It’s Black Friday. The Wife and Offspring are busy undecorating Thanksgiving to make way for Christmas. Meanwhile, I’m sitting in my office typing this. I’m grateful he’s here to haul stuff up and down the stairs because my hip is giving me hell. I really aggravated it while doing some last-minute shopping on Wednesday. I need to remember not to pivot on that leg, but when the store is packed and patrons are playing full-contact grocery shopping, only the nimble survive.

I think I’ve mentioned before that Thanksgiving isn’t really my thing, but this one wasn’t bad. We stayed home, and The Wife went all out with the food. My role was minimal—I just handled the turkeys and roasted some sweet potatoes. Speaking of, the sweet potatoes were a bit of a surprise. The Wife picked them up from Whole Foods, thinking they were Japanese purple sweet potatoes. They weren’t. These were milky white inside and incredibly starchy—definitely not what we expected.

I peeled and chunked them up as uniformly as I could, (They resisted; I respect that.) and roasted them in a sheen of ghee, brown sugar, salt, black pepper, cinnamon, and cloves, reminding the wife about failure always being an option. Turns out, they were amazing. The sugar gave them a crisp-crunchy coating, and the insides were creamy-smooth. A happy accident.

I’m also very pleased with how the turkey turned out—which is rare for me. This year, we had two turkeys in the garage freezer, so I decided to break them down into individual pieces before cooking. Part of the motivation was this blog; I’ve got an idea for stuffed turkey thighs I want to try. The other reasons? Space and cooking logistics.

See, I have this bin for brining turkeys, but it only fits one 15-pound bird. I used to have another bin, but it’s currently housing vintage medical instruments (don’t ask). Not that it matters—we don’t have the fridge space we used to anyway. By breaking down the turkeys into breasts, wings, thighs, and legs, I was able to fit both into the briner at once. Bonus: I made stock in advance from the unbrined carcasses, instead of waiting until after Thanksgiving when all turkey-related motivation disappears.

Here’s the thing about cooking whole turkeys: it’s always a crap-shoot. Turkeys are giant balls of frozen variables, and as a home cook, you can only control so much. It starts at selection. Fresh (never frozen) is better – it tastes more like turkey, the tissues hold together well, and they aren’t pumped full of factory brine that has to be flushed out with your own. But the higher quality comes at a much higher price and frankly, I don’t like turkey enough to pay a premium. I’d rather spend that kind of money on other meat.

Honestly, most of my turkeys are the “free” ones the grocer hands out when you buy a ham. Occasionally, I inherit one when someone needs freezer space. And if the grocer freezes their fresh birds to extend shelf life, I’ll snag a couple at a massive discount. At that point, it’s borderline food waste, and there’s no reason to pay more than necessary.

Really the only variables I can control are the brine, the breakdown, the heat, and the smoke. The rest is up to the bird parts. I’m happy to report I pulled it off very well this year, and now I’m driving my family crazy, going on about how good the turkey was. This isn’t bragging—it’s shock. I haven’t cooked turkey this competently in years.

It really was good, though. Objectively. The apple and cranberry juice from the brine came through beautifully. It wasn’t overly seasoned. The meat stayed moist—except for the "tails" of the breasts, which weren’t dry, just less juicy than the thicker parts. Every piece of the bird cooked perfectly on its own terms because they weren’t bound together, dragging each other down.

Oh! Look! A metaphor for me to torture! Neato!

For the good of the whole, dare I say, “the collective”, the individuals making up that collective had to be treated as though they existed independently, with no regard to the collective’s needs because, in reality, there is no collective. It is an egregore, a social concept equivalent to parentheses, created to categorize and unify like individuals into a whole. Those like characteristics then become the identity of that collective and the individuals become irrelevant. Rather like to Sorting Hat in Harry Potter.

What? You think Harry, as a person, mattered? Re-read “The Deathly Hallows”. I’ll wait.

“Only a true Gryffindor could have pulled that [the Sword of Godric Gryffindor] out of the [Godric Gryffindor’s, originally] hat…”

But, you may argue, Harry’s name was in the title. Sure. It had to be called something. I doubt Scholastic would have published “Fantasy Social Class Structures, the Seven Year Conflict, and some kid called Neville.”

I’m just dicking with you. Neener neener.

Now go cook something.