Love inspires me to do crazy things. For example, decide to roast a turkey for my students for an early Thanksgiving Dinner.  My husband and I work at a boarding school, and each staff member chooses a faculty family–a small group of students that we’ll mentor and hang out with over the course of the school year.

Our school serves vegetarian meals.  I’ve never eaten meat.  My husband is ok with that, and I’ve cooked vegetarian at home for 26 years.  Our students aren’t vegetarian, and they miss meat, so a few years ago I decided that because I really do love my students and I want our faculty family to feel like home, I would prepare meat when they come over.

Roasting a Turkey Requires Planning Ahead

A #vegetarian roasts a #turkey for love's sake. Tips for doing it right! Click To Tweet

(No one is paying me to mention their products–I haven’t actually tasted anything and am only basing my opinions on the pleased expressions, comments and compliments of my students).

Lesson One:  Buy your frozen turkey at least four days in advance and store it in the refrigerator.   Frozen turkeys take a LONG time to thaw (and a person can’t just leave it out on the counter overnight–unless you want to send everyone home with food poisoning). I purchased a Safeway’s Open Nature turkey because the label said the turkey had been raised without hormones and on a vegetarian diet.  My students have enough hormones, thank you very much!  And at least the bird and I had something in common.

Lesson Two:  It will take you longer to prepare the turkey than you think it will.  Start early.  Sometimes, the turkey is trussed with Medieval instruments of torture.  You have to remove these metal doohickeys, reach your hand into the cavity and pull.  Something that people don’t want to eat will come out (a neck).  This is another good reason to make sure your turkey has properly thawed (otherwise, you might get frostbite).

Don’t forget to reach into that cavity and pull out the neck.

Lesson Three:  Turkeys need baths and dressing, too.  I read a lot of instructions–some on the packaging the bird arrived in, some from the oven bag box.  All the instructions made me giggle (except the warnings about cooking the bird to a certain temperature–I had my daughter go out and buy a meat thermometer).  Anyone out there an Amelia Bedelia fan?

For the rub, I mixed together 1/2 Tablespoon each of dried basil, sage, thyme and oregano with 1/2 Tablespoon of olive oil.  It smelled good, so I used it.

Lesson Four:  It’s ok to cheat.  Buy an oven bag (I used a Reynolds Turkey-sized oven bag) and a disposable roasting pan.  It’s worth the six-dollar investment to be able to wave adios to the leftovers at the end of the meal!

Lesson Five: Disinfect!  I made sure to spray all the surfaces that touched the raw meat with a bleach solution (including my hands).  I’m not a germaphobe, but caution never hurts.

Lesson Six: Know when to call in the experts.  After baking the turkey for the requisite number of hours based on it’s size, it still didn’t look done.  This goes back to lesson number two.  Everything will take longer than you expect.  The stuffing (which I baked separately so that I could eat it) got a little overdone whilst waiting on the bird. Finally, I asked one of my students to take a peak.  She said it looked done.  Between her and the thermometer, I couldn’t go wrong.

Lesson Seven:  The joy on the faces of my students as they ate turkey was worth touching raw meat.  We had a wonderful dinner, made some great memories, and everyone said the turkey tasted delicious (moist, full of flavor and perfectly done)–I’ll take their word on it!).

What inspires you?
Inspire Me Monday Instructions
Link up below, and don’t forget the 1-2-3s of building community:

1. Link up your most inspirational post from the previous week (just ONE, please).

2. Vist TWO other contributors (especially the person who linked up right before you) and leave an encouraging comment.

3. Spread the cheer THREE ways! Tweet something from a post you read, share a post on your Facebook page, stumble upon it, pin it or whatever social media outlet you prefer–just do it!

Please link back to this week’s post or add the button to your post so that we can spread the inspirational cheer :).

I found inspiration for my Monday at #inspirememondays. Join us! (tweet this)

So, go ahead! Take the plunge and share your most inspiring post with us!