You may recall that the 3-D Frankendaddy had thyroid surgery just one week before Christmas. He had to take it really easy. In fact, for several days all he did was snooze. He would wake up from a nap in his favourite chair in order to go lie down in bed and sleep.
Walter wasn't allowed to drive until his 'stitches' came out, which was supposed to be on Christmas Day. So we had to rely on others, in the meantime, to pick up anything we needed at the store. We had tried to stock up on most things, but of course, there are always those perishables -- including the Christmas turkey.
My neighbour and best friend, Susan, who lives right across the street offered to pick things up for us. She was going shopping for her own turkey, and asked if we wanted one as well. Of course, I jumped on the offer even being pre-warned that she was going for a utility turkey. I could have specified otherwise, I'm sure, but I just thought I'd go with the flow. After all, how bad could it be?
Well, let's just say that life imitated life on this occasion, and I literally had to stitch my turkey together with toothpicks! For the Frankenturkey effect, I have added bolts digitally.
I want to emphasize that none of this was my friend's fault. The turkey looked perfectly viable when it was frozen and in the package. However, once thawed and out of its protective covering, it was obvious that the skin was missing entirely on both breasts, from the neck end right through to the butt end! Not only that but there were some nasty hematomas, dark purple in colour, on the breast meat itself. This unlucky turkey had really been brutalized, poor thing!
Anyway, I did what I could to avoid total disaster by removing excess skin from the neck end. In fact there was so much skin just hanging there that I was able to cover most of the breasts, as you can see. I also used what they call the "Pope's nose" (which is quite fatty) to cover the rest.
In the end, we were able to salvage our turkey dinner (which we had postponed until the 26th). My son was supposed to come over on Christmas Day but he was ill with some stomach ailment which had very unpleasant side effects. My brother joined us on Boxing Day for the turkey meal, but my son was still under the weather. The turkey meat was a little dry, but not as bad as it could have been, and when drowned in gravy (which turned out to be the saving grace) it was entirely edible.
Walter was somewhat alarmed when black stuff oozed out of the turkey breast as he was carving it (the cooked blood from the hematomas no doubt), but soldiered on and around the damaged parts.
So between surgeries, illnesses and Frankenturkeys, it was not the best of Christmases, but we got through it with our sense of humour intact!
And it's over now and things are back to normal including Walter who actually went to work yesterday, sans stitches and he survived. All I can say is 'Hallelujah'!
