Tomorrow I have to go and buy a turkey. You see, for some reason I decided it would be a really great idea if I were to make an English Christmas dinner for my friends here in Germany. So that’s what I’ll be doing on Saturday.
I went by Rewe today to look at turkeys. I found one that was 3800g. That’s 8.3 pounds. That’ll be enough to feed 12 people right? I mean, there’ll be plenty of other stuff to eat… mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, bread pudding, stuffing (home made I might add!), veg, pigs in blankets… the works. Anyway, where was I? Oh, turkey.
So, 8.3 pound turkey. Marvellous. Now, the things is, it’s absolutely impossible to buy a whole fresh turkey in Germany, unless you know a farmer and get him to personally wring it’s neck for you and make sure nobody tries to take it away and turn it into turkey breasts and legs and wings and… basically anything but a whole turkey. So I have to buy a frozen turkey. (Actually I’m quite lucky to get that – I found exactly 2 supermarkets in Karlsruhe that sell frozen turkeys and the only reason they even have them is because we’re so close to the French border! That’s right, they’re French turkeys – Germany is not a turkey country, apparantly). The problem with the ginormous frozen turkey is that it’s, well… frozen. And a huge 3.8 pound turkey takes a long time to defrost. A very long time. Waaay longer than I was expecting. According to the internet a turkey of that size will take around 48 hours to defrost in the fridge. Yes, I said Fourty-eight. Hours. That’s madness! And brings us to problem number two…
Exactly where am I supposed to defrost this giant turkey? I do not own a whole fridge. I have one measly little shelf in a small fridge that I share with 2 other people. There’s no way on Earth I’m going to get that turkey on my shelf. Even if I had no other food in the fridge I’d probably struggle to get the turkey in there. So I’m now going with the stick the turkey in my floor’s drinks fridge option as suggested by Jan. I just hope none of the people I live with objects. Currently there are exactly 2 bottles of water in the drinks fridge so it should be ok, but knowing my luck this will be the week that everyone decides they desperately need cold beverages or else the world will come to an end.
Wish me luck?
Confuzzledom 