TURKEY TURKEY

First off, a better picture of me on a camel:

Next, real updates. Wednesday classes were pretty excellent. For Barnaby's we spent the whole class wandering around to various galleries in Shoreditch, the artsy fartsy capitol of London (example: according to Barnaby, Shoreditch was voted the coolest place to live in Europe in a public vote in Italy. I assume it was run by an Italian magazine or newspaper or some such thing). There was some... interesting... art. Nice to wander around at the very least, even though it was COLD.




Street art in Shoreditch



Sneak picture of Barnaby in one of the galleries

Jean was true to her word; we spent the first half of class discussing The Winter's Tale, and the second half in a pub down the street called The Rugby Tavern. Lovely.




Jean and me in the Rugby Tavern

 Thursday we had a paper due for Dr. King on Riddley Walker, so I spent Weds. night putting the final touches on that before rushing out to try to find a roasting pan for the turkey that I had to make for Thanksgiving! Found one, and was only 15 minutes late for pub quiz :) Dr. King came again (WOO!), and we STILL did awfully. Which goes to show you how difficult pub quizzes here can be. Serious business, these pub quizzes. We bonded some more with Louis and invited him to Thanksgiving dinner (which he declined because he was already going to one! With a friend from California). Then back to the flat for bed, which ended up being "back to the flat for a marathon cleaning session." The boys' apartment, AKA Cooking Ground Zero, was an absolute mess. They hadn't done dishes in some weeks (literally. They just pile dishes in and wash them as they need them, so the ones on the bottom were grey. With mold. Disgusting), and there was schmutz all over the counters, so John and Hayes helped me to clean up. I washed, John dried and stacked, and Hayes worked on the rest of the work space (counters and table... a glorious undertaking). Our early night ended up being a fairly late night; took almost 2 hours to get everything up to my standards. I felt like my Pop Pop, marshaling them about and trying to make sure that my Operating Space was clean for the next day (Jack had offered earlier to wake up early to take the dishes out of the sink and stack them next to it. I almost had a heart attack...). After a good long cleaning session though, the space was clean and ready for Operation Thanksgiving the next day. On to bed then because Hayes and I had an early day on Thurs...

Up at 6:40 to pick up the turkey at 7 on Thanksgiving morning! The butcher was really nice and tied the turkey up with string and all that nonsense, which was really good because I didn't have any string. Hayes, gentleman that he is, carried that 18.5 lb bird all the way back to the flat, and stopped with me to buy some tin foil (because turkeys need tin foil hats for the first part of their cook-age, as I learned). We were back by 7:20 or so, leaving me with plenty of time to get the bird washed and dressed and bundled (tin foil hat, get it?) before popping it into the oven at 9. Even had time for some tea and oatmeal. Good morning.

Off to class to discuss A Man for All Seasons, a play about Thomas More and Henry VIII. Dr. King was headed to visit his Mom for the weekend, and had let slip on Tuesday night (at our farewell dinner) that he had forgotten about it being Thanksgiving and wouldn't have scheduled class at ALL had he remembered, so he let us out early :) Nice. We were greeted with the smell of cooking turkey, and I got to start basting it earlier than anticipated, about 2.5 hours into the cooking instead of 3.5. I quickly discovered that cooking a turkey is boring work. It's all fun and games when it goes into the oven, and more fun and games when it comes out, but the in between time is just...dull. So, we watched Scrubs and Friends on TV, and salivated over the turkey smell that was everywhere in the boys' apartment.

I took Dad's advice and bought some bacon to lay on the turkey for the last hour or so of cooking, and that provided the snacks for when the turkey actually came out of the oven. John helped me to figure out how to get the bird out of the pan once it came out of the oven (a surprisingly difficult undertaking when you're working with a kitchen stocked with only the bare-bones cooking tools that college kids normally need for food prep), and all of a sudden my kitchen was filled with invaders!



My Masterpiece



Hayes and Jack Invaders!

"Whatcha doin? Huh? Makin' gravy? I don't think that's going to be enough gravy." Thanks, Jack

Gravy making went spectacularly. Because of the concerns of a Little Bird, I made extra, and we now have two soup containers full of left over gravy sitting in my refrigerator.

See that nice, rich brown gravy? Mmmmm, tasty :)

We were only about 20 minutes off from my projected Dinner Time which I think is pretty damn good, and everyones' contributions were fantastic. We ate ourselves silly and then sat around listening to 90s rap music while we digested. Eventually, we hauled ourselves up and went off to the pub to play some after dinner darts, but I threw in the towel around 10 out of sheer exhaustion and headed back to the flat. Cooking a turkey is serious, exhausting business!

I was up at a decent hour today (before noon!), and I'm nursing a stuffy nose. Erin ever so kindly has offered to share her orange juice with me, so I'm doing the Vitamin C thing. I'm going Mind Over Matter on this one, and REFUSING to get sick. I just have too much work to do. My research paper about British Brewing is due on Tuesday, Dr. King's final (for which we have the questions to prepare in advance) is on Monday, and Barnaby's exam and Jean's Shakespeare paper are both on Wednesday. And then it's time to go! Mom and Dad will be here on Wednesday, and then we head off to France and Italy. I seriously can hardly believe it.

In conclusion: Operation Thanksgiving was a roaring success. Now, it's time to get back to work.



London Thanksgiving dinner

**All of these pictures were taken by Ruthie except the last one which was taken by Erin. I stole them.