Erste Truthahn Zubereitung - Our First Turkey

Hey all
Hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving weekend.
In Munich, with our princeton friends - we had our first Princeton Munich Thanksgiving Dinner at grace apartment. It was just awesome. The story unfolds:
Even thou we moved it from saturday night to friday night so that maximum people can attend it, thou time to prepare food was much less as everyone had workin day.. Everyone had some last minute assigned tasks ;-)
So i met up with claudi to buy some Glüwein n Brownie and arrived at grace place around 7:30. And guess what our 3.8 kgs (8 pounds) of deeeeeeeep frozen turkey was waiting for us.
During the day i was looking for: where to get turkey and pumpkin pie (don't even think abt this) in munich and most forums were like oh its hard to find a turkey, its expensive and takes 5-6 hours to cook, n this n that. So i was pretty sure, Marc (it was his task to get the dead bird, turkey, chicken, whatever) won't get one and we wud settle for chicken which is easier to cook. And the other imp thing which was even more motivating, no-one had ever made turkey in our entire guest list (with 2 americans, one veg).
So we enter the apartment and marc with his frozen turkey submerged in hot water to defrost, ok what next, we have the dead bird.. now what to do with it.
First Thought: its frozen , if we keep it in water it take 2 hours or more just to defrost and 6 hours to go, means 8-9 hours. We decided to put the big bird in the microwave and defrost asap (which was a task in itself). So after an hour (like 8:30 or so), we took in out and tried opening in legs and wings; and clean it to make space for filling and put it again back. Mean time grace made a nice filling for it (rice, croutons, sauce etc.).
Second Thought: ok its kinda defrosted and ready to do something with the bird ;-), had a quick look on internet for receipe. And then the big move to keep it in the oven. We took it out of microwave, on the tray, buttered it, filling in, and there goes our turkey in the oven at 250 °C at 9:30 PM.
Third Thought: ok, we need to cover it from top also, otherwise in 2-3-4 hours it will be all black on top, so covered top with foil.
Fourth Thought: Mean time, we had the first round of food, with veg soup, bread, rice n drinks.

Oh in between all these thoughts (which are actually full tasks of one hour each), forgot our big vodka guy - stephan - who was ready with vodka with orange juice for all of us ;-)).. no empty glasses for anyone
Also after every 15-20 min, we took the turkey out, battered it with its own fat, it was cool and it started to change color and smell (uu, can still smell it ;-)) and back to oven

checkin out the turkey nth time

Had a beer pong match also in between, guys vs gals (no prize for guessing, WE WON, only one in-glass shot for gals)

our make-shift beer pong table

And our turkey was looking perfect, smelled perfect and everything perfect.

Tempting Turkey :-°°

battering the turkey.. isn't the turkey looking beautiful ;-)

Fifth Thought: On the table everyone, Turkey is ready (11:45 PM, in just over an 4 hours) :-)) (oh forgot again, lot of things happened in between all this, one.. turkey sauce, zophia made sauce for turkey)

PERFECTLY COOKED TURKEY, TASTED YUMMMMMY, ABSOLUTELY PEFRECT :-)))) (com'on it was our first, i had too write this long).. EVERYONE enjoyed it all lot. And to make it even better (Deutsch touch), we served our HOT GLÜWIEN, perfect combination. And ate till the last piece of meat on it. I was terribly full. But full of satisfaction also.

And then the brownie, woh, i thought i won't able to eat anything but cudn't resist it..*g*

And thats how it all went, with joy n laugther, & thats what it is all about.. cheers to everyone who was there :-)