AAAH! IT'S THE INVASION OF THE PEANUT BUTTER SNATCHERS!

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I woke up this morning and as usual, made my coffee before starting my day.  I pulled the curtains back on my patio door and lo and behold, who was all waiting out there? Those cheeky squirrels! Not one, or two or even three but FIVE of them waiting for me to give them some peanut butter with toast.

Usually they come one at a time.  I really wished I could have captured them all at once to show you guys but they never really stayed still long enough for me to do so. By the time I ran to grab my camera - they all scattered! It was a great chance however, for me to try out my new Canon camera - capturing them in motion.

In the beginning, I was only able to capture at most, three of them at one time - through the patio door, so these did not make for the greatest pictures...






TURKEY DISASTER + HAVE YOU EATEN TURKEY THAWED OUT AT ROOM TEMPERATURE?(POLL)

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Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a great Christmas and let's hope an even better new year to come.  I wish I could say I had a great Christmas dinner but I must admit it was a bit of a disaster.

Christmas day was on a Wednesday so I asked my husband if he could thaw out the turkey on Monday night.... in the laundry sink. Fine. Christmas day rolled around and I actually.... WE actually forgot about the turkey in the laundry sink.  Oh well, it must be still a bit frozen, I thought.  It was not.  The insides were still a bit cold but basically it was thawed out.  Anyways, Jack decided to look online for a turkey recipe but the more and more he read, he kept seeing this warning NOT TO THAW TURKEY OUT ON THE COUNTER or NOT TO THAW OUT TURKEY AT ROOM TEMPERATURE. It could lead to food poisoning.  I told him it would be fine, we've eaten things left out the night before - no problem.  I told him we've thawed out chicken on the counter (before placing it in the fridge to cook later) - no problem. Well holy matrimony!  He started going on about we can't eat this, we'll all get poisoned and am I trying to poison everyone.

I started going on about "what are we going to have for a christmas dinner? There's probably no turkey left ANYWHERE and it's Christmas day.  EVERYTHING is closed! Needless to say, we argued for another 15 mins then finally, I just grabbed the turkey and dumped it in the garbage container outside. In the end, we just had our ham which was quite tasty (thank God).  3 days later we actually found a few turkeys left and bought one. This time we thawed it out in cold water as one of the ways recommended and eventually had another christmas dinner.... this time with turkey included!

Now I've asked a few people at work if they've ever eaten turkey thawed out on the counter.  Two said they have and they have never gotten sick.  Were they lying? Have you ever eaten turkey that's been thawed out at room termperature and lived to tell about it? And how do you usually thaw out your turkey?