The Dynamic Duo

Jim shot his first turkey the other Saturday. He and his hunting buddy, Dean, went to some property that Dean’s parents own on the Clearwater River. Jim spent a good portion of the day hiking around in the woods looking for a turkey. He finally found one. It turned out to be a rather large tom turkey. Its beard is 11 inches long, and its spurs are 1 inch long. Jim thought that it weighed about 25 pounds. It had a huge fan that Jim is currently working on mounting. I suggested that he turn it into a hat, but he didn’t like that idea. Thankfully, Jim skinned and gutted the turkey out in the woods somewhere so I didn’t have to deal with any of the really gross stuff. My first job, however, was to clean off all the dirt and twigs and make sure that there wasn’t any little pieces of guts left on the inside. At first I didn’t want to touch it, but in the end it wasn’t too disgusting. After Tom, that’s what I named him, was all cleaned off, I put him in the fridge for the night. I cooked Tom for dinner on Sunday night. After church, I made stuffing for the first time. My mom was pretty vague about how to do it so I wasn’t sure just how good it would be. Then I stuffed Tom and put poultry seasoning on him and stuck him in the oven. About an hour after I put him in the oven, Jim found an article online that said that skinned turkeys could not be roasted because the skin is what holds in the moisture. At that point I was sure that my first turkey cooking experience would be a failure. About every forty minutes, I basted Tom with butter. After about four hours, Tom was done. I was using two those aluminum pans to roast Tom in so I had to ladle out of all the gravy with Jim’s tiny tiny ladle before I could take Tom out of the oven. I took out all of the stuffing and carved up Tom. One of the legs was completely burnt because it was touching the top of the oven while Tom was cooking so there wasn’t very much dark meat. There was enough meat to feed seven hungry people and have some leftover. Dean, Nick, Jeff (Jim’s friends), Patrick (Jim’s roommate), Tara (Patrick’s girlfriend), and I were all the people who were there. Jeff made some potatoes, and Patrick brought some rolls. It was like a mini-thanksgiving dinner without the green beans. Tom turned out nice, juicy and delicious. My first turkey-cooking experience turned out to be a success.