Basting is evil. Basting does nothing for the meat. Why? Skin. Skin is designed to keep stuff out of the bird, so basting just lets heat out of the oven. That means the turkey will take longer to cook... so don't touch that door!
For me especially, I travel a lot, and with the weather change and everything, my skin gets dehydrated very fast.
Air travel dehydrates people.
You compare the nation to a parched piece of land and the tax to a life-giving rain. So be it. But you should also ask yourself where this rain comes from, and whether it is not precisely the tax that draws the moisture from the soil and dries it up. You should also ask yourself further whether the soil receives more of this precious water from the rain than it loses by the evaporation?
I want to bring things up to room temperature, especially poultry, before I cook it because I want it to cook faster so that there's less moisture loss.
Stuffing is evil. Stuffing adds mass, so it slows the cooking. That's evil because the longer the bird cooks, the drier it will be.
Sometimes when I travel from climate to climate, my skin can change very drastically because I go from hot to cold. I get dry like everybody else - from planes.
