The turkey to end all turkeys

Nah, not this one. This is a nice turkey. It's on our front door. We made it this week in homeschool preschool -- OK, I made it, but the twins supervised and helped cut out the feathers.

THIS is the turkey to end all turkeys. The turkey that may cause me to give up eating -- or at least cooking -- turkeys altogether. The turkey that Would Not Cook.

It sounded like a good idea when I read it online. Supposedly it's actually not necessary to defrost a turkey -- you can just cook it from frozen. It takes longer, but that's OK, you just allow 50 percent more time. I bought a ten-pound turkey, which normally should have taken about three hours at 325 degrees. So I figured that if we cooked it straight out of the freezer it would take four and a half hours. We put the turkey in the preheated oven at 9:15 this morning. Here I am taking its temperature at 1:15, i.e., four hours after it went in. And what does the thermometer say? Probably about 130 degrees (we're aiming for 165).

OK, fine, it's not done yet. Back in the oven. At 2:00 we tested it again. No change. At this point we remembered about the giblets. The instructions online say to remove the giblets after the turkey has been in the oven about an hour. We tried that, but the turkey was still too frozen to pull anything out of its abdominal cavity. We were supposed to try again half an hour later, but we didn't. So now the turkey's been in for nearly five hours, and we remember to pull out the giblets. Except that we can't find them. Instead, what we pull out of the turkey is the NECK -- eeuww, don't like necks -- and it still has visible ice on it. NOT a good sign. We couldn't find the giblets bag, but we put the turkey back in for another hour.

Around 3:00 we tested it again. It got up to 140 degrees. I turned the temperature up to 350 degrees. At 3:30 (six hours and 15 minutes after it went in) I gave up and took the turkey out of the oven. "We're supposed to cover it with foil and let it sit for half an hour," I told Rocket Boy. "It will get hotter as it sits there."

"That doesn't make sense," he said.

"I know, but that's what all the websites say."

"I'm going to put it back in the oven," Rocket Boy said.

"Fine!" I said, storming off.

Meanwhile, the twins are starving, and we're trying to tide them along with little bits of things like cookies and juice. Here's Baby B sadly waiting for his Thanksgiving dinner:

At 4:00 (six hours and 45 minutes after we first put it in) we took the turkey out of the oven again and let it sit under a tent of foil for half an hour. Oh, I forgot to say that when we took the turkey out the first time, I noticed that the abdominal cavity had red blood in it (and of course it isn't done until "the juices run clear"). Rocket Boy went ahead and made gravy out of the drippings, but boiled them for about 15 minutes before adding flour, which hopefully was good enough. But when he started carving the supposedly "done" turkey, the meat was not completely white -- there were pinkish areas. Ick, ick, ick. Oh, and he finally found the giblets bag.

We put the food on the table.

What a spread for a family of four, two of whom ARE four. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potato casserole, spicy spinach dish, rolls, and cranberry relish. It was delicious -- even the turkey was pretty good. But as I ate, I started to feel uneasy. It did not help that the twins would not eat much of anything. Baby A had two rolls and Baby B had one. They refused the turkey and mashed potatoes (and of course everything else).

I wasn't expecting them to eat much, but I thought they'd eat more than that.

After I finished eating, I went back to the turkey carcase and started pulling off the rest of the meat. And then I started to get really grossed out. The turkey just didn't look right. Parts of it still looked bloody.

"I'm not going to eat any more of this," I said to Rocket Boy. "Not tomorrow. Not ever."

The Mayo Clinic website says it takes several hours for the signs of Salmonella to show up, but it can be as much as two days. So I won't know for a while whether I ate anything bad. At least the twins didn't have any.

On Wednesday, in homeschool preschool, the twins and I talked about being thankful. I brought out a bunch of their stuffed animals and had their stuffed animal turkey "ask" the animals what they were thankful for (he makes a "gobble gobble" sound when you press his tummy). The animals' answers were predictable: they were thankful for the twins, for having a nice place to live, and that sort of thing.

What am I thankful for this Thanksgiving? Many things, of course, including my family. I'm a very lucky person, even though I live in Ridgecrest. But not turkey. Not thankful for turkey. Maybe never again?