The Miraculous Turkey

I have a few photos from one of my recent writing assignment photo shoots concerning the perils of deep-frying a turkey. (Don't do it! It's not worth it!)

My editor and I, plus a photographer, headed to the fire department's training facility so that the training captain could help us blow up a turkey. Well, we arranged it all ahead of time, of course. I don't know that you can knock on the fire department's front door and just ask that sort of thing.

Anyway, here are a few photos.

Meet our bird. This is the poor sucker all wrapped up pre-deep-frying incident. Notice the weight. It says 18 pounds. 18!!! Turns out my editor had a really difficult time finding a turkey around town in the firs place. (Maybe all the grocery stores are getting ready for Thanksgiving by clearing out all the "old" turkeys? Who knows.) So this was the only turkey he could find. Therefore, this was the smallest turkey he could find. Personally, I felt a little guilty. There are people who struggle to put food on their tables all the time, and here we were, about to drop an 18-pound fowl into a vat of hot peanut oil just for the photo opp. Sad face. At least the magazine will be distributing food to people for the holiday. That makes me feel a little better.

And this is the poor dear all unwrapped and exposed. Oh, also -- frozen. Because that's one of the big mistakes people make when they try to deep-fry a turkey. Please, for the love of all known safety precautions, THAW the bird COMPLETELY beforehand. Or just don't deep-fry your turkey, that would be better.

This is the fire captain about to hack into the turkey with the sledgehammer he's holding in his right hand. It had to be done in order to wedge some metal into the bird in order to suspend the thing from a rope in order to hang it over a rafter in order to safely lower the thing into the pot in which it would eventually be cooked.

This is the turkey being dropped into the pot. I didn't get the big splash of hot oil (400 degrees, I think it was), but here you can see that some of the oil spilled over the edge of the pot and is burning over the heat source underneath. Pay no attention to my editor's elbow. He was trying to take photos with a digital SLR. I only had my iPhone on-hand. This also explains the poor quality of my photo.

After about 30 seconds, the fire captain raised the turkey from the pot. Notice how it already looks all golden and delicious. This is him inspecting the turkey and the equipment to make sure everything's OK for us to dunk the turkey one more time. And so it continued, more of the dunking and hot oil flying everywhere and the bird sizzling.

If you plan on deep-frying a turkey (you're crazy!), it's imperative you follow the safety precautions found here. Do NOT use an 18-pound turkey (use 12 pounds or less). Do NOT use a frozen turkey. Do NOT fill the pot almost to the top with oil (like we did here to get a splash). DO have a fire extinguisher present. Or, you know, a fire captain. Who has a fire extinguisher with him. Did I mention you should follow the safety precautions found here?

All (poor-quality) photos by Sway Sovay

Sway's Weekend Music Pick: "With Rainy Eyes" by Emancipator

I'm kind of obsessed with Emancipator's stuff right now. It's perfectly chill and good to work or study by. Great for autumn somehow, too. You can hear more at emancipatormusic.com.

Cuddle With Me

This week has been sickly. Wait, no, I meant me. I've been sickly. Not actually sick, mind you, just feeling sick. Sick of being awake.

It started with Monday. I spent probably 10 hours that day working on a feature article for a client who wanted to submit something to the ever glamorous publication Soft Drinks International. I spent most of the weekend and Monday thinking and reading way more about plastic than I've ever wanted to, let's just say that. I filed the article with my client at 1:30 a.m. and went to bed.

Now, I don't know how old you are, whoever you are, but I am 26, and according to my genetic aging process, have long passed the age during which I can still pull an all-nighter -- even a quarter-of-a-nighter -- and still manage to fully function. No, I'm already an old geezer when it comes to staying up past my bedtime (9:30 p.m.) and I was thus 100% USELESS the next day. Although, in my defense, it's not like I got to sleep in or anything. I still woke up at 5:30 a.m. to be sure I was "in the office" at the usual time (7 a.m. Phoenix time) for my East Coast clients, plus I knew I was going to need to make myself available in the event the plastics article needed revisions.

Worked until roughly noon, until my workload came to a reasonable stopping point, then I set an alarm on my phone and shut my eyes on the couch for just a few minutes ...

One hour later, I woke up and got right back to work, but I swear, being that tired and trying to form cohesive sentences and type with accuracy is pretty darn near impossible. You end up typing things like "... but the real issue with PLA plastics isn't their durability, it's that their kittens are so cuddle with me ..." I know you know this to be true.

The next thing I knew, my boyfriend was arriving home from work already. I thought, "Good. I can stop working. We'll eat dinner. We'll watch a sitcom. We'll go to bed. And I'll get my usual eight hours of sleep and feel a whole lot better in the morning.

No.

"Well," my boyfriend said, "I have to go in to work early tomorrow morning, so we'd better just eat and then go to bed."
"What? How? How early?" I managed to stammer.
"I have to be there at 5," he said. "I'll set our alarm for 3:30."
Nooooooooooooo.

By the time all was said and done, what with defrosting the chicken and boiling the pasta and grilling said chicken to perfection and then eating said chicken with creamy alfredo sauce (Seriously, it was either that or just yogurt and beer. Note to self: buy frozen pizzas and/or TV dinners during next grocery trip), we didn't make it to bed any earlier than usual. In fact, we actually made it to bed later, so I only ended getting about six or six and a half hours of sleep. Funny how after you've had the same schedule for years those one or two hours can make such a huge difference right?

As a result, on Wednesday I was "in the office" by 5 a.m. I worked until 12:15 p.m., at which point I had to drive to Downtown Scottsdale, more specifically, to the fire department, to meet my editor and a photographer there for a story I've been assigned. Long story short, even though we had an appointment, there was a gross mis-communication prior to our arrival, and the trip turned out to be a bust. So I drove home, worked, then my boyfriend came home from work early since he'd started early, he played some Modern Warfare and then went to water polo practice. (Yes, a couple months ago it was rowing, now it's water polo -- I know, I can't keep up either.) I kept working.

Boyfriend came home at 10:00 from practice, there was some semblance of a dinner, then there was sleep. But not much, because going to bed at 11:00 and getting up at 5:30 means you're going to spend at least the first 30 minutes just thinking about the fact that you're going to bed at 11 and getting up at 5:30. It's the sick law of dreading what's coming.

So today -- exhausted. Today -- still behind on work for the week. Today -- had to interview a rambler over the phone. Today -- forgot to eat lunch. Today -- exhausted.

Today ... Tonight ... have to somehow clean up the house, because the in-laws arrive tomorrow morning.

Yes, that's right, in a fantastic twist of fate known as The Worst Timing Ever, they will be arriving from Oklahoma in the morning and I will somehow have to make sure they have decent living quarters and a refrigerator stocked with something more than just yogurt and beer.

Don't worry, I've pulled it off before.

And then after they leave on Sunday, so help me, I am going to sleep. For days.

Don't Forget To Park Your Cow

Los Angeles to New York City

This cool time-lapse video is kind of mesmerizing, and it definitely makes me want to go on a roadtrip. Bad.

Sway's Weekend Music Pick: "All I Want" by Kate Earl

The View from Montserrat Mountain, Spain

"Earth is crammed with heaven." - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Photo by Sway Sovay