Tyler Fried Turkeys

When I first met Matt 7 years ago I learned that people cook Cajun fried turkeys. To me they sounded gross because I pictured it like I would a piece of fried chicken. Well people, I was wrong! Every year at Thanksgiving and Christmas, Matt, Mark, and their dad cook these turkeys and it is a MAJOR undertaking. Matt's dad got a recipe for a Cajun dope from a man in south Louisiana about 20 years ago and told him he would never tell anyone the ingredients. So as of 2008 they have been doing these turkeys for about that long. They started out frying about 14 of them for close friends and relatives. In 1993 they burned their entire house down cooking these turkeys and lost everything. True story-Matt was a junior in high school at the time and Mark was a freshman.
Now they cook the turkeys with gas instead of butane and have 5 oblong cookers(each holds 4 turkeys) and are able to cook 20 at a time and they take an hour to cook. They inject these turkeys with the "secret" Cajun dope on the Saturday before Thanksgiving and cook them the Tuesday and Wednesday before. Currently they have sold out at 490 turkeys folks! That is A LOT of turkeys and YES they are FABULOUS!! It is a very big task and Matt had to get up at 4:30 am this morning to start cooking. And they are still cooking as I type. They will finish cooking 300 turkeys today and will finish the rest tomorrow.
They usually only sell around 300-350 for Thanksgiving. So this is my story for tonight! Sorry to bore you but I am have nothing else to post.
I did put a big dent into boxing up our house. I think we have more dishes than Wal-Mart-seriously! And so I spent about 5 hours packing and boxing things up today. Tomorrow I will try to get started early so that we can get back to Ruston. My entire family is coming in and I am really looking forward to an exciting year. My sister, Laura, will be in from Atlanta, and my brothers Brian and Darrell will be in from Dallas. All the grand kids will be in with them and I know Jake will have a blast entertaining them! I will post some pictures from our visit later. I hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I have SO much to be thankful for and I will save that for the next post.