Random News: November 23, 2023

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s November 23, 2023, and it’s a Thursday for some reason… and it’s Thanksgiving, possibly my favorite holiday.  I’m enjoying a cup of Peet’s coffee in my robe, but my time to relax is short; I gotta get cooking soon.

• Here’s my annual guide on how to make a turkey.
• First, get a turkey. Don’t get a frozen turkey. You’re way too late. You couldn’t make a frozen turkey ready for dinner tonight with anything less powerful than a hydrogen bomb. A frozen turkey would laugh at a typical flamethrower. 
• So get a fresh turkey. Take it home.
• Preheat your oven to 350º F. Some say 325º. I say my oven runs a bit cool and I don’t have all fucking day. Adjust accordingly.
• The turkey will be wrapped in some kind of plastic.
• Be careful about where you open said plastic. There will be various liquids inside that you don’t want to spray around willie-nillie in your kitchen.
• I’m assuming you’re in your kitchen. Don’t prepare food in your bedroom or bathroom.
• So anyway, you’ve got this turkey in front of you. You will notice something right away.
• The turkey will have a hole where its neck used to be, and a hole in the general vicinity of its ass.
• But don’t worry. This is normal. Here’s where it gets weird.
• You’re gonna remove the neck from the ass, and the body parts, aka giblets, from the neck. Do not freak out. They are in little plastic bags.
• You are not compelled to do anything with these spare parts. Now, if you’re a cool-ass motherfucker, you might want to make your own giblet gravy from scratch.
• I will not be telling you how. I’m just your turkey guy. Go find a giblet guy elsewhere.
• Controversial moment: to rinse the bird or not.
• The actual USDA has a statement on this. It says…
• “Many consumers think that washing their turkey will remove bacteria and make it safer. However, it's virtually impossible to wash bacteria off the bird. Instead, juices that splash during washing can transfer bacteria onto the surfaces of your kitchen, other foods and utensils.”
• So, ew, fucking gross, there’s so much bacteria on the fucking animal carcass that it’s pointless to wash and you should just give up. That’s what they’re saying.
• I carefully rinse my turkey in my sink with nothing else in it. I do NOT splash turkey juice all over the fucking place. I am careful. I am calm. I am at one with this dead bird.
• After I give it a rinse, I pat it down with some paper towels. Then I put the turkey on some more paper towels.
• Important note: everything the turkey touches in this raw state must be SUPER cleaned immediately after. I’m talking hot water, soap, disinfectant, and so on. Hands, countertop, sink, the car in which you drove the turkey home, and all points in between.
• I mean, don’t freak out. But do clean.
• Let’s talk about stuffing.
• I fucking love stuffing. You could serve me literally everything else in a giant Thanksgiving feast and without stuffing, it would be entirely meaningless to me.
• Stuffing is easy to make. I won’t tell you how. You can easily find that info elsewhere. But I will say this.
• If you’re going to put in in the bird, you should have made your stuffing like two hours ago. It’s already cooled down entire and has been in your fridge with some plastic wrap on it to keep it moist.
• Moist, I said, Moist.
• Your other option, and many prefer this anyway, is to cook the stuffing apart from the bird.
• Why do I bring all this up? Two reasons.
• First, the cooking time is longer with the bird stuff versus not.
• Second, I’m gonna tell you some shit about how to stuff.
• Put your bird into the roaster pan. Don’t stuff the turkey until right before that fucker is going in the oven. 
• Do not overstuff the bird. That’s a terrible idea. Just put the stuffing in the cavities until it is loosely full.
• Side note: I make twice as much stuffing as I need for the bird because a) I heat up the non-stuffed stuffing as its own side dish and b) I require stuffing for my sandwiches the next day.
• So you have your stuffed bird, and your oven is well heated to the proper temp.
• One more thing.
• Take a lot of butter and put it all over that turkey.
• How much butter? Like, way more than you think. Every millimeter of the surface area of that turkey should be buttered. Heavily buttered. Apply the butter any way you want. Melt it and pour, or just squish it all over at room temp. Smear it into the crevices.
• I hope you have a meat thermometer. If not, you’ll probably be fine. If so, stab it into the beast in the lower part of the thigh next to the body, not touching the bone.
• Put the bird in the oven. Try putting it in at an angle where you can actually see your thermometer. That’s helpful.
• So, that’s basically it. Oh wait, you probably want to know how long to cook that sucker.
• Roast your bird at 325-350º for about 15 minutes per pound, if it’s stuffed. For my typical 12-13 pound turkey, that’s usually right around four hours.
• This is a good time to scrub the crap out of everything per above. Especially yourself.
• But wait. There’s one more thing.
• When it’s about 2/3 done and the skin is a lovely shade of golden brown, make a little tent with some aluminum foil and put it over your bird.
• The turkey is fully cooked when the thigh’s internal temperature is 180 degrees. If you’re super fancy, the thickest part of the breast should read 170 degrees and the center of the stuffing should be 165 degrees.
• Take it out of the oven. Don’t leave your oven on unless you’re cooking other shit as I do.
• This next part is important.
• You may be hungry but you’re gonna wait a bit. Let the turkey stand for 15 to 20 minutes before carving. There are reasons for this that involve your turkey being delightfully juicy rather than bone-ass dry.
• Also, if you’re me, you’re finishing up 17 other dishes at that moment and need the time regardless.
• And now, The Weather: “Pink Mold” by Daneshevskaya
• Let’s do a little news.
• A four-day cease-fire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas will began tomorrow morning, a day later than originally announced, as negotiators worked out final details of the deal, which is to lead to the release of dozens of hostages held by militants and Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
• I wish them all the best. Release those people and try to live in peace.
• Yesterday, Fox News posted screaming headlines about a terrorist attack at our northern border.
• Senator Ted Cruz, always a bastion of truth, has a social media post that’s still up right now, saying, “This confirms our worst fear: the explosion at Rainbow Bridge was a terrorist attack.”
• Except it wasn’t. It was a poor fucker from western New York and his wife, who’d planned to attend a Kiss concert in Canada that ended up being canceled.
• The Bentley they were driving rammed into the crossing at Rainbow Bridge near Niagara Falls, hit a curb on the US side of the border, and became airborne before exploding.
• The FBI found no explosive materials and no relationship to terrorism related to the incident. It was just a bad car accident in a luxury vehicle that’s prone to explosions.
• In news no one wants to hear on Thanksgiving or any other time of year, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear declared a state of emergency in Rockcastle County following a multi-car train derailment yesterday that resulted in a chemical spill.
• Around 16 train cars were involved in the incident, including two carrying molten sulfur that ended up on fire.
• Ugh.
• From the Sports Desk… today is obviously a football day in the USA, but here are the top 10 teams in the NHL based on their current record.
• 1. Boston Bruins (14-1-3). 2. Vegas Golden Knights (14-4-2). 3. New York Rangers (13-3-1). 4. Vancouver Canucks (13-6-1). 5. Dallas Stars (12-4-2). 6. Los Angeles Kings (11-3-3). 7. Florida Panthers (12-6-1). 8. Colorado Avalanche (12-6-0). 9. Winnipeg Jets (11-5-2). 10. Tampa Bay Lightning (9-6-5).
• In a Sports Desk story I thought was cute, when they do the coin toss for today’s set of games, one side of the coin will feature the image of John Madden. The other side will depict Madden’s famous Thanksgiving nightmares fuel food: the turducken.
• It is part of the league's second annual Thanksgiving tribute to the late broadcaster and coach, a holiday on which he called 20 games over his career.
• Today in history… Thespis of Icaria becomes the first recorded actor to portray a character on stage (534 BC). John Milton publishes Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship (1644). King William III of the Netherlands dies without a male heir and a special law is passed to allow his daughter Princess Wilhelmina to succeed him (1890). Edwin Hubble's discovery, that the Andromeda "nebula" is actually another island galaxy far outside our own Milky Way, is first published in The New York Times (1924). The BBC broadcasts ‘An Unearthly Child’, the first episode of the first story from the first series of ‘Doctor Who’, which is now the world's longest running science fiction drama (1963). Ronald Reagan signs the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17, giving the CIA the authority to recruit and support Contra rebels in Nicaragua (1981). Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury announces in a statement that he is HIV-positive and dies the following day (1991). The first smartphone, the IBM Simon, is introduced at COMDEX in Las Vegas, Nevada (1992). Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is elected president of Liberia and becomes the first woman to lead an African country (2005). After 11 months of protests in Yemen, Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh signs a deal to transfer power to the vice president, in exchange for legal immunity (2011). 
• November 23 is the birthday of Holy Roman emperor Otto I (912), US president Franklin Pierce (1804), actor Boris Karloff (1887), comedian/musician Harpo Marx (1888), baseball player Josephine D’Angelo (1924), composer Johnny Mandel (1925), singer-songwriter/guitarist R. L. Burnside (1926), activist/politician Bobby Rush (1946), politician Chuck Schumer (1950), singer-songwriter/pianist Bruce Hornsby (1954), reality TV personality Snooki (1987), and singer-songwriter Miley Cyrus (1992).

Alright. Time to get my deviled eggs cooking and then start on my stuffing. One last thing: I know why people say to avoid political talk at Thanksgiving. I get it. But I would also say that there are ways to have important conversations with people you care about while you’re all together that don’t result in ruining the holiday. You’d be surprised how a simple chat over dinner can actually impact someone’s thoughts. Just an idea. Enjoy your day.