas, but I guess M$ must have bought the farm back then and still had a lot of them in the warehouse. Whatever, turkey is turkey, and if it's the same as it's been for several years, wtf.

I got a phone call while it was thawing. I came back to the turkey about 15 minutes later and found out that someone had snuck in my kitchen door, removed a drumstick, and stuffed the cavity with Spam. So I took it back to WalMart and luckily the manager agreed to replace it with a new one, and he also sold me a roasting/thawing pan with a deadbolt lock on it and advised me not to leave it out in the open. Fair enough, this is not the best of neighborhoods sometimes.

I got the thing all thawed out, and with the kitchen door secured, I opened up the roaster thing and added the stuffing. I almost forgot to pull out the little bag of giblets! Many times I had baked turkey in the past and the little plastic bag was still inside, but this year I remembered. I noticed there was a coupon in the bag this time.

It entitled me to a $5 discount on M$ next crop of turkeys, which it said couldn't be made available in time for Xmas this year. Wow, I can put that over with my important papers and have something new next year. While this one has been in the freezer for five years now, it's still quite pink and not at all freezer burnt. But that'll be a novelty to get a fresher one, something to look forward to.

This turkey had one of those pop up thermometer timer things. I jiggered it a little to see if it was working, and a little computer chip inside in a squeeky voice told me to cook it at 350 F for twenty minutes a pound, and to poke it when it was browned, and if the juices were clear, it was ready to go. It then told me I should check if it was 165F with a meat thermometer. I went down the street to the hardware store, which was still open, and told the manager I needed a meat thermometer for a M$ turkey. He said, just go pick out any one on the shelf, even the old ones in the back, they're completely compatible. So $3 later I had my thermometer.

I used this generic brand of stuffing and cooked it up and it came out great. Everybody was satisfied and it was turkey as usual, same as last year, same as the year before that. Nothing strange except, you know, for some reason, the closer this bird came to getting cooked, the slower it got at browning. I had to leave it in an extra hour until the juicy pinkness cleared up. Seems like it took longer than last year.

Everybody was so hungry that eventually one of them dug in to get the last piece of stuffing, and would you believe, found a small amount of Spam inside. Must have been stuck in there by someone from the factory. We just threw it out, no problem.

Then later I started cutting up the carcass for midnight sandwiches, cleaning the bones. All of a sudden, the knife clunked up against something right behind the neck. Now, I did remember to remove the giblets this year, what could this be?

Oh, gosh, it was an AOL disk. Lucky, none of the guests knew I had forgot to remove it, and it didn't spoil the flavor or anything. Hey, I might clean it off and try AOL out again this year to see if they've gotten any better these days.

The day after, a couple of us ended up with a mild case of the runs. I guess somebody brought in a virus. Well, with the cold weather and closed quarters, and all these people milling around during the holidays, that's not totally surprising. Took a little Paregoric and I was fit as a fiddle. I felt kinda bad about the virus, but I called the guests the next day and they said, oh, it could have happened to any one of us, it wasn't a big deal, and if that's all that happened was some loose bowels, it certainly can't spoil everybody getting together and communicating and having fun at the holidays.

Can't wait to try out that new crop of turkeys next Xmas!