cooking adventures

Last week I went through one of the big rites of passage of adulthood: I prepared and cooked a whole turkey. It had been in the freezer since thanksgiving and we were running low on edibles, so I figured I would give the turkey a try.
Things I learned:
1. There is not just one bag inside the turkey containing giblets, as I previously thought. There are two bags; they take the turkey neck and put it in a bag in the abdomen, and they take the turkey giblets and put them in a bag in the neck. I'm not sure why they reverse the locations of these object anatomically, but I do know that it was a close call with the bag inside the neck almost being cooked with the turkey.
2. I found a recipe that called for cleaning the bird, then pouring boiling water over the turkey in a clean sink to scald the skin and retain moisture. It looked cool but I think I messed up the other parts of cooking the turkey such as...
3. using a meat thermometer is important. I had never used one before, but it was really not at all complicated and I'm not sure why I was previously intimidated by it. I didn't use mine till the very end and my turkey ended up dry.
4. After handling a raw turkey for several hours and then smelling it cook, I didn't even really want to eat it anymore. But we had eleven pounds so I ate some anyways.
5. If there's no cranberry sauce, raspberry jam will do.
6. Turkey makes good tacos and sandwiches.

It was fine and not that hard, but I'm glad that my first attempt was not under any pressure from having other people eat it besides me, Ethan, and Reagan. On the other hand, we have a silly amount of meat left which will go to waste.

The other night we had some strawberries on their last leg and we were both craving something sweet so I made strawberry cupcakes with strawberry cream cheese frosting. For frosting I used the recipe linked, but around 2/3 cream cheese and 1/3 butter.
They were super delicious and I convinced myself successfully that since they had strawberries and cream cheese, they were fair game for breakfast and healthy for snacking.

I made them two days ago and there is currently one left. Yeah, they're good.

Here's a picture of me and Ethan at a recent friend's wedding we attended.

We're getting ready for our own marriage so soon! I'm super excited.