23 December 2007

Tiny Turkey

Even though I am a vegetarian now, GLH had his heart set on a Christmas Turkey.

So a week ago I went down to the butchers and ordered a fresh turkey. They asked how many people we would be serving and I said "4." But added that we would like leftovers. Our guests just had a baby and I wanted to send them home with lots of leftovers so they wouldn't have to do so much cooking for the next week.

Today GLH went down to pick up the fresh turkey.

It is the smallest turkey we have ever seen. We did not even know that a turkey could be that small. The turkey is a bit more than 3 kilograms (about 7 pounds). I was expecting at least 10-12 pounds. It is half the weight of our cat, Max! If our cats lived in the wild, they would hunt and kill it.

So much for leftovers...

Perhaps in the future I should order a turkey to feed 6-8 people?

6 comments:

Ksam said...

Yep, as someone who works in the Turkey Industry, I can tell you that European turkeys are definitely smaller than American ones.

I was actually looking around for a chicken yesterday in the supermarket and was suprised to read "dinde" on the label - they were all so tiny!

Marcy said...

What, you mean europe doesn't have the mutated american turkeys that have been bred to have such large chests that they can't even walk? ; )

Global Librarian said...

Yeah, the good ones! With lots of breast meat! :-)

Anonymous said...

I would suggest a Turkey Breast in the slow cooker for left over. Moist, tender and great.

The Big Finn said...

Whenever I order a turkey from the butcher, I just tell him what weight we want (6 - 8 kilos) rather than how many people we want to feed. The turkey usually comes in at the low end of the range because either he can not get such a large turkey, or he just can't believe that any person in his right mind would want such a large turkey.

christina said...

Wow, that was a REALLY small bird! They call those "Baby-Pute" around here. The frozen ones we've been buying for Christmas over the past few years seem to all be exactly 5.4 kg. Go figure. There were four of us and we managed about half the turkey in one sitting.

I guess one of the reasons that they don't have gigantic turkeys here is that they won't fit into the tiny little ovens.

Oh, and Marcy, Europe has plenty of other mutated food to make up for the lack o' decent turkey. :-)