My husband works for a company (which shall remain nameless in the interest of his continuing to work for them) that believes in old school ways of taking care of its employees. One of the ways it shows us how much it cares is by giving out free turkeys to employees for Thanksgiving. I believe they give out hams for Christmas, too, but I'm not entirely sure because we keep kosher (ish--I'm originally from Baltimore and have to have a Maryland crab cake occasionally or I lose my Hon street cred).
A week ago, J asked me if he should sign up for a turkey this year. Thanksgiving has been a rather low key holiday for our family the past few years. We live too far away (11 hours by car, more by plane if you add in all the accumulated time going through TSA lines) to go to family for a four-day weekend. And most of our local friends are either living closer to their parents or more susceptible to the pull of Mom's cooking than we are, and our attempts at hosting a gathering here has not borne fruit. The long and short of it is that we celebrate Thanksgiving with just the three of us. Which is not a problem, as I love to cook and having lots of leftovers is part of the joy. In any case, I told J to please sign us up for the turkey and I busily got started thinking about recipes. (Read: I forgot all about it.)
Yesterday, I recieved the following email from J at work:
From: J
To: The Aspiring Mensch
Re: Turkey
Got it.
It's Huge.
How hard would it be to make Turkey
Jerky?
(I'm not joking)
I wasn't entirely certain what Huge meant in terms of turkey, except that I was excited for the prospect of turkey sandwiches, turkey soup, turkey hash, and yes, turkey jerky (if I can find a recipe) post-Thanksgiving. Then J walked in this evening with the turkey. Here is an unretouched picture of the turkey next to something so you can get an idea of scale.
The turkey is Huge. It weighs more than my toddler. (At least currently, while it is still frozen).
Please keep in mind that this larger-than-a-Volkswagen-sized turkey will be feeding the following individuals:
J
Myself
The toddler who is currently only willing to eat applesauce or peanut butter, or in some cases, non-food substances.
I think we're going to need a bigger boat.
(Side note, J unilaterally decided that it would be funny for the turkey to be wearing a mustache. He then wrestled me to the ground any time I got close enough to remove the mustache from the turkey before snapping the picture. I don't understand it, but apparently the mustache is hilariously funny).
