A couple of weeks before the last Christmas my husband and I ever spent living in the Kootenays, I went to the local butcher shop and ordered their smallest, locally raised organic turkey. When I asked how small they came, the woman at the counter said about nine pounds. We had two small boys at the time. Nine pounds would be plenty.
My mom had come a few weeks prior to look after the boys while my husband and I flew to the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island to look for a place to live. My husband was being transferred there by the non-profit educational organization he worked for to start an Island branch. Our little rental house in a cozy, beautiful mountain town in the East Kootenays had been perfect for us to live in as a small family, but it was pretty tiny. We looked forward to spreading out a bit more, especially in a larger kitchen. Moving day was to be a week from Christmas day.
On a visit with my friend Sandy, I had mentioned the fact that I had never cooked a turkey. She gave me her copy of Martha Stewart's November, 1996 edition of her magazine because it had a 'turkey 101' guide in it. I was aware of Martha Stewart, of course I was. She was everywhere, but I considered her out of my league. I wasn't rich and her recipes were. I was, however, into good food and aspirational, so I read the recipe. It actually looked do-able and delicious, as did the recipe for stuffing, so I thanked Sandy for the magazine and tucked it in my diaper bag.
On December 24th we drove down to the butcher shop to pick up our little turkey. When the woman brought out our turkey from the back I thought she had made a mistake. "We ordered a nine pound turkey" I faltered. "This is the smallest the farmer sent us" she said. "How much does it weigh?" I gasped, eyeing the Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean-sized girth of the bird on the counter. "Nine kilograms" she said. I'm pretty sure I said, "Oh my God". Well, there was nothing for it. We'd ordered it and it was Christmas Eve, so we had to buy it.
I went about gathering all the ingredients for our now enormous Christmas feast. We had no family coming to dinner, no friends either, since the contents of our little house was mostly in moving boxes. It was just us and our 9 kilogram bird. I studied Martha's recipe and made calculations. I was not an entirely experienced cook so I was trusting Martha to lead me to victory. On Christmas Day, I melted a whole pound of butter with an entire bottle of white wine. I soaked a four-layer large square of cheesecloth in the liquid and draped it over the turkey. Once in the oven, I started preparing all the ingredients for the stuffing. My husband kept our little boys occupied with their new toys and cleaned up after me (our kitchen usually looks like a bomb went off when I've been cooking) while I chopped endless amounts of celery and onions. The stuffing recipe alone filled an entire large roasting pan. I don't remember where I got the pan for the turkey.
Every half hour I wrestled with the roasting pan and basted the turkey with more of the white wine and melted butter. About three hours in I removed the cheesecloth as per Martha's instructions and continued to baste the bird on the half hour. Our entire little house filled with the delicious aroma, so much so that we opened a few windows in the middle of winter.
That the turkey was a rousing success is not the main point in my story. The fact that we ate it for lunch and dinner for the next five days after Christmas is. Sadly, we were forced to throw the last bit out. I suppose, looking back, that cooking a week's worth of meals before moving is a smart idea, just maybe not the same meal every day, twice a day.
I still cook that same turkey recipe, thirty-odd years later. It's a winner. The turkeys themselves vary in size, depending on the amount of people sitting down to dinner. I halve the stuffing recipe and it still fills a large baking dish.
My husband loves the share the story of our first Christmas turkey. He's an expressive guy so the story is always accompanied by large hand gestures and increasing vocal volume. This post is in his honour.
Until next time,
Rebecca
