Pre-Thanksgiving Prep

Since it isn't a holiday over here and peole had to work, we decided to have our Thanksgiving on Saturday . So that just meant Thursday would be a prep day for me.

Originally we thought we'd have to cook 4 or 5 of these small, frozen Hungarian turkeys from Tesco for our feast. Until a couple of weeks ago, when one of my friends, Tomáš, offered to call a farm to see about ordering us a fresh turkey. Brilliant idea!! Then the fun (and a lot of laughter) began. First I had to let them know if I wanted a female or a male turkey. Then what size of a bird did I want? I did not want it alive. I wanted it chilled; not frozen. I did not want to pluck the turkey. I wanted it cleaned and without all of the insides. I wanted it weighed, but without the head or the feet. In the end we placed an order for a 13 kg (28.6 lb), which would be the largest turkey I ever cooked.

Claudia drove me to go pick it up on Thursday. There was no way I was going to ride a tram and a bus while carrying around a huge turkey in an IKEA bag. We were a little nervous when we went to pick it up because we just knew that something would be not quite right...like maybe the neck would still be attached or something. But everything was perfect.

We got it back to my flat and we were really happy when we knew for sure that it would fit in to my oven. Barely!!

Marcus came up that afternoon from Bratislava to help me get ready for the weekend. On Friday morning we cleaned the flat and made several trips to the grocery store. Claudia and Janelle helped us with the cooking Friday night. After baking pumpkin pies I got to bed at around 1:45 AM but had to be up at 5 AM to get the turkey ready and in the oven by 5:30 AM.