Thank you mefites for all the can-I-eat-this questions

November 26, 2015 8:29 AM

I've been cooking turkeys for decades and I have never accidentally left an uncooked turkey out. Yesterday I did and when I discovered it this morning i remembered all the can-I-eat-this posts here, reread a turkey one, and pitched it. Thank you all the many people here who have told us all when eating something might make us very sick. Enjoy your holiday if you're USan, enjoy the day if you're not. You all enrich my life.
posted by mareli to MetaFilter-Related at 8:29 AM (16 comments total)

I put my thanks forth today in the form of a brief tune on Music.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:15 AM on November 26, 2015

At last! Someone who didn't eat it! All these years have been totally worth it.

Glad you and your friends/family/test subjects dodged that bullet, evn if you are eating a big bowl of breakfast cereal with all the trimmings.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:10 AM on November 26, 2015 [11 favorites]

Fun times in my past: having thanksgiving at my husband's grandmother's house, given that she is a rather testy and easily offended individual, and she just stores the uncooked turkey in her garage.

None of us died, miraculously.
posted by meese at 10:56 AM on November 26, 2015 [5 favorites]

So, this is the thank-you thread?

Thanks to Metafilter for all the advice over the years. It is now lodged in my head and I rarely have to actually post my questions. Thank you for expanding my horizons and teaching me about things I would never learn otherwise. Thanks for helping me be a more understanding, more broadminded, more accepting person.

And thanks to my kids, who are about to introduce me to the vegetarian/pescatarian Thanksgiving. Let's hear it for crab quiche!
posted by SLC Mom at 12:27 PM on November 26, 2015 [6 favorites]

"hey, we need a pescatarian replacement for turkey for the parents. oh hell. what's like turkey? in what way? i dunno. well, if you're not careful with turkey it causes food poisoning. oh, right. well, crab meat is like that. yeah. ok, crab quiche it is."

good luck.
posted by andrewcooke at 12:59 PM on November 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

Why did you switch to a pescatarian thanksgiving?

Just for the halibut
posted by ian1977 at 1:57 PM on November 26, 2015 [13 favorites]

Unfortunately, that careless attitude has led to overfishing and the endangered status of the Atlantic halibut. Think more carefully about the consequences of these decisions, please.
posted by Wolfdog at 2:05 PM on November 26, 2015 [4 favorites]

I guess we know who's the halibut of that joke, now, don't we?
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:44 PM on November 26, 2015 [8 favorites]

Losing $20 - $30 is a bargain considering the risk of projectile vomiting, explosive diarrhea, and fucking up your otherwise chill Thanksgiving. Your family thanks you.
posted by megatherium at 7:20 PM on November 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Crab quiche sounds super delicious.
posted by Mistress at 6:43 AM on November 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

if you're not careful with turkey it causes food poisoning. oh, right. well, crab meat is like that.

I seriously doubt anyone making crab quiche is going to go to the trouble of steaming the crabs themselves, and the crab meat that you buy in the store is already fully cooked (they steam the crabs before removing the meat). You just have to pick out any stray bits of shell. Crab meat is super easy and safe to cook with. Crab quiche sounds great.

I'm sorry, when you bad mouth crabs, you bad mouth the great state of Maryland, and this aggression will not stand, man.
posted by teponaztli at 1:45 PM on November 27, 2015 [5 favorites]

Yeah whenever my brain goes "but you're throwing away 20.00 worth of food!" I respond "ER copays on my plan are 100.00. Out it goes."
posted by emjaybee at 9:57 PM on November 27, 2015 [4 favorites]

+++ for crab quiche!
(canned meat version, fer shur.)
posted by SLC Mom at 9:47 AM on November 28, 2015

Back in olden times, a century ago when refrigerators were something new and a lot smaller than they are nowadays, my mom told me that the usual thing in her neighborhood (crowded rowhouses in Philadelphia) was to hang their turkey from a spike or nail in the outside wall of the house for the day or two before cooking it on Thanksgiving. The winter weather was considered cold enough to preserve whatever food you hung out there, and it was a way to add a bit of free storage space. Additionally, since it was a somewhat poor-ish neighborhood and there was a definite risk of getting your turkey stolen overnight, most sensible families hung their birds outside of a second floor window, not the ground floor.

Which is why, to this day, there is a big ol' six-inch spike still stuck in the wall outside of the upstairs bathroom window in my grandparents' old rowhouse.
posted by easily confused at 10:14 AM on November 28, 2015 [10 favorites]

I posted a can-I-eat-it turkey question this year and I ate it and was fine and now I am forced to believe that I am immortal. I think you missed out on superpowers.
posted by middleclasstool at 9:08 PM on November 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

dude. you poisoned your wife and daughter. your stomach might have superpowers, but your cooking is way too mortal.
posted by andrewcooke at 2:44 AM on November 29, 2015 [2 favorites]