Thanksgiving

This is our friend's turkey....cooked upside down...if you notice our google searches below, we thought that one out ahead of time!

So since the last post, I've been going pretty much nonstop.  With grad school applications due a couple weeks ago, a last minute trip to Minnesota, some committee stuff, and Thanksgiving, I've barely had any time to do anything, let alone tell you about it.  Luckily, I have decided to spend this Sunday in bed recovering from a whole day of cooking, next to my petchi, with nothing to do but eat Ritz crackers that I bought at Target (oh man, while back home I remembered how amazing Target is) and watch movies.  Oh, and tell you about my Thanksgiving.

This weekend my friends Alison and Ian and some other Americans in Tbilisi were planning a big Thanksgiving dinner.  Now, when it comes to the turkey, a normal person would designate as chef someone who was experienced wtih cooking turkey, right? Right!  But no, instead they thought it would be a good idea to make me (I don't know how to cook meat at all...well, I don't cook in general either) and Alison (a vegetarian) in charge of one of the turkeys.  Oh, and in charge of green bean casserole, pumpkin pies, stuffing (it had 6 different directions, confusing!), and potatoes au gratin.

trying to be optimistic

The day started off with this:
Alison: "well, it should be ok...we follow the directions for basting, etc"
Me: "Basting?"
Alison: "You don't know what basting is?"
Me: "....nope.  "
 

We arrive at the apartment to get started.  Two turkeys were already done with the brining process and we had to dump it out, but this being Georgia we had to do it in the toilet.  "Pressure from beneath" was the key to the first one, but Ian left to take care of another turkey at someone else's house, so Alison and I had to dump out the brine for our turkey ourselves.  "Pressure from beneath" didn't work this time, and brine went everywhere but down the toilet.  So then we smelled like turkey brine all day.  We also managed to forget to wash off the brine before putting the turkey in the oven, which we were told was a big mistake, but somehow our turkey ended up being awesome, along with the rest of our food! 

we had to dump the brine in the toilet

Alison accidentally broke the glass that the flavor rub was in...oops

cuttin' potatoes

getting some pie crusts made

soaking onions in milk, then in batter, then frying them for the casserole

I took some videos of the beginning parts (notice it meant I didn't have to do any of the 'rub downs'  joke's on you Alison!) but I totally forgot to take even pictures after that because we got so busy trying to get everything else made.  And then at dinner itself I was way too busy eating.  All in all we were cooking by 11am, and weren't done until 6:30.


Google searches from the day included:


How to cook a turkey
Which way does the turkey go in the pan?
When do you put stuffing in?
How do you do a turkey foil tent?  (that one sounded a lot more intricate than it was)
Does it matter if you didn't wash the brine off the turkey and now it's already cooking?
How do you tell if a turkey is done?
How do you tell if a turkey is done without a thermometer?

carving our Turkey.  it rocked.

Here is the video: