Some Quirky Cooking Escapades

I have never cooked a turkey before. This last year was my first time, partly because my Mom doesn't like turkey so we always had ham for the holidays. Which is why once I was a teenager I always begged to go somewhere else for the holidays... somewhere I knew there would be turkey. :) Although Mom did pull through one year when she made two turkey legs just for me at Thanksgiving.

My place of employment gives everyone a turkey for Thanksgiving. Well.... honestly, we had two HUGE Thanksgiving dinners... one with my family on Thanksgiving, one with Zach's family two days later. So we decided to hold off on our turkey til around the second weekend in December.

I took this thing out of the freezer on Thursday with plans to cook it on Sunday. After three days in the fridge, it was STILL FROZEN. So Sunday morning we take it out and toss it in the sink of water... when we decided it was time to cook it... getting the guts out was another story.... it took about four different tools to yank that little plastic hook-y thing out of it. Melted a stick of butter, basted it over, shoved it in an oven bag, and attempted to put it in the oven.... well, forgetting that the turkey would not fit with both racks in the oven. Should have thought about that BEFORE I turned the oven on... so Zach grabs a hot pad and the rack and we quickly decide since this thing is already 500 degrees and Zach is standing in the kitchen holding it the only place to go with it is outside on the deck into the snowbank :). I run and open the door and he tosses it into the foot of snow on the deck and it sizzzzzllllleeesssssss pretty funny.

This is what the turkey looked like when it was done:

Not bad for my first one ever.

We had turkey for the next two weeks.

We had just gotten done being overindulged with turkey, when Zach texts me and says he has a surprise for me. His place of employment had given everyone a turkey for Christmas. Since we ended up having four Christmases and tons more food, we decided to wait a month or two before making this one...

So a couple weeks ago we decided instead of going shopping for meat, we would just make the turkey. Took another Sunday afternoon and cooked it. Took it out of the freezer on Wednesday, this one was defrosted by Sunday and yes, this time I remembered to take the oven rack out before pre heating the oven. But I couldn't find the bag of guts anywhere in the thing, had no trouble getting the plastic thingie and the neck out, and it turned out much better. I think brand name had something to do with it...

This one was much prettier. I found the bag of guts when I cut it up but it didn't seem to harm it any.

Meat loaf has always been something else I have struggled with. I could never figure out how to get it rounded in the middle, until my Mom told me you have to form it that way in the pan. Ooops LOL. I have also been making homemade hamburgers a lot lately and been adding a pouch of onion soup mix into the meat.... saves having to cut up an onion and crying. The meat loaf turned out really good.

Before:

After: 

It was delicioso. 

Oh.... and I just HAVE to share this with you all.... check out this awesome pizza spatula that my cousin gave Zach for Christmas: 

It so reminds me of the movie Uncle Buck, where he uses the shovel to flip over the mega huge pancakes he was making for the little man's birthday. And yes, I know I burnt the pizza. :)