Okay I take my turkey cooking pretty damn serious.  My first turkey I ever cooked for Hubby took 12 hours to cook and ended up with the inside still frozen and the outside as dry as hell.  We agreed, for the sanctity of our new marriage, to chuck the whole thing in the garbage, order Chinese, and never speak of it again.

To vindicate that day, I have perfected… The Thanksgiving Turkey Recipe.

Which I recently sent to my mother as I will be cooking Thanksgiving dinner at her house this year and I needed to prepare her for what was going to be going down in her kitchen.

Also, I may have just copied and pasted that email into this blog… I know, lazy as shit.

Also also, I apologize for the run on sentences, but she’s my mother and she doesn’t judge… my grammar… that much…

Okay mom this is how it’s going down!

We take a whole log of room temperature butter and mix it with a pile of chopped herbs. What are the herbs? I have no idea, they sell a box in the produce section at Safeway called Turkey herbs and that’s what I get, it’s probably sage, rosemary, thyme and other green things. 

Then we CAREFULLY separate the skin from the turkey, WITHOUT TEARING THE SKIN, if we tear the skin we must go buy another turkey IMMEDIATLY!!

If we don’t… well then congratulations… we’ve destroyed Thanksgiving. 

Okay, then we CAREFULLY push in the herb butter so it’s a nice layering between the skin and the meat all around the turkey.  THEN with the extra butter and herbs, by the way we’re going to have some extra butter and herbs, we give the turkey his final massage on this earth, and then salt and pepper the shit out of him.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!

We then take 2 oranges… 3 if we got the big boy turkey, and stab them all over making little cuts and then shove little clove things in the cuts until we have a perfectly covered orange clove grenade, which we then chuck into the cavity of the turkey and tie his legs shut with string to help contain the explosion of citrus clovey goodness that will occur during cooking. 

If we don’t have string we can improvise by twisting his leg nubs and shoving them through his neck to keep them in place… like badasses.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!

We then chop up big cubes of celery, carrots, onions, garlic, and potatoes for the turkey to sit on and dump a whole bottle of white wine in with them to keep everyone happy… we will also be happy as we should be on our 2nd glass of wine by the time we reach this part of the turkey process. 

We then tent the top of the turkey loosely with aluminum foil for the first 3 or so hours, taking it off to cook uncovered for the final hour to get the lovely brown top. 

Side story: I once started the turkey breast down and then half way through flipped it, I read it was supposed to keep it even moister… but I may or may not have dropped it in the flipping process, causing me to panic and set my oven mitts on fire.. again… so I don’t do that anymore… anyways back to the instructions.

During the hours and hours of cooking time we are basting that turkey every 30 minutes with the butter wine liquid of joy and sunshine that is gathering at the bottom of the pan. We also continue to baste ourselves with glasses of wine until the turkey is cooled and ready to be cut and served… this should probably be done by dad or Hubby as you and I should not be handling sharp objects by this time… as we will most certainly be blitzed.

And that… is how you cook… The Perfect Turkey… your daughter… Mona.

So there you are! The perfect Thanksgiving Turkey Recipe, you’re welcome!

Now go eat turkey until you explode and/or slip into a coma!… like the pilgrims intended it.

WHAT A HORRIBLE CHILD!!!!! Why would she say that to her mother!?!?!