The "observer effect": Is it proof the system is "aware it's being observed?"

I enjoyed your thought experiment, but I can immediately think of a flaw.

the measurement in question is being performed in your mind. and your mind IS aware of the state of the Turkey, which is why you switched the probes.

similar to a quantum encryption experiment, when you receive state information which does not correlate to the known state, you can reasonably assume that the data has been tampered with.

so, in other words, it is not the thermometer which is measuring the system state. it is your mind.

or even another way. an object or phenomena cannot be measured by a system at the same metalevel as the object. because the probe and Turkey exist at equivalent metalevels, the state of the probe becomes entangled with the state of the Turkey.

the wavefunction collapses to "Turkey cooked" or "Turkey uncooked" by state measurement performed by YOU! and the entanglement resolves itself instantaneously: when Turkey collapses to "cooked", fat probe collapses to "inaccurate".