Christmas Dinner

Christmas is a difficult time to be away from home but we had a good Christmas.  We had 24 for supper again this year.  We didn't have any repeats from last year (hopefully that is not a commentary on our food). Turkey is not a popular meal here so getting one is a bit of a challenge.  My past (North American) experience would suggest the best place to buy a turkey would be a grocery store.  Unfortunately, grocery stores here do not sell turkeys.  Our turkey was purchased in a candy store/tailor shop.  As you enter the store/shop, on the left there is a wall of glass bins displaying dozens of locally made chocolates and candies.  Straight ahead there are a couple of sewing machines and a curtained-off change room.  To the right is a deep freezer full of slightly freezer-burnt turkeys.  Although that is strange enough, it gets stranger: the woman who works in the shop doesn't even sell the turkeys.  If you want to buy a turkey, you have to go next door to the pharmacy and the pharmacist will come back with you to the candy store and sell you the turkey.  Unfortunately, this year the pharmacist only had very large turkeys, even bigger than the one that barely fit in the oven last year.  I was not going to host a Christmas supper without turkey so I bought the smallest one which was 23 pounds.  Derek's eyes bugged out slightly when I lifted the turkey out of the back of the car but he said nothing.  He didn't even question my poultry purchase on Christmas morning when he was bent over the edge of the tub sawing the legs off the turkey so it would fit into the oven.  (The turkey wouldn't fit in the sink so the washing and sawing had to happen in the tub).