turkey roasting 101

today i learned that there are about 800,000 recommended ways to roast a turkey.

i also learned that every time i try to type the word "turkey", it comes out "turkery", and i have to back-track. watch for it in case i miss one.

my husband and i are both big family people. we love our own families, and each other's families, and we try to find lots of time to spend with them. when we started dating, it was tough for us to decide how to split up holidays, but somehow we made it work (with a lot of miles put onto our cars and long days usually consisting of two amazingly yummy meals). but when we got married back in october, i knew i didn't want every holiday to turn into a marathon of driving, eating, and hurried hugs, so i promised myself that we would host thanksgiving at our new house. this way, everyone could see the place, and they could be the ones doing the driving instead of us. so we hoarded our giant bonus points like any good lower middle class couple just starting out would do and got ourselves a wildly large 17 pound turkey for free (just the way i like them).

and then, i wussed out.

i was still a novice at gluten free cooking. i had never cooked for more than 5 people before. but to cook a turkey, and a conglomerate of other high-profile holiday dishes while maintaining their gluten free status was unthinkable, especially one short month after getting married and moving into our new home. so after several apologies and two very forgiving mothers, we spent our first married thanksgiving like the 5 years before- eating, driving, and falling into two separate turkey induced food comas. don't get me wrong, it was a wonderful thanksgiving, but not what i had envisioned. and the worst part?

we were stuck with a 17 pound turkey in our freezer.

so as spring rolled around, i decided to give the whole "hosting a holiday" thing a second shot. i'm much more adept at the g-free thing now, and cooking large quantities doesn't intimidate me quite as much. and, since easter is the next holiday to come up on the roster, it was the lucky winner. i've spent the last week and a half or so deciding what i want to make, checking and double checking that i have what i need to make it fabulous, and reminding myself that even if it's not perfect, no one will care (or, at the very least, they'll keep their mouths shut). and then, this morning, as i was devoutly avoiding refinishing our last deck chair, it occurred to me that i have absolutely no idea how to roast a turkey other than what i've seen my mother do (and all that really comes to mind as i rack my memory is basting).

enter: google. after clicking on the first three hits and realizing that every single one of them was in every possible way different (aside from the "put it in the oven" part), i knew i was in trouble. i kept clicking. different, different, different. what. the. heck. even cooking times were inconsistent. and unfortunately, i have no real closure for this post. like i said, i learned that there are lots of different recommended ways to roast a turkey. i didn't say i learned how to roast a turkey. the true test will come on sunday when i pop that sucker (slathered in butter) in to a 325 degree oven for four hours in a roasting pan that has a half inch of water in it and pop a little foil tent over top since my roaster has no lid and start to baste every 45 minutes. i don't even care that i just used a ridiculous run-on sentence. this turkey roasting business is one giant run-on sentence just waiting to be written. all i can do is cross my fingers and hope that i did a satisfactory job combining the litany of information i had thrown at me after typing "roasting a turkey" into that little search bar, and that my easter turkey comes out crisp on the outside and juicy on the inside.

i can't wait to see what sunday teaches me.