Thursday, November 24, 2011

The largest bird in the country

As you all settle down to your thursday afternoon thanksgiving feast know that I, being on the other side of the dateline, have already gorged myself, drifted into a food coma, had a full night's sleep, awoke and had leftovers. This was my second full thanksgiving of the year since my mom did up a beautiful pre-thanksgiving dinner last month when I was in the states. And if you now count leftovers this morning it is probably my fourth, and by lunchtime should be my fifth t-day feed of the year. Not too shabby.


Marshall Islands thanksgiving is much like one in the states. We gather all of our friends and family together and eat till we blackout, then drink until there is an argument and all go home to happy to sleep in the fetal position. Here though in the absence of family or a local thanksgiving celebration all the white people get together to celebrate. Basically we do this for any reason at all and thanksgiving is a damn good one. It is also another opportunity to indulge is promoting america's superiority at holidays to our non-american friends.

This year I volunteered to cook the turkey, not that I really know what I am doing but hey put it in the oven and wait right? I was first in the store after the cargo ship arrived and can guarantee I bought the largest bird on island, 23 lbs, so I was off to a good start. I picked up all the tools and ingredients and threw the bird in the oven yesterday at lunch. Unfortunately, (ya right) I was informed when returning to work that we had a company baseball game that afternoon and would have to leave work early, ah shucks. Still believing I would be home in time thought this is no problem for the bird. Well apparently the electrical company had other ideas since while we were out at baseball the power on the island went out. Fortunately this didn’t cause me too much stress, as I didn't even know until I was driving home after and a friend called worried about the turkey. I arrived home to find the power still off. Just when I thought it was the end, pop the power cracked back on. Well at this point there was nothing to loose and didn't know if it was ruined so just proceeded with the cooking now scheduled to be 2 hrs late.

Eventually it got up to temperature and was hopefully done. It looked good anyway and thought it will have to do. Now for the hard part. The flexible tin disk the turkey was in was too weak to pick up so was forced to remove the entire oven rack then take it out to my car for the drive over to the house were everyone was. Solo this was quite the task but managed to get it done although not without spilling turkey juice all over the oven, floor, carpet, table, stairs, car seat and floor. Driving down the road over speed bumps and cutting taxis didn’t help either. By the time I arrived I was exhausted and covered in sweet after gripping a 180 degree bird while driving a stick shift in the cab of pickup in the tropics.

All ended well and maybe the best turkey I ever had but I am sure the exhaustion and novelty contributed in some way. All 19 people also seemed to enjoy it so was at least edible. Glad to see that I wasn’t sick this morning either which is a good sign. The stuffing I made with Mom’s recipe using sausage was a big success too. and the gravy from turkey drippings, at least what was left after spilling on the my kitchen or car was tasting too, I guess salt fixes everything.

This morning is an induction ceremony at work for our new to us backhoe and sewer snake machine, welcoming them into the family of other rusty tools soon to be neglected and ruined. At least we got diabetes snacks: a cookie, soda, muffin, and cake.

1 comment:

Me said...

Hi!
My name's Rosie Borchert and I'm part of AND Productions Web Development team. We're working on a networking site where we'd highlight various individuals across the globe who have amazing stories of volunteer work/daily life/hard work through photos, blogs, and video. We'd love to speak with you further about being a correspondent for us. I hops all is well and I look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
Rosie Borchert
rborchert@nashkotyul.ru