butchery
I did a little butchery this evening.
Last year, almost to the day, saltcellar brought a frozen 22(?) pound turkey to my house in his backpack.
"Here," he said, "my mom bought a hundred dollars worth of groceries at Fred Meyer, and she got this turkey for free. She doesn't eat birds, so I thought maybe you could use it.
"Sure. I'll take it," I said, and put it into my freezer.
Since then, I have entertained many guests by showing them the entire turkey in my freezer. It filled up almost my whole freezer. I wish I would have taken a picture.
I don't have a big roasting pan, and really wasn't interested in roasting the whole thing, so I just left it in there for a long time. Finally, the discussion went in the direction that if I wasn't going to roast it whole, I could probably thaw it, cut it up, and roast or boil the individual parts and get Ben, the human eating machine, to help me consume it's raw protein goodness, so the turkey's life would not have been in vain.
Now, as you can probably imagine, this is not a pleasant job to attempt, and one has to think several days in advance to defrost the turkey before one attempts it. So, after a good solid year in my freezer, I finally pulled it out and slammed it down on the grate of my fridge just a few days ago.
Then, I didn't do my normal grocery shopping for work on Sunday, and we went out to eat today. It seemed like it was tonight or never to do this bird in.
I covered my floor with newspaper and a big pan, cut open the webbing and sliced open the bag. I let the turkey drain a little and pulled out the organ meats. Then, I set the turkey on a pan, and grabbed my Henckels 4-star and dug in. I wish someone would have been there to witness me slicing and rending this great beast on my kitchen floor.
Finally, I popped the wings in the oven to bake for a midnight snack, popped the meaty carcass in a pot of boiling water for broth for tomorrow, and put the breasts and legs into big gallon ziplocs and put them in my fridge for easy cooking and consumption.
Thank you to the turkey, may it experience many lives better than that one.
Just pulled the wings out of the oven. Delicious.