The Turkey.

If you don’t want to sink, you’d better figure out how to swim – jeanette walls

Seeing that we are living on $4.50 a day for our eating allowance, we have become a bit like gremlins. Its really not that bad because when you combine 10 peoples living allowances than you get $45 dollars a day for shopping but then you factor in again that I live with 7 boys between the ages of 17-24 and you begin to understand why four gallons of milk is always gone within 2 days.

Now, when food comes into the food bank and it is improperly labeled (aka no label or in plastic baggies or what have you), or it is damaged beyond help (cracked, opened, broken) it gets weighed and thrown away. This is where the gremlin part comes in, we scavenge that food like no other. Daily we take home boxes of opened cookies, unlabeled cans, and cracked jars of salsa. Which is why when we found out about the turkeys we were so ecstatic.

The Turkeys were pre-cooked, expired, and re-frozen. There were thirty of them, give or take and they needed to be eaten immediately. We waited for a few days and asked multiple times about the turkeys and Finally were given the green light, that yes, we could take one home because they were not going to be able to distribute all of the Turkeys in time and already some of them were questionable.

The pre-cooked part was essential; we don't have a kitchen in our cabin, only a microwave and refrigerator. We let the turkey thaw in our house for a full 24 hours and when the meat was ready. Christina and I methodically and carefully as possible carved our prize ( well as carefully as we could with pocket knives). It was amazing. It was the first time we had had meat in the cabin that wasn't Walmart deli meats or canned meats. I think I ate at least 20 turkey and cranberry sauce sandwiches. The plates of dark and light meat were gone in days.

Well now we back to no Turkey but what can you do. Back to spam and rice.