The Thanksgiving turkey is a golden idol, sitting at the center of the dinner table, and just about as useful.
From the complex math to figure out how long the defrosting and cooking will take (always wrong); to the parsing over conflicting instructions for dry or wet brining; to the five or six hours of basting; to the final battle with the carving knife, it is the result of several days of kitchen labor. And in the end, will result in piles and piles of leftovers, because everyone would rather be eating pie and mashed potatoes anyway.
