Happy Thanksgiving!! I have invited 6 students to my house for Thanksgiving dinner tonight. I managed to find a turkey that wasn't still alive and gobbling, and amidst the electricity cuts, I'm attempting to roast the thing. It really looks more like a large chicken, as Butterball 20 lb. turkeys really don't exist here, but it ought to be enough to feed us all. This is my first turkey(Yes, Mom, I remembered to take the giblet package out of the middle.), and I have spent the morning wrestling with the naked bird in the sink trying to get the legs out from under that little falp of tail skin so I could stuff it. If I'd had a bigger sink, it would have gone flying onto the floor at some point, I'm sure. Getting the legs out wasn't nearly as difficult as the little dance I had to do to get the legs back UNDER that little flap of skin without losing all the stuffing inside the bird. The bird had a slight edge over me for a minute, but I prevailed and it's now in the oven.
On another note, I have a very large, grapefruit sized black bruise directly to the left of my tailbone right now. I'm pretty sure I may have cracked it, as sitting is not the most comfortable of things today. Back up to last night... I'm makng an apple pie and suddenly realize all the baking spices I thought I had with me (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, etc...) have mysteriously disappeared. I decided to go on a mission. I got two steps outside my building to the small flight of stairs that leads to the plaza. Most of the ice and snow is gone and it's been relatively safe to walk around... so I thought. Say hello to a little concept called "Black Ice." It's either so thin that you can't see it, or it's absorbed as much dirt as the ground around it so it looks like there's no ice there. I set one careless little foot on the stairs, did the "I'm an ungraceful skater" arm-waving, foot running Flintstone thing for about 3 seconds, then bounced down the stairs on my posterior.. BAM... BAM.... BAM!!! Two girls that were coming from the other way saw me start to go, shouted something in Albanian, then as I hit my finally resting point gave a loud, cringing "Dohhhhhh!" I couldn't get up. I sat there wallowing in self pity and fighting back the stinging tears of shame for a while until the throbbing died down a little. To make matters worse, on the way down I must have jabbed my elbow into my thight muscle because it's been cramped up with a big knot in it ever since. Anyway, once I peeled myself off the ground (it required an extra large spatula), I made it to the store. Not only did I score the needed spices, the lady gave me a chart with all the major spice names in Albanian, English and Serbian. It was completely worth the ass-bruising just for that!!
So battered and sore, I tackled the turkey battle this morning. And won.
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