At Least I Wasn't Cooking For A Crowd.

Since I cook mostly for myself, even meat laden poultry carcasses, there's room for error. Usually, when making myself a Thanksgiving turkey, my error is in the thawing. Basically, I forget to do it within a reasonable time frame.

But, this year. Oh this year.

I started thawing that sucker on Monday. However, at just over 11 pounds, it was still a bit icey this morning, so I let in soak in an ice bath. Eventually, I opened up the Butterball plastic and was greeted with ice chips in the cavity. I stuck my hand in to pull out the bag of guts to find the neck was frozen solid, so I pulled out the package of guts, contorting the frozen neck to pull it out. I then stuck my hand in the cavity to remove the ice chips and rinsed out the aforementioned cavity.

Know what my error was this year? Friggin' giblet baggie!

Apparently, the giblets were in their own baggie, not the neck baggie, but since I took out a baggie, stuck my hand through the bird and rinsed it out, it never occurred to me to check for a second baggie. Since I don't use guts & necks, the bag goes directly into the trash and I don't even look inside.

Do you know how amateur of an error that is? I've cooked at least 5 turkeys all by myself and this is the first time I've ever cooked the bag of guts! I would've been embarrassed, but it's not like there were familial witnesses who will joke about this for years to come.

Thank Goodness.

The real kicker is this morning I was reading a list of quick-fixes for Thanksgiving mistakes and one was cooking the bag of giblets/neck. I thought to myself, "How do you not take out the bag? How silly."

Silly me.

"I wasn't ready to go
I'm never ready to go
Twenty-seven years of nothin' but failures and promises that I couldn't keep
Oh Lord, I wasn't ready to go
I'm never ready to go
Let it ride. Let it ride easy down the road
Let it ride. Let it take away all of the darkness
Let it ride. Let it rock me in the arms of strangers, angels until it brings me home
Let it ride. Let it roll. Let it go"
-Ryan Adams & the Cardinals