Dress Rehearsal

I’ve been stalking the local grocery store the last few weeks because it has been running a special program to allow you to get a free turkey for Thanksgiving. Of course, you have to spend a certain amount of dough on specific items to accumulate enough points to get a free 12-14 lb Butterball Frozen Turkey. I had done everything I was supposed to do and after a few attempts by the clerk to get the transaction right I had my shiny new turkey in hand. Evidently, I was the only person so far that had jumped through the correct hoops and collected the right stamps to earn the free Tom. The MA Fat Woman doesn’t mess around when it comes to food and coupons. I went off visiting my mom and sick family member and mentioned that I was going to cook a turkey over the next few days. Well, eyes lit up and mouths started to water; my mom wanted to know what day and what time because they were coming to eat. It seems that the list is growing of people that are going to her house to eat for Thanksgiving and she said it would be a dress rehearsal for the actual dinner planned for that day. Somehow, that made sense to me. The turkey was frozen solid and I had to put it in the dryer for a 30 minute spin cycle on tumble dry low. It took forever for it to defrost. I began the process of taking off the various layers of netting and plastic; I pulled the neck out of the body cavity and then stuck my hand in there looking for the gross stuff. I rooted around in there for several moments and didn’t find anything. I pulled out my hand, held the opening up to the light and stuck my head down there to see if I could spy the innards. I couldn’t find anything so I stuffed the bird and shoved it into the oven. After a spectacular Sunday Pre-Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings it was time to begin the clean up. One of my friends was taking the meat off the bones when she stumbled upon a little plastic bag oozing juice and other substances. You guessed it; it was the bag with the innards. They had been cooked right along with the turkey, in their little plastic bag. I had looked for them, just not in the right hole.