A plucking good Christmas Turkey Dinner extravaganza in Senegal!

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Dear Family and Friends

Thank you for all the warm holiday wishes. This week I would like to recount the epic tale of Jan’s Operation Turkey Dinner Senegal 2010.

This small chapter of my life that involved a grand heroic quest for a turkey began quite a while back. On one of my many random escapades into the country side I had seen a live squawking turkey with my very own eyes. The knowledge that they existed brought me hope yet no closer to my goal, as I still had no idea how to find or eat one in Saint Louis. As my last blog may have indicated I have been having a hankering for some taste of home and comfort to supplement family with a equally lonely group of strangers in a foreign land such as myself. In the lead up to Christmas I had been circulating amongst my the expats that I was hell bent on cooking a turkey for Christmas in an hurclean effort to taste home.

In the week leading up to the holy day, I began my search, fortunately for me if you take off a day dedicated to finding a turkey, it can be done. So done in the last minute Christmas rush spirit, I set off with our hired handyman Bocar to find an overgrown fowl for the oven. We searched much of the town, asking directions, knocking on random doors, asking more directions, all the while trudging through the bustlingly streets of Saint Louis, we finally found a vendor who had turkeys in stock. But like any good Sénégalese financial transaction you do not receive your goods immediately, there is a period of waiting when the said turkey is located and produced.

I assume most of your turkey experiences were rather mundane, cold, emotionless experiences that the largest trouble involved rummaging through the bin of frozen turkeys for the one that met your weight specifications.

Mine differed.
My turkey looked me in the eye and gobbled.

Having a live, gobbling turkey in your kitchen is a bit of a daunting experience. Quite a change from the frozen geneticaly modified monstrocity that I usually have to deal with. Fortunately our handyman Bocar was a little more practiced with birds than I was… none the less with a dull knife, bucket of hot water, spurting blood, strewn feathers, turkey guts, and overall mayhem it was no easy feat to execute, pluck, clean and prepare a turkey in a sandy backyard. Furthermore, when your hands are covered in bird blood, photo op moments were not the most opportune, thus the few meager, off camera shots will have to do.

When the turkey gobbled no more and his gizzards were cat food, I commenced the second stage of Operation Turkey Dinner Senegal. I invited every single expatriate that I knew to my house to drink, be merry and eat turkey dinner. Friday morning I went out and bought all the necessary vegetables and spices for my feast than a gin and tonic was poured and cooking ensued. Despite my somewhat primitive cooking conditions, eg putting the turkey in a giant cauldron pot, as baking pans do not exist here, everything was going quite well. I made homemade stuffing, boiled potatoes for mashing, put the turkey in the oven for backing at the lowest heat possible and then in proper holiday spirit spent the rest of the day wracked in pain from a light dose of salmonella poisoning... In all I still had good time, people came by, food was made, wine was drunk, laughs were had, all in all there was a Christmas cheer in air in between bouts of projectile vomiting, it really and honestly was a good Christmas. In short always wash your hands and NEVER eat stuffing that has been put in the turkey before thoroughly cooked! We all learn the hardway...

As this is the halfway part in my trip here, I am looking forward to a new year with god knows what will conclude this adventure, or let along my next one. I hope everyone one has had an equally good Christmas and New Years. I am sending much love to everyone!!!

So in all life is good, had a bit of a slump around Christmas, being sick, work almost nonexistent, have had a lot of free time to read and indulge in antisocial behavior.

Love
Jan

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Photos

It was plucking hard!
can resist the bad puns