Practice Turkey?

Now bear in mind that this isn't my turkey. It's a picture I got off the Internet but it does look a lot like the one that I have.

I never really cooked a turkey before because my mother used to throw us out the kitchen when she was cooking.

So this Thanksgiving I decided to make a "practice" turkey. Simply put this means that I want to cook the turkey and see how it turns out before I "unleash" my cooking on another human being.

I have been given a lot of different advice(s) on how to cook the turkey. One woman told me that she soaks hers in water and kosher salt for 3 days before she prepares to cook her turkey.

So with my limited knowledge I can say that one of the best (and smartest) things that I did was to buy the turkey well before Thanksgiving Day where it sat in the freezer until Sunday and then put in the refridgerator to thaw. It's now the day before Thanksgiving and the turkey has been rinsed and cleaned and soaking in salt water. Took me a while to figure out what to do with the giblets but I'm going to put that in the stuffing.

On an encouraging note its nice to know that there are other people like me that haven't made a turkey before. I was watching the news and they were interviewing people who were doing their last minute Thanksgiving shopping today and they had one guy that wanted to know if he could defrost a 20 pound turkey by tommorrow morning?