So much to be thankful for...

Wow! Where to start? After Amanda, Shayne and I ran the Marine Corps 10K, the man decided that he had a new passion. He promptly signed up for the Turkey Trot 10K held at Quantico. I declined due to the fact that I was quite sore after the first one, due to my utter and complete lack of training. Ha!


Waiting around for him to finish, we were pleased to locate real, live turkeys on location. Those poor suckers had no clue that they were to wind up as a beautiful feast on my holiday table. The smooth-talking farmer soon had Shayne and I agreeing to drive out to no-man's land and pick up one of these bad boys for Thanksgiving. He went on and on about the delicious "Turkey" flavor and incomparable juiciness and tender flesh that would please us to no end. We were drooling fools in his rough farmer hands.
Triplets, cruelly seperated at birth.

Come pick-up day, I'm late from work and it's raining. I need to pick up a prescription before we head out to BFE. CVS decided to work their special brand of magic and take forever to hand over the goods. Yet again. Long story short, it's reeeaaallly late by the time we make it out to Old MacDonald's place. In the boonies. In the dark. In the rain. Cue ax-murderer movie theme song. Upon arrival, we were irritable but the sight of his 200 lb Rott, aptly named Angel, kept us well behaved.

Ah, but we were so excited to have a taste of this delectable bird. It would be so worth the effort!!

Imagine if you will, dear reader, a sunny and beautiful Thanksgiving day. The anticipation slowly building as the family gathers in the kitchen to begin preparations. The man butters and seasons the turkey (which is surprisingly ugly, with horrible tubes rising from it's skin where the feathers were pulled out), Andrea and Amanda chopping veggies to roast beneath it all, cramming all available space with savory stuffing. The complete agony of discovering that today, of all days, the oven WILL NOT WORK!! Dear Lord. Please. Please! Nooooooooo!!!

We pulled that oven apart and grimly realized that we were, in short, screwed. The ignitor was busted and we had neither the knowledge nor skills to do diddly about it. Sigh. Time for Plan B. Which never existed until we realized Plan A was a no-go. Time to haul out the grill and pull out our best Martha Stewart.


In the end, after several hours of grilling, it was still mostly raw. We cut as much breast meat off as we could and pan fried the slices in butter and olive oil. Many dishes had been prepped in the preceding days and relieved a lot of the stress and we used the broiler and range to the best of our abilities.


The turkey was gross! Tough and charcoal flavored. No fault of the turkey's . But everything else was delicious.


And the best part of all is that we were together, healthy and happy. And secretly spitting our turkey out in our napkins to throw away later.