iamtonyang.com

any grand notions of waking up early sunday morning to go check the supermarket to see if they restocked their XL turkeys was just a notion at that. in reality, i didn't make it to market basket until 10:30am. market basket on a quiet day can be a madhouse crush of people. on the last weekend before thanksgiving? something you may not wish on your worst enemy. from the nearly filled bike rack, i knew it wasn't going to be pleasant. i made a beeline to the frozen turkey department. there were birds in the 20/24lb section, but they were really just 16/20lb turkey moved over to take up the space. the largest one i found was 17lbs, which i grabbed, fearing i wasn't going to do any better. i called my father to confirm, but in talking with him, i decided try elsewhere for a bigger bird, 17lbs. didn't seem like enough. so i left market basket with just some flan-making ingredients (gallon of whole milk, a carton of eggs).

i tried again the star market across the street, but couldn't find any of their frozen turkeys (in hindsight i think they're kept in the freezer cabinets, not the refrigerated bins), just fresh turkeys which were too expensive. i was a little worried. maybe we waited too long to buy a turkey, and now all the large sized turkeys were gone?

arriving in belmont via bicycle, i ate some rice noodles before my mother and i left in search of our thanksgiving bird. our last hope was the watertown stop & stop (pleasant street), which is a rather large supermarket that doesn't get a lot of shoppers due to nearby russo's; if anyplace would have a lot of surplus turkey, it'd be them. but first we went to nearby waltham ocean state job lot (river street), to get a smaller birdfeeder for my mother amongst other things. but while we were there, we realized there was a shaw's supermarket right next door, so we decided to take a peek and see if they had any turkeys.

shaw's¹ didn't have a lot of frozen birds either. the largest one we saw was 16bs. (only $8!) but that was even smaller than the 7lbs turkey i nearly bought at market basket but later returned. so my mother and i were debating whether or not to just buy this 16lbs bird and call it a day, since there was no guarantee we'd find something larger at stop & shop. so we almost decided to take the 16lbs. when my mother thought we should just get a fresh turkey instead. we went to the fresh turkey bin and she found a perfectly-sized 20 lbs. bird. granted, it was $24 (3x more expensive than frozen), but with thanksgiving in a few more days, a fresh turkey meant we wouldn't have to thaw it and could begin brining right away. so we ended up buying the fresh turkey. my mother also scored a bunch of keurig coffee cups on sale ($5/box).

finally we went to OSJL. they had a lot of bird feed, but the selection of feeders was somewhat lacking. i told my mother we could just my old deluxe feeder (can take 9lbs. of seeds) and got a suet feeder instead ($2) anda suet cake ($1). returning home, we passed by the stop & shop and i could see that the parking lot was also pretty full. when we got home i set up the suet feeder and hung it from the shepherd's pole in the backyard. never had a suet feeder before, wonder how it takes before squirrels start pillaging the cake!

my father came home with the brine solution in a large bucket and began preparing the turkey.² there was some juice in the bag and some chunks of ice in the center of the turkey. also in the cavity: a large length of turkey neck and some organs (liver). my father removed some loose skin around both ends of the turkey before putting the turkey into the bucket and submerging in the brine solution. he also had a bag of ice which i didn't understand until i learned that you have brine the turkey in cold condition to prevent the bird from spoiling. so either put it in the refrigerator (impossible with a bird so large) or add ice to lower the temperature.

Vestibulum auctor facilisis fringilla. Suspendisse molestie rhoncus magna quis tincidunt. Donec vel lorem cursus, dictum felis eu, pulvinar tortor. Integer nec mauris leo. Nullam facilisis, augue id maximus egestas, nisi augue tempor tortor, ac porta nulla orci in libero. Pellentesque at dolor vel lectus porta commodo eget eget leo. Suspendisse quis erat non mauris dignissim pulvinar ac ut lacus. Aliquam et dui fermentum, convallis erat vitae, blandit urna. Nulla vitae rutrum mi, id pharetra orci. Aliquam dapibus purus ex, cursus dictum augue luctus non. Ut eget eros pharetra, pulvinar erat ac, dignissim urna.

¹ shaw's bought star market a while ago, so technically they're the same supermarkets. but apparently that's not quite true, as we discovered things on sale at star's (e.g. asparagus, $1.99/lb) that weren't on sale at shaw's (asparagus, $2.99/lb) and vice versa. that's strange because there were also many things that were on sale at both chains. i guess they do this to make bargain shopping more fun for the customers!

² shady brook farms fresh turkeys are actually already basted (brined) with turkey broth, salt, sugar, vinegar, celery, rosemary. double brining!