Our Journey: Brandon's Turkey

This whole fiasco started nearly six weeks before turkey day, as we sat around the pool with our Thanksgiving family, delegating pieces of the meal to each other. I'd made an apple pie for a previous gathering and was put on pie duty for Thanksgiving. Others had made various side dishes for other BBQ's and/or at last year's feast and were called upon to recreate those dishes.

Then it got to Brandon.

And we all laughed.

He didn't know why.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that his usual contribution to a meal is in the form of drinks? Maybe?

His pride took a hit and - you know Brandon - he set his sights high. "Fine!" he said. "You laugh all you want; I'll make the turkey!"

We chuckled again; well, they all chuckled and I rolled my eyes, knowing that Brandon is just stubborn enough to make it happen. Then I got nervous about how much it was going to cost us to import this darn bird.

The rest of the story is best told with the pictures I took of the process. I forgot a few of the first "steps" so you'll just have to imagine Brandon planted in the chair at the computer, youtube-ing "how to brine a turkey." His jaw hit the floor several times as one video kept throwing out lines like "two days later" then "wait overnight" and "three days later." I just laughed. And he found another recipe that had a shorter timeline.