I feel like it's best to talk about this in several different areas/stages.
How do you feel when it's something *else* roasting? Beef? Lamb? Chicken? Duck?
Because, really, while many people feel like it's not Thanksgiving without the turkey, there are *plenty* of people who are bored to death of eating turkey that day every single time, and honest, as long as it's yummy, there's nothing saying you *have* to serve turkey. It's a free country. For now, anyway. ;-)
Then there's how things tend to make the home smell. I tend to choose recipes that basically say "brush the meat with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, stick it in the oven on a V-rack, flip it about halfway thru and wait it to reach proper temperature." -- there's no excuse nowadays, a good temp probe that will let you stab the meat and put it in the oven with a remote display on the countertop is about 10 to 20 bucks. Notice the lack of "open the oven every 15 minutes to baste", that does at least 2 things, it stops the oven from cooling down, which makes the process go very fast, 1.5 to 2 hours instead of 3, 4 or even 6; it also stops smells from spreading all over because the "fumes" will come up from the oven vent and be sucked out by the exhaust hood, instead of spreading all over from the oven door. The catch here, is that this method of roasting is often referred to "high roasting" or "high-temp roasting" because it often starts at 400-450F and may or may not drop to 350F at some point. You will have to accommodate this by finding recipes that use similar temps and don't need basting, which shouldn't be hard, if you are making baked yams/potatoes, dressing and even a lot of pies use high temps.
Notice I did not say "stuffing". You will not be stuffing anything, cook the stuffing in a separate dish (which makes it a dressing instead). That also shaves off roasting time and smells.
I am not OCD (that I know of) and I've been cooking my Turkey on a V-rack for years, because it's easier, faster, and people invariably remark on how tasty and juicy the meat is. It also peeves my sister-in-law, because instead of starting at around 11am and serving before 2pm like I do, she starts her cooking at around 6am and serves by 2pm, basting every 15-20 minutes etc. And no one says the meat is juicy. It's tasty, we appreciate the effort. And she's a wonderful person and I love her dearly, but just because you worked long and hard it doesn't mean that the outcome is the same. I value final results and working smart over working hard any day, thank you.
I want to talk about something else, and I will apologize in advance because it's a delicate subject, you can't see my facial expressions etc. I don't mean any disrespect, I don't mean to offend etc.
But we need to talk about your OCD. You
sound like you are suffering from OCD. I do not recommend it. If you can't have fun with your OCD, I recommend you find a way to drop it somewhere out in the open road to never look back, as if you found a snake in your yard and you drop it 20 miles out of town. ;-)
What do I mean by that? From this side, you sound like you are living like a prisoner of your OCD. I would *love* to hear you tell us by December that you decided to have fun with it and your OCD is in your bus and you are driving your bus to wherever *you* want to go.
Why do I say that? Well, everyone has to eat. It's one thing to not like lamb and make pork instead. It's another thing not to be able to cook anything inside because of the smell, even if it's stuff that you like, like bacon.
And one doesn't have to have *any* OCD to feel that way -- I love the smells of food but I don't want my living room, or worse, upstairs bedrooms to smell like the food for days.
So, I ask you honestly, and you can tell me to go fuck myself, but *why* are you living with an OTR microwave/hood? Particularly when you can't cook bacon in the home, or have visitors for Thanksgiving?
Are you sentencing yourself to never cook in your home and live from stuff that you can buy ready or eating out?
I ask as someone who does not cook much (the vast majority of cooking in this home is by my wonderful husband) and I have *no* trouble eating ready-made stuff or going to restaurants every single day, but my spouse would rather not do that, and even I get sick and tired of restaurants and want a good homemade meal. Not to mention that I tend to gain way too much weight when I eat out or processed/ready food all the time instead of things we can control the ingredients etc.
Please be honest with yourself, your wife and us.
Because it's one thing to say "no cooking will happen in my house" and another entirely to say you'd rather not have the cooking smells permeating everything for days.
If you think about it, there are ways to *fix* the situation for good: get rid of the microwave/hood combo, put a good microwave oven somewhere else and install a good, quiet, powerful exhaust hood -- you have about a month to do it and determined people have done it in less than 2 weeks.
Find a place for your nuker, install a hood. Feel free to cook bacon, turkey, whatever in your own home.
Or find a way to install a good hood, a small table and a range in your garage or basement just for such things.
What I'm trying to say here is that you ask us what to do as if you were handicapped on a wheelchair. Stuck and unable to do anything, so you want us to tell your wife to suck it up and go have T-day at a restaurant.
Well, that's not fair to her *or* *you*. You can't let OCD run your life, even if that's the stereotype on movies and TV. I have plenty of friends and family with OCD in various ways, shapes and forms, and they find a way to live their lives: there's therapy, there are medications (some people react better than others, some medication works for longer than others etc), but there are things that you can do.
And I know it might sound like I'm here ragging on you and telling you what to do, but I'm not.
I'm here saying it's possible to leave that prison and make it at the very least a home arrest, and in many cases, break free completely. Enjoy yourself.
And I, for one, am rooting for you.
I'm hoping that by December, you will have told us that you and your wife made a plan about what to roast, that you followed the plan and it worked well, and everyone felt welcome and had fun, *including* *you*.
Gentle hugs,
-- Paulo.
(PS: just because it feels "mandatory" at this point in the year, and so you can have a laugh or two, please follow the link for "Just put the f*cking turkey in the oven!")
