So yesterday was Thanksgiving, and Freddie and I hosted at our apt. We were in charge of making the turkey. I had done a lot of research over the past month or so, and decided to go with the 2 hour turkey roaster from Safeway. The way it works is, you cook your turkey (with no stuffing on the inside) for about 2 hours at a very high heat, which makes it cook faster.

Apparently, this is not such a good idea for a gas oven, becuase it makes it smoke profusely! It was like there was a fire in our apt, there was soooo much smoke! We had to open the windows and put fans in all of them to get the smoke out, and lock the kitty in the bathroom to keep her away from both the smoke and the open windows. Finally, I couldn't take the watering eyes anymore, so I had to turn the temperature down 50 degrees, which I knew would slow down the cook time, but for fear of setting off the water sprinklers in the apt building, we had no choice. Turning down the temp definitely minimized the smoke, but we still needed to keep all the windows open... Finally, as SOON as the temp in the core reached the needed 160 degrees, I yanked the turkey out of the oven and turned the dial to off! I've never been so relieved to finish cooking something in my life!

This was our major snafu yesterday, learning that the 2 hour turkey roaster + gas oven = smoke damage to your lungs.

But after all that, and the apt was aired out, and the guests arrived, the day was great. Great food (tons of it), good friends, lots of wine (I shouldn't have had that glass of champagne though), and great conversation. I love Thanksgiving. :)