Monday, December 1, 2008

Waking up from the Turkey Coma

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Great food without the stress of christmas gifts. Mike and I hosted a fried turkey festival at our apartment for those who had nowhere else to go. We ended up with about 20 people at our place, with a majority foreign grad students. However, we had a better american showing than last year, I think there about 5 of us. Where as last year, Mike and I were the only ones who actually celebrated Thanksgiving.

Fried turkey is wonderful and not quite as dangerous as many youtube videos make it out to be. The turkey friers you buy in the store have more safety features than your average car. First, you have to pass an IQ test to properly put it together. Second, there is a max-fill oil line on the pot that helps remind you that you have to account for the volume of the turkey and the expansion of the oil. Finally, the gas valve to the system has an automatic shut off valve to ensure you don’t leave the turkey unattended for more than 20 minutes. That being said, I can still see how many people can burn down houses with the apparatus. Case in point: our neighbor saw us getting the frier set up and came over to make sure that we knew that you shouldn’t fry a frozen turkey. He then proceeded to tell us that he thought it silly of us to fry the turkeys on the cement patio in the back of the building and that we should just do it on the deck of our place. He also recommended that we cover our deck with tinfoil incase there is a spill, just to be safe. He then asked us if we “liked to party” and said that he had many flavors of marijuana in his apartment if we wanted any. We graciously declined his offer and his advice. Moral of the story, frying turkeys is dangerous if you do it while high on a tin foil covered deck, but not very dangerous if you are sober, responsible, engineering/physics grad student.

Happy Holidays.

No comments: