What'd I Miss?

So Thanksgiving is over and we're all back to work now. I roasted a turkey for the first time this year. I'm sure that's drawing surprised looks from everyone who reads this given how much I write about food and cooking. I can just picture all the thought bubbles going "Really????" Well, I've roasted tons of chickens, both stuff and unstuffed, but doing a turkey has always seemed like so much work. And the thing is so damn heavy to walk home with. But this time, I decided to go all out and use my fancy Mauviel roasting pan to cook the lucky 10 lb bird about to become my Thanksgiving dinner centerpiece.

Well, since this was my first time roasting a turkey, I did experience some hiccups. I made the mistake of using the internal temperature chart that came with my meat thermometer, and not realizing that this chart was totally wrong and had temperatures way too high. I also forgot to think about the fact that the internal temperature will keep rising after I took the turkey out of the oven. You would think that after all my cooking and hours of watching the Food Network, I would know this. But alas, I learn by trial and error.

Despite being overcooked a bit, my turkey wasn't a total disaster and it was still pretty yummy. I happen to love turkey meat, especially dark meat. I also happen to love cranberry sauce, and despite my less than perfect turkey, my friend and I still had a pretty good meal. And I feel sufficiently armed to cook my next turkey, which I feel like doing every week from now on. And I may just do that. I'm gonna become my own turkey roasting machine.

At my old company, I used to have to work on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but my new company has the day off. So I had a nice four day weekend to relax and catch my breath. After Thursday, I still had about 3/4 of my turkey left, and so inevitably I nibbled on it Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I know there are lots of very creative Martha Stewart ways to use left over turkey, but I would just carve a couple pieces and eat it with my leftover stuffing and leftover string beans, which led to my problem over the weekend. I really intended this past weekend to catch up on all the little things that I've been meaning to do for the past month, like wash my bathroom mats, put up my ebay auctions and clean out my closet, but I didn't account for the turkey-induced coma that I would be subject to for the entire freaking weekend. It had been a long time since I had eaten this much turkey (a year, in fact), and after lunch, I would be KNOCKED OUT. I felt like I had been drugged, and probably would have slept through World War III during my turkey naps. It's just too bad that I don't have a boyfriend to take advantage of somnambulent state.

Well, my turkey is gone now, and I'm trying to get back into my routine. I actually had a blog post today about a completely different and un-Thanksgiving related topic, but I couldn't get blogger to post this very artistic diagram that I spent the morning drawing to illustrate my point, so that will have to come later. In the meantime, hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving!