Under a Gibbous Moon

A little bit before last Christmas, my wife received a frozen turkey from her employer in lieu of the usual Christmas party. Of course, Thanksgiving being over we didn’t actually have much use for the turkey and so it has been sitting, unused and unloved in the back of our freezer for some time.

Recently, tired of the big bird taking up valuable freezer real estate, I determined to thaw and prepare it. After spending several days in the refrigerator, taking up even more valuable real estate, I deemed it thawed enough to actually cook. I wrastled the beast into a cooking pan to start to dress it out. After easily pulling the giblet bag from the whole that once supported its head, I discovered that a thick metal “clamp” was used to hold the bird’s legs together like some kind of avian chastity belt.

After much more wrastling, I finally managed to free the legs from the pernicious grip of the “clamp”. I now needed to remove the neck from the “body cavity”.

I have no idea why. What would possess someone to kill a bird, lop off its head, and then stuff it up its butt? Of course, I guess I shouldn’t be the one to judge since I’m about to stuff bread, veggies, and a secret blend up herbs and spices up there.

Then, in a brilliant piece of cookery that I can’t take credit for, I covered the damn thing in bacon.

This step was actually pretty easy. The natural tackiness of the bacon made it really easy to plaster onto the turkey, even the sides.

After this was accomplished, I thrust the baconed bird into my oven at 325 degrees until I felt like taking it out.

How did it taste, you ask? You didn’t? Well, too bad. It was pretty good, not the best turkey I’ve ever had but it wasn’t as dry as my usual attempts. The bacon added a nice flavor to the turkey meat that was nearest to the skin, though the effect diminished the further down.

One last remark about turkeys. As someone who loves dark meat, why do they keep breeding turkeys with less and less dark meat. White meat is the least flavorful of any given bird meat.

But it’s healthier? Not hardly. After you get done adding the sauces and gravies to make the white meat palatable it’s far worse than the plain dark meat.