Christmas Eve Dinner

  McKay and I decided to have our big holiday meal on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas day because we wanted to relax and stuff our faces with leftovers come the big day. I figured we could start cooking around two, then have a nice early dinner around five. Three hours is plenty of time, right?

  You'd think that. But you'd be wrong.

  I delegated the turkey to McKay. Neither of us had ever made it before, and I don't really enjoy touching raw meat all that much (especially when there's *gulp* BONE involved. Ew. [This is why I would make a terrible nurse, mother]). Plus, it seems like roasting a turkey is as manly as cooking can get, right? I mean, unless he went out and bashed the bird on the head himself or something.

  So, McKay prepped the turkey and popped that sucker in the oven. We don't own one of those fancy-schmancy meat thermometers, but we had a disposable pop-up thingymagig that's supposed to indicate when the turkey is cooked through, and we figured that would work jolly well.

  You'd think that. But you'd be wrong.

  After preparing the sweet potatoes (my mom's recipe, best thing ever), the cauliflower, making sure the jello was in fact jiggly, and making the stuffing and potatoes, the popper-upper thing was decidedly un-popped. Not wanting to eat wormy turkey, we left it in and decided to check on it in a half hour.

  You'd think a half hour past the cooking time of a turkey would be plenty of time. But you'd be wrong.You'd think that giving an extra HOUR after that would be more than sufficient. But that just proves how foolish you really are.

  It's seven o'clock, and I'm insanely hungry. I begin hinting that maybe turkey would make a nice dessert rather than main dish.We decide the popper-upper is the Chinese's way of screwing with us, and McKay starts to carve the turkey. Which, you can see in the picture, is disturbingly pink. Back into the oven it goes.

  Eight o'clock. We decide to carve the turkey and cook the pieces.

  Eight-thirty. All the side dishes are cold, the cauliflower is burnt, but WE ARE EATING THE TURKEY NOW, SO HELP US.

  And neither of us died. So take that, turkey. And Chinese turkey pop-up manufacturers.

  Hope you all had delicious, non-wormy Christmas dinners!

P.S. I'm due on Tuesday. Pretty much in denial, but I also inwardly freak out every time I feel Lincoln move now. Was that a contraction?? Was it?! Nope. No, it was not.