Tomorrow is the Thanksgiving pot luck lunch at my office and I’m in charge of the turkey. I don’t pretend to possess any degree of turkey prowess – I’m more of a baker, really – but last year, I managed to cook a turkey breast successfully in my handy dandy crock pot. I offered to make a pumpkin cheesecake this year and let someone else handle the main attraction, but there weren’t any volunteers to take that on, much to no one’s surprise. So I shrugged and added turkey breast to my grocery list this week.
I planned on prepping the whole thing tonight so that I could switch on the crock pot when I got up in the morning. The meat had to cook for 6 hours, so that would work just fine for lunchtime. The recipe I consulted in my Fix It and Forget It cookbook assured me that I didn’t have to thaw out the turkey, so I lugged the stone-like mass out of my freezer and klonked it into the serving dish of my crock pot. However, when I busted through the wrapper, I discovered that there was a blasted gravy packet frozen to the meat. Argh. I grabbed the nearby kitchen shears to chip away at the ice surrounding the gravy packet when I realized that there were three major factors preventing my extraction. The gravy packet was four times larger than I anticipated, its contents were frozen and rigid, and worst of all, due to its curved shape, the frozen-solid turkey breast had a death grip on the stupid thing. As I came to this soggy conclusion, I accidentally punctured the packet with my shears and gravy slush came seeping out.
Lord, what a mess.
I ran the whole thing under the coldest water my faucet could produce in an effort to safely melt the ice surrounding the gravy packet. Unfortunately, this plan didn’t exactly work and rendered me with hands that were frozen stiff and completely numb. I gritted my teeth as I attempted to pry the turkey breast from the gravy – “Come on, you know you want to!” – but to no avail.