Giving Thanks for 20-Pound Turkeys

Thanksgiving came a little early this year. As in, yesterday. A few weeks ago, my roommates and I decided that we wanted to have all of our friends over for a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner. Sure, we wanted to see everyone...but I think we also wanted to find out if we were grown up enough to pull off such a feast.

I rose to the challenge and volunteered to cook The Turkey. This was no ordinary Butterball...this was the biggest bird at the grocery store, and when the cashier rang me up a few days ago, she said, "Shoot girl, this is the largest turkey we GOT this year!" Now, I am no turkey master...I usually just eat what is put in front of me when I go home for the holidays. But in this instance, I felt a bit of pride well up inside me because not only was this MY turkey, it was also the first turkey I had ever cooked. (I like to live dangerously. Go big or go home!) And so I smiled, thanked the cashier, and dragged my 20+ pound turkey home, where it just barely fit in our refrigerator between all the bottles of wine and cartons of milk (yes, we fight osteoporosis AND heart disease!).

I managed to take the day off yesterday after convincing my boss that I had everything under control in preparation for the upcoming holiday weekend. I didn't exactly lie, but I am working REALLY hard today, that's for sure. Anyway, I woke up early and got to work. I sauteed onions and celery, prepared the stuffing, cleaned The Turkey, slathered it with butter, stuffed it, and put it in the oven. Then I didn't really know what to do with myself, other than check The Turkey every ten minutes to make sure it hadn't shriveled up or caught on fire.

Lindsay had come over to help me, which was really sweet of her considering that she is a vegetarian and looked pretty pale when I started rubbing butter all over The Turkey as if I was a professional masseuse (which would actually be a cool job, or at least would be beneficial in the boyfriend department, no?). After the blood returned to her face, we watched a movie and then found pretty fall leaves to sprinkle all over the many card tables we had borrowed from our parents. Eventually Lindsay went home to change, The Turkey finished its five hour roastathon, I made more stuffing, took a ridiculously fast shower, and threw on clothes. By then, my roommates were home and had opened a much-needed bottle of wine. Our friends began to arrive, bringing with them some of the most delicious food I have ever eaten: corn pudding casserole, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, garlic mashed potatoes, cheesy potatoes, broccoli, salad, rolls, apple pie, pumpkin pie, chocolate chip pumpkin bread, and Oreo cheesecake. The fifteen of us squished around four tiny tables, said grace, and The Turkey was carved. I had a brief moment of panic when the knife touched The Turkey's skin...if you have ever seen National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (which you SHOULD because lord, it is a cinematic masterpiece as well as a watch-after-Thanksgiving-dinner tradition in my parent's house), you know that part when they cut into the turkey and a large puff of steam escapes as the entire thing deflates? And then they all sit around the table crunching on it as Cousin Eddie's wife sobs loudly? Well, that's what was going through my head, but thankfully The Turkey was cooked to perfection.We totally chowed down. I don't think I've ever eaten so much IN MY LIFE. Seriously. It hurt to inhale. From the satisfied faces and strained waistbands, I think everyone else felt the same way. A few scraps of The Turkey remained and were put in a tupperware in our fridge, but pretty much everything else was licked clean.

It was a spectacular night, despite the fact that I am STILL full and have absolutely no desire to eat my mom's Thanksgiving turkey tomorrow afternoon (oh I know, I'm sure I'll change my tune as soon as I see it in all of its delicious glory). Looking back on our pre-Thanksgiving dinner, I guess we are grown ups. I can't pretend that we aren't. I mean, I cooked a Thanksgiving turkey and we said grace and geez, some of us are married or soon to be married and have mortgages, and doesn't that all point to the fact that YES we are absolutely "grown up" now? I'm not going to get into a big debate on what it means to be an adult and how it doesn't mean you can't have fun and blah blah blah, but seriously. I don't think we could have pulled this together two years ago when we were seniors in college, and it would have been hard to even do it in this spectacular fashion last November.

There are many things for which I give thanks this year, but I would especially like to give thanks for The Turkey--all twenty pounds of it--because it brought together some of my best friends and allowed us to stop and relax with each other for a few hours. And it made me realize that growing up doesn't have to mean growing apart, even if you see some friends less often than you used to. And that we shouldn't be afraid of growing up, because we definitely still know how to have a wicked good time. And nobody got salmonella poisoning or anything.