Preamble to Disaster, a Holiday Tale. Part one

Once again the holiday season is upon us. I know it is here, not so much due to the appearance of actual festive decorations at the stores,  (The Wal-mart had Christmas sales going 3 days before Halloween) but rather, because I have received my annual "Just In Time For Christmas" furlough notice from work. Well, this wouldn't have been so bad if I had more than 50 cents in my bank account, but with the upcoming holiday demandments causing my wallet to constantly hemorrhage cash, I have been wondering if my checking account will eventually bleed out.
Now, were it that sarcasm had any monetary value, it is conceivable that I would be a multi-millionaire, based purely on the sheer volume of venom that tends to flow from my lips. Unfortunately I have not seen many people lining up to compensate me for that unique talent. So I am destined to another month and a half of laying awake at night, worrying that on Christmas morning my poor children will give me the "Santa screwed us over and it is Daddy's fault" look.

Preparing To Be Thankful.
It is well known to those even moderately acquainted with me how I am a cheapskate of biblical proportions. I love the pre-Thanksgiving sales where you can get a 20 pound turkey for nine bucks. I fill the freezer with a few of them so we can have them throughout the year, much to the dismay of my family. I had a budget for about four birds this year and was about to make my move when an unexpected wrench was thrown into the works.

Someone at church had a flock of fresh hormone and preservative free, locust fed, all natural free range turkeys that they were selling. Dessy was all over this concept of having a chemical free Thanksgiving, and sent me to work out the details. I came prepared with questions like; "How do you pluck them?" and "Are they still alive?" I was imagining the horrified look on my kids faces as I tried to dispatch the turkey in the back yard with an axe then chase the headless blood spurting bird down the alley. I was assured that the bird was cleaned and ready to cook. It may have been prudent of me to do a little more research before making the purchase. By the time I got there, only one turkey was left. So I bought it. All 36 pounds of it.(That is about 16 kilos to you metric system adherents.) It was huge. I brought it home and put it right in the freezer.

We were set. Right?

It was three more days until Thanksgiving, and Dessy told me we should probably thaw the turkey. There are several ways to thaw a turkey, like soaking it in cool water, or thawing it in the refrigerator. I prefer the cool water method because it is faster. Dessy pointed out that the turkey looked too big for the sink, so I said that the next option was to soak it in the bath tub. We could combine it with the kids bath time to save water. I am assuming that the agitation provided by the children splashing around would help to thaw the bird faster. Once again, Dessy had to be the voice of reason here, and she declared that the thawing would be done in the refrigerator.

I took the turkey out of the freezer, and realized that maybe it was bigger than we had originally thought. It occurred to me that we may have some unforeseen issues here, not the least of which may be that we do not have the right equipment to make a bird this big. Dessy got out our large roasting pan, and of course it was overflowing on all sides. I tried to set the pan and bird combination on the lowest rack of the oven and it nearly touched the upper broiler element. We may have to do some creative thinking to successfully roast this bird, like having to set the oven to the "Clean" setting in order cook it all the way through.

To get the turkey to fit in the refrigerator, we actually had to take out a shelf. I Googled the proper way to thaw a bird and discovered that the standard rate of thaw is one day per 4 pounds which means that technically I should have put the bird in the fridge 7 days ago. So to help it along I ran an extension cord to the fridge, put my wife's curling iron in the cavity of the bird, plugged it in, then closed the door. Our dinner guests will be none the wiser except that my wife’s hair will smell like turkey guts and the stuffing will have overtones of burnt Asian hair.

Next comes the brining. The way I figure it, we do not have enough time to sequentially thaw, then brine the bird, so I need to combine the process. It occurred to me that we will need a lot of salt to brine something this big. I have a bag of ice melt out in the garage, but Dessy said to save it for the front walk when it snows again.  It also came to mind that if you add salt to water, it draws the heat out of the object in the water, much like making ice cream in a hand crank mixer. The wheels in my brain started cranking, and I came up with a plan. My folks still have a 300 gallon stock tank out in their barn. I can put the turkey in the tank, fill is with relatively clean well water, add a couple of the salt licks left over from when they owned a horse 20 years ago, and then plug in the tank heater to keep the water at a nice simmer. Drop in some potatoes and carrots a few hours before dinner and you are good to go. My plan makes for easy clean up too, we just hose  out the horse stall when we are done.

Happy Thanksgiving....Now on to Black Friday!