...And so it begins

Well, actually it began yesterday, when I made the cranberry sauce. Or at least the first cranberry sauce. I may need another, differenter batch. Just because.

But today we get serious. I have collected turkey-bird, and marched two miles with him (or her? I have no idea: do they generally market hen-birds or cock-birds or both? Is there a point in being discriminatory? Should I have sought out one or the other?) on my back. He (for the sake of convenience only: it's less typing. Fewer characters) is now relaxing in a warm bath. He's never been frozen, exactly, but they do deep-chill their birds here to a scary-stiff extent. The poor thing needs to get some warmth in his bones before I towel him dry and scatter his skin with salt and baking powder for an overnight open-air brining. (Is it lazy or perverse, that we still call this brining - albeit "dry-brining" - when there is no liquid involved, no actual y'know brine?)

And I need to do some baking today, and a lot of cleaning and sorting and organising, and I'm not quite sure how much more actual cooking I can contrive but I am hopeful: some at least...