...was unarguably the ugliest thing I have ever in my life pulled out of an
oven.

We began with The Brine. Louie put together a witches' brew of chicken broth,
apple cider, honey, maple syrup, salt and ginger ale with spices, and after
letting the SOB soak overnight we found he was not only well-thawed but he
presented us with something disturbingly phallic-looking. This, I discovered,
was the neck, though we found it in a place I never expected to find a neck.
Although if the head were attached, it would have reminded me of the boss I
had before Daniel. We then stuffed him with pieces of cut-up onion, apple,
pear and herbs, plopped him into the pan and put enough water in there to
come an inch or so up the side, as my freind and long-time turkey chef Olive
instructed. Of course, Olive never soaked a bird in brine and no one ever
warned us that there would be an overflow of juice and turkey fat that would
start a fire in the oven.

And so, once the supply of baking soda was used up, the rest of the juice
drained into two half-gallon pitchers, and half our bath towel collection
ruined, we rearranged Old Tom for his final degradation. Lifting him from the
pan to stick some vegetables in to bake with him, Tom's skin just
disintegrated. Literally peeled right off his nude flesh, leaving us staring
at a bird with prison pallor. We couldn't even dress him up again because,
like cheap clothing on a final clearance rack, it just broke up into little
bits when it hit the hot juice. In an act of desperation we mixed up a paste
of butter and herbs and smeared it on Tom's poor bare breast, waited for the
vegetation to develop a sense of comletion in its life's work, and called the
Mutha-in-Law. When she stopped laughing, and Louie told her that the bird had
just dropped both a leg and a wing from the rest of its carcass, she told us
that he was not only done, he was TOO done. And then there was this little
paper bag that rolled out of his insides along with the fruits we stuffed him
with. What do you know...so THOSE are giblets! Roasted with Tom all along. It
was hard to tell he was ready for duty, however, because he looked as naked
as the day he was hatched. It was too late, though. I had a throng of hungry
buddies who were expecting to be given the bird; and the bird we gave them.
We wrapped the monstrosity in foil and hoped for the best.

Fortunately Dennis had the implements to carve him, and the good sense to do
it away from the eyes of our friends who might have looked over his shoulder
and said, "Good GOD!!! What the hell IS that thing?" When we picked Tom up
from the pan his butt was stuck to the metal and fell off. It looked honestly
like something that was found by the roadside and rolled through a recently-
cut lawn. But it was actually a good, flavorful turkey, though no cover-boy
for Gourmet Magazine, and didn't turn out dry at all. We had enough to send
everyone at the party leftovers in abundance; we were planning for twenty,
but only half that number turned out. Usually Dennis hosts a good thirty
people every month. The most important thing was that we had a bunch of happy
friends, none of whom ended up hospitalized.

To you good cooks here, I owe a debt of gratitude. (you especially, Matthew,
you'd make some lucky bride out there a great chef, I mean husband!) To my
boss Daniel, I plead: next year, get LITTLE turkeys!

Blessed be,
Baha