i went to the butcher this afternoon to pick up the turkey i ordered last week. i said i wanted a fresh one, not frozen and i said it had to feed 21 people. strangely, it did not occur to me to ask for a ballpark figure of the cost. i guess i was too busy asking whether the turkey would be frisk in danish, seeing the smile cross the young man's face as i realized my mistake and he said, it would be possible to have it fersk. the two words, while sounding quite similar are the difference between whether it's had a good night's sleep and is happy, chipper and energetic and whether it's not been frozen.
the turkey was in an enormous box and weighs more than 10 kilos (20-odd pounds). it was wrapped in some kind of butcher paper and plastic, so i didn't open it up 'til i got it home. i guess i didn't look at it while i was at the butcher shop because i was too busy trying not to faint dead away at the price of it. it was a mind-numbing price, one which i do not even dare to type because that would be like saying it out loud. shall we just say that i am thankful i only do this once a year and next year i may cook up a small herd of veal calves and a little suckling pig instead and it will still cost less.
so i get home and mix up my brine in sabin's old baby bathtub (after scrubbing it and giving it a treatment with two kettles of boiling water). then, i unwrap the turkey to lower it into the brine and right there on what should be its pristine and quite possibly gold-plated breast was an enormous black wart/zit-like thing that could possibly be an attack by another bird or cancer or the beast attempting (apparently quite successfully) to grow another eye right there on its breast. in other words, a horrible, awful, unslightly blemish on my very expensive bird. so there will be no martha-like presentation of the golden brown beauty at the table, because i had to cut a bit hunk out of the skin to remove the barnacle. and as i was fuming about that, i discovered that there were no giblets. so i did what any highly strung wanna-be martha would do. i called husband and burst into hysterical tears.
he gave me a pep talk and i went back down to the butcher, determined to tell them off. and i went in and started to explain and once again, to my dismay, burst into hysterical tears. but it worked. i got $50 back and he gave me two bottles of wine. and he was really apologetic. he had ordered the bird from the big meat market in copenhagen where restaurants go and he hadn't seen the blemish himself because it came all wrapped up. i gave him the cut off little nasty bit in a small zip loc and he said he would talk to them when he goes in on saturday and he assured me that it wouldn't happen again in the future.
now my enormous, but flawed turkey is in its brine and everything else is on schedule. we will have a great thanksgiving on saturday, but we will be carving the bird in the kitchen before serving it. those swedes who are coming are always so martha perfect, i'll just have to dazzle them with the pies.
why oh why is everything a competition...i blame martha.
