Bacon Wrapped Turkey

Who doesn't love a big Thanksgiving dinner? Right. Nobody. I remember when I was little I was a picky eater. Ok, who am I kidding, I am still a picky eater. Back then Thanksgiving was more like a buffet of foreign food than anything else and I would pick my way through my plate, trying one bite of something green and moving to something red and always finishing by eating three or more rolls because they were the only thing I could get my taste buds to accept. Warm from the oven and sooooo soft.

Even the turkey wasn't complete without some ranch on it. I am pretty sure I am the only person who does that and I was so self-conscious about it that I would always dip my ranch sauce next to my turkey on my plate and pretend that they were just touching each other the way most people's food does on thanksgiving, or any other day. Not on my plate though. Everything was always at least an inch apart. Everything except my vegetable dip and turkey. I know. I am sneaky.

It wasn't until I was in college that I decided that stuffing was ok and another year later until it was ok to mix the stuffing with the mashed potatoes and maybe a bite of turkey. Thanksgiving and I have had a hard time getting along from the beginning but we are slowly becoming friends over the course of many years, though I am pretty sure I will never be able to get through more than a taste of yams and I don't know if I will ever touch gravy.

This year we added bacon to our Thanksgiving selection. A friend of ours had cooked their college turkey wrapped in bacon and sang its praises before heading off to California for a real family meal. It's definitely something I would give a second chance, although it took longer to cook than any of us had planned on. And then it still wasn't done. We cut into it enough to grab a handful of pieces from the breast and everyone had one or two pieces with dinner, hoping that there would be some leftovers for later when the bird was completely cooked. Not so lucky. That thing was still juicing when we took it out to put the pies in for dessert a hour or so later. Needless to say, who wants to babysit a turkey. A little more was salvaged but no one had any dark meat from that bird. The bacon was definitely amazing and it was a great memory to have us all gathered around the bird, peeling the bacon off and eating it right there instead of waiting to put it on a plate and pass it around the table. Definitely a tradition I wouldn't mind keeping. I've got to figure out a better way to cook that bird with bacon, though.