Some Women Cook Turkeys; Other Women Date Them
Congratulations to contest winner Alyx Morgan.
I used to say my epitaph would read “she never cooked a turkey although she dated a few.” The turkeys I wrestled with were never frozen, although they were definitely fresh.
Despite the fact that I was a mature woman in her mid-fifties, I was still a turkey virgin. Both of my ex-husbands, my mother, assorted relatives and friends had cooked many a turkey for my consumption.
But not me. Fortunately, I make an awesome prime rib, so when Thanksgiving rolled around my kids and I were the only beefeaters on the block. Formerly happy California cows provided our happy holiday meal.
But a couple of years ago, my turkey eschewing daughter informed me she wanted a big bird in the oven for a change. Being the eternal optimist that I am, I knew I could sway her back to my peppercorn prime rib. Then my son chimed in with the same request and I was doomed.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I wandered into the Safeway and asked to speak to a butcher. I informed the burly fellow that I had never cooked a turkey, and I needed help purchasing one.
“YOU’VE never cooked a turkey?” he asked, staring doubtfully at my woeful and slightly wrinkled countenance.
“No,” I replied testily. “My husbands always cooked the turkey. I don’t need a husband. I just need a turkey!”
He rolled his eyes and pointed to the freezer compartment which at 6:01 p.m. contained exactly three turkeys. I had my bird. But despite the assurances of the butcher that my petite 9 lb. turkey would thaw out by morning, at 4:30 on Thanksgiving day, that sucker was still frozen solid. What’s a mother to do?
I shoved it in the oven and prayed.
At 8:30, I pulled out the golden brown turkey and handed it over to my knife-wielding son. He took one look at the pinkish meat and prepared for a bout of food poisoning.
Which did not occur. What did occur was the juiciest turkey dinner ever, surrounded by lots of love and laughter, especially when my out-of-control mixer sprayed whipped sweet potatoes across my kitchen cabinets. Who knew vegetables could add luster to old wood?
And that our turkey adventure would add luster to a favorite holiday!
Leave a comment about one of your holiday mishaps or adventures by midnight November 30th, and you’ll be entered in a drawing for a $25 gift card to…whatever you choose. It’s your gift!
Oh Cindy, you are very funny. You have a consistent style that is rhythmic, funny, and charming. Keep them coming
Well, Matt. I’m blessed with a wonderful family and friends and enough material to keep you all entertained for years to come! Thanks for commenting.
This mishap is my mum’s rather than mine. When we were kids, and my mum was trying to do fifty things at once, she put a pot of boiling water on the stove and dropped in a tin of raspberry sponge pudding, which had to be steam cooked in the tin. She returned to her myriad other tasks and remembered the raspberry pudding about 2 hours later when the pot boiled dry, the tin exploded and the kitchen ceiling was decorated with raspberry pudding. Not until it was repainted some months later did evidence of the mishap completely disappear.
Wow! That’s going to be tough to top, Jenny. Did any of the kids try to climb a ladder and lick the pudding off the ceiling?
No, we didn’t, but what a great idea 🙂
Love the post as usual.
Can’t top these full-blown events, but one Thanksgiving I put the turkey in an unbeknownst-to-me broken oven. After about 4 hours, someone asked, “Shouldn’t we be smelling the turkey by now?” We ended up with a vegetarian feast.
At least you had an excuse, Camille. Remembering to turn on the oven is frequently an issue around here! Thanks for commenting and I hope you had a well cooked holiday meal this year.
ROFL Cindy! At least you removed the ‘giblets.’ I’ve heard too many stories of novice turkey cooks who didn’t realize that packet was inside the cavity and cooked the bird with it still in there.
I don’t have any disasters other than the usual undercooked or overcooked kind. I will tell you about an unusual Thanksgiving dinner the DH and I had in 1999 — fish and chips! You see, we were in Australia and there wasn’t a turket to be found. 🙂 There were, however, lots of Santas in board shorts. It was a very strange to celebrate T.giving in late spring, but I’d love to do it again someday.
AC
It doesn’t really matter what we serve on Thanksgiving, does it? Turkey, prime rib or fish and chips. It’s such a joy to be with family and in your case, a very romantic holiday with the DH. I love your travel tales, Aunty Cindy.
Fun post! One of my funniest Thanksgivings was the year when our sink stopped up after dinner. We couldn’t do dishes and I have this great shot of people with their hands up to their elbows in the sink, sweat dripping down their faces as they tried to feel around and clear the block. My sister and I had to drive out to the sole open supermarket to buy a plunger and there was a huuuge line and one beleagured checker. Everyone else had turkeys and pies and whipped cream and were stocking up on food after their late shifts from their jobs for a late dinner. We had…a plunger. And everyone there was stressed and took one look at us and started cracking up. We had a great bonding experince in that slow slow line. I think by the end we had half the store singing plunger carols.
Happy Thanksgiving!! : ) Liz
Hi Liz. We had two Thanksgivings when my mother stopped up the disposal with potato peels. Nothing like a stopped up sink to bring the family together. But who else but you could invent “plunger” carols. Love it!
Cindy, love the flying potatoes! Mixers can be dangerous! I have a bad habit of setting the oven on fire while basting the bird. (So my aim is bad…what can I say! Never claimed to ba a master baster!) This year my husband wanted to line the oven with tin foil, since I cook, and he has “clean-up” duty!
Doesn’t everyone set the oven on fire when they baste? Oops. Lucky you to have a hubby who cleans!
Oh my goodness – Cindy that is sooooo funny! I have cleaned my cabinets a time or two with various food items as well. In fact, that’s about the only time they get a good scrubbing.
Alas, I have no turkey stories to tell. My husband is a gem when it comes to cooking turkeys. He BBQ’s them and those birds are awesome! I fix the rest and it usually comes out quite delicious if I might say so myself.
The only funny food story that comes to mind is one from my childhood. I was about eight years old and attempting to make cookies. I used about a cup or two of salt instead of a teaspoon, I guess my gubby little hands couldn’t quite make it all the way around the Morton salt container and I ended up just pouring half a container into the dough bowl, but anyway, my dear sweet father ate them anyway, pretending they were yummy! My mother offered a little more supervision after that.
Thanks for sharing your story. It was a very fun post.
Patricia Rickrode
w/a Jansen Schmidt
Your husband is a gem. I’ve never tried a BBQ turkey and obviously have never BBQed one myself. In fact that funny turkey story is my one and only encounter with a bird. I will claim to have the best mashed potatoes in the county! Thanks for sharing your salty cookie story. I’m a salt lover and they sound great.
Oh gosh, you are so funny! During my childhood, we always would have a huge family get-together, right here in Diamond Springs! My grandmother would brag about how she made the best pies, and actually they were pretty yummy!! So as we all started to dig into our pumpkin pie, we all looked around the table, with a surprising look on our faces. Hmmm, who was going to say it? Finally my grandmother took a taste of her pie, and was shocked! It was awful! She realized she had forgotten to add the sugar! We had a pretty good laugh, and every year since, we always talk about the year of the terrible pie!
Hi Kay! Great pie story!
Patricia
Great story, Kay. I can honestly say I’ve never forgotten the sugar in anything but I can never remember to check the expiration dates on my baking powder. For some odd reason you end up with the flattest cookies in town when your baking powder is a mere 3 or 4 years past the expiration date. Who knew?
Your posts are always such a delight, Cindy. I am sure over the years I have had a flub or two, but the turkey dinner that comes to mind is when my older daughter called in hysterics. She’d not taken the giblets and neck and such out of the turkey and when she realized her mistake, she opened the oven door. She’d also not put the bird into a large enough pan and grease dripped onto the floor of the oven and – it caught on fire. Flames shot out of the opened space until she slammed the door closed. Obviously it was her first attempt and I bit my tongue and only soothed her damaged ego like a good mom. As far as I know, she never attempted another turkey in the oven, bless her heart.
Oops. I meant to post my comment below, here as a reply to yours. I guess I was not being careful.
Anyway, see below.
Patricia
Hmm, Paisley, your daughter and I have much in common. You are a good mom. Next time something in my kitchen goes up in flames, I know who to call for help!
Hi Paisley. I hope your daughter wasn’t badly burned. My goodnes, potential disaster.
Patricia
Kellie was just fine, Patricia. Once she slammed the door shut, the flames went out. I think her pride was hurt more than anything.
Our funny family dinner was one Christmas in the 1960’s when my brother thought you could roast chestnuts in a closed oven instead of over an open fire. A huge kaBOOM at dinner had us all jumping out of our seats, thinking we needed to call the bomb squad. My bro was incapable of anything simple. He also made three batches of eclairs that were flatter than pancakes because our cousin left out an ingredient in sharing the recipe.
I blogged on this a few years ago in a post called “Not So Slient Night.” Anyone who wants more details on our family’s tipsy (I do mean tipsy) turvy Christmas Eve, feel free to read in toto: http://hotflashbackscoolinsights.blogspot.com/2007/11/not-so-silent-night.html. We may not have been your “normal” Norman Rockwell clan, but we had as many laughs as an I Love Lucy episode.
I love roasted chestnuts, Joyce. So I suppose I don’t want to pile them in the microwave either? Isn’t it great how these crazy events are the holiday stories we remember for years to come. Thanks for sharing.
You are too funny Cindy! If you stuff some more details into your turkey tale, say another 100 words or so, you could submit this story to the new anthology series from Publishing Syndicate. This story would be perfect for “Not Your Mother’s Book…On Holidays!” Check it out…there are 27 other “Not Your Mother’s Book…” titles looking for stories too. http://publishingsyndicate.com/publishing_syndicate/submissions/nymb_submit_guidelines.html
Margie, you are the ultimate promoter. I do have enough turkey tales to fill my own anthology!
What a funny post, Cindy! But I’m waiting for the other half–let’s hear more about those “fresh” turkeys. Then again I guess I met a few in Dying for a Date. No turkey disaster tales to share. But my nieces and nephews fondly remember our Charlie Brown Christmas tree. The tree looked good when we chopped it down in the woods on a friend’s farm. When we got home, it had a few holes so my engineering husband wired limbs in place. The mistakes add the zest, right?
Thanks, Linda. You never know. Turkey Tales may be the next Dreamspell anthology! Love the tree story. Your hubby is a clever guy. Now I know who to email with an engineering question.
My husband saw a chef on tv (I think it was Emeril) explain how to make a Louisiana Thanksgiving turkey, so the hubby decided to make one as per his suggestions. This was some years ago. The instructions were to smear butter (and spices) all over the raw turkey, crank your oven up as high as it will go, shove it in uncovered and “brown will flow across the surface of the turkey” searing in the juices. Well, something “flowed across the turkey surface” all right: FLAMES. It got rather exciting for a short while, but dang if that wasn’t one of the best, juiciest turkeys we ever had. Even now, our kids will ask, “So, dad, are you going to set a turkey on fire this year?”
Great story, Cindy! Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas!
Pauline, I’m still laughing over your flaming turkey. Sounds like a great tradition! Happy holidays to you and your family.
From what I’ve heard from some of my friends, I think your experience is too true…but funny, nonetheless! I recall one Thanksgiving when I made a blueberry pie for one of the desserts. It smelled super as it baked but looked a bit odd when I took it from the oven. On cutting into it, I discovered bluish water sitting in the bottom of the pie plate. I couldn’t figure out what had happened, but served the pie anyway. As people took a bite of the pie, they all had the same reaction: a quick scrunching up of faces and a hasty laying down of forks. I tried it — it was awful! And I’ve made pies for decades! It wasn’t until some weeks later when I was in the kitchen and making a cake that I realized what’d gone wrong with the blueberry pie: instead of grabbing the glass jar that held the cornstarch, I’d grabbed the glass gar that held the baking soda! No wonder the juices didn’t thicken…and that one bite gave us that grimace! Ya live and ya learn…
Thanks for the story, Jo. I’m beginning to realize we have to experience these mishaps in order to achieve culinary success. Looks like we all have a tale or two to share.
HI Cindy,
You want a turkey story? The first year that my husband and I were married, one of his relatives had shall we say, a lot of holiday cheer on board by dinner time. So much that he sat on the open dishwasher door and broke it from the hinges and cut a piece of turkey from the just cooked bird before dinner. We couldn’t believe our eyes when he began to “salt” the meat with Comet cleanser and proceed to stick it in his mouth. The other relatives were actually going to let him poison himself with the bluish-green tinted meat, they were so irriiated with him for being intoxicated. I yelled to my husband, who jumped across a chair and grabbed it from him just before he took a bite. He was so startled he stumbled and fell to the floor, where he slept, snoring, during the Thanksgiving meal. True story.
Happy holidays,
Claire Applewhite
I’m officially ROFL with that story, Claire. It’s true that life is stranger than fiction. And even funnier. He probably wouldn’t have even noticed the comet seasoning!
We’re storing some of daughter’s furniture in our garage, including her fridge. Last Christmas, I bought a turkey and put it inside,after making sure that hubby plugged it in. Unfortunately, he didn’t make sure it was turned on, so the day before Christmas I had to run back to the market and try to find an unfrozen turkey.
Oh, I bet that refrigerator didn’t smell very good. I could also compose an entire blog about meals in unplugged appliances! Thanks for sharing and happy belated Thanksgiving.
Hi Cindy, I think my story may be the most recent. This Wednesday, I prepared two pumpkin pies and turned on the oven, which prompty blew up. Stuck with two liquid, uncooked pies, I attempted to take one to a neighbor. After driving down my steep driveway and up her’s, I arrived with a plastic bin full of pumpkin and a soggy pie crust. I told her to think of it as a pumpkin tart – a thin pumpkin tart. The innards from the other pie are now growing old in my refrigerator.
Thursday morning I hit the grocery store for whatever I could find, which turned out to be a rotisserie turkey topped with a rather vile herbal glop (which I scraped off) and an overly spiced “homemade” pumpkin pie. Yep, another fond holiday memory in the making.
Those holiday memories are making great comments on this post. Next time turn the liquid pumpkin pie into a smoothie!
Great! Very clever. I too am not quite sure how to cook a turkey, but I’m an expert at finding and dating them!
So many turkey stories, so little time!
I always let Marie Callender’s do the bird and dinner for me. Their meals come with a printed time line that if followed allows you to get everything hot, on the table, at the same time. No small feat! So my turkey story is about the great Colorado Springs Thanksgiving Riot of 1982. In one of my previous lives , I was an apartment manager. Long story short, when the pipes froze and busted all the water had to be turned off to a 9 building, 207 unit apartment complex 3 days before Turkey Day. The city and my maintenance crew were out the in the snow 36 hours straight while the office staff and I kept the hot coffee flowing. In an earlier lifetime in the military I never served in combat but have often thought it would be very similar to facing hoards of people ready but unable to do their holiday baking and cooking with relatives on the way.
It doesn’t matter how many turkeys you date as long as you don’t marry them.
Penny, that is quite a story. You have some interesting tales to tell yourself. As far as that last line, no way can I top that!
I use those cooking bags, so it’s pretty foolproof. I wish there was such an easy way to “cook” a relationship.
I agree with you, Mae, although a slow simmer is better than watching it boil over!
I love your sense of humor, Cindy! I used to take pride in making a great turkey meal for the family on Thanksgiving, but my one son now has three kids and moved to an apartment, so we now have Thanksgiving at his house, and they invite the entire family. But his wife isn’t so into turkey baking either. So the vegetarian dishes end up taking center stage. The times they are a changing!
Oh, well, that didn’t come out right! I guess I better grab a cup of coffee in the morning before I start to write! I meant to say my husband and I downsized from house to apartment, while my younger son and his wife bought a large house.
So now they are the official Thanksgiving makers.
Hi Jacqueline. The best part of our kids growing up is when they take over official holiday functions. The first time my daughter had Christmas at her house she served a pork roast and then promptly became deathly ill right after dinner. THe rest of us kept waiting to join her but fortunately her bout was due to her lunch of one week old moo shu pork which was way beyond its expiration date.
There’s NOTHING wrong with beef for Thanksgiving! I seem to have more vegetable than turkey problems. One year I got yams instead of sweet potatoes. I ended up using red and yellow food color during the mashing process and no one was the wiser. Last year, my pumpkin pie failed on Thanksgiving morning and the stores were closed. I had a nice acorn squash on hand. It made a lovely faux pumpkin pie and I didn’t tell anyone until they’d all declared it a winner.
Thanks for commenting, Shannon. You are very creative with your faux potatoes and pie. Food coloring! What a concept.
My craziest Thanksgiving memory also happens to be my favorite.
I was in high school, when a group of friends & I decided to cook our own Thanksgiving dinner at one of their houses. Parents were gone, & each of us teenagers decided to take on one of the traditional dishes. It was one small kitchen, & about 10 or so of us, so we had to time things out to make sure we each got time with the stove or oven to make sure everything was ready at the same time.
None of us had ever cooked any part of Thanksgiving dinner before, so the turkey turned out very dry, the rolls were very over-done, the mashed potatoes were lumpy (as was the gravy), but we had so much fun while we were making it all – playing games, singing songs, & laughing at the hilarity of all of us trying to do this for the first time.
I’ve made better Thanksgiving meals since, but I always look back fondly on that dinner. I’m guessing you’ll do the same with this one, Cindy. :o)
Hi Alyx. Thanks for sharing your Thanksgiving memory. Isn’t it wonderful how these stories of mixups and merriment are the ones we remember with great fondness.
Hi Cindy. Loved the part about the sweet potatoes sprayed across the cabinets! Me, I had turkey pizza for Thanksgiving, sort of like a shepherd’s pie turned inside out or, in pizza terms, imagine turkey and stuffing for toppings with mashed potato substituted for cheese and gravy instead of tomatio sauce. Odd, but strangely good! Standard pumpkin pie for dessert though.
Hi James. Turkey pizza sounds wonderful. I may have to try that next year! Thanks for commenting.
Hi Cindy. Loved the part about the sweet potatoes sprayed across the cabinets! Me, I had turkey pizza for Thanksgiving, sort of like a shepherd’s pie turned inside out or, in pizza terms, imagine turkey and stuffing for toppings with mashed potato substituted for cheese and gravy instead of tomatio sauce. Odd, but strangely good! Standard pumpkin pie for dessert though.
Great story, Cindy. It reminds me of the first turkey my wife and I cooked. I was in charge of manhandling the bird. By the time we got it stuffed and I wrestled it into the roaster at 6:30 a.m., I was so tired and happy, I didn’t look back. I should have. When I tried to carve it, it looked a little flat-breasted. We later discovered I had cooked the darned thing upside down!
Hi Peter. Those first turkey dinner stories seem to provide the best memories, don’t they? Thanks for commenting.
Great idea for a response-generating post! I can’t top some of these, but I do rememberthe year I decided to smoke a turkey. If you’ve ever done it, you know it seems to just sit there under a lid on the patio with no more than lukewarm temperatures for 10 hours or so. When you take it out, it’s gray looking outside and pink inside. At that moment, you hesitate – all my nearest and dearest will be eating what may turn out to be the last meal of their lives, served up by me. It’s a frightening thought. And, no, they didn’t sue and it turned out fine, but I never did it again- too much anxiety!
Thanks for sharing, Susan. After reading these comments, I’m beginning to think we should ban turkey and celebrate with Thanksgiving pizza for a low stress holiday.
By now I’m sure you stopped reading. But mine is a boiled eggs true story.
I put the eggs in a pan to cook for 3 minutes. However, it was only after I showered, dressed,got into my car, went to the beauty parlor, had my hair soaking wet and being curled, that I remebered. I dashed out and the girls in the shop watched in horror as I ran out screaming, “my eggs, my eggs.”
Naturally a disaster met me. The eggs, what was left of them were on the floor, the walls, the sink, the pot burned because of no more water.
However I was able to save the pot. For info about saving burned pots write to me at my web.
Rita, you deserve to win just for this story alone. No wonder your books are so funny. Your life provides great material!
I always think back to the time I put the turkey in the oven, then all of a sudden realized I had not took the gibblets out of the cavity of the turkey.. Had ot hall it out and unstuff it, only to discover I got a turkey sans the gibblets. My friends who were here visiting me from PA., have never let me forget that…
Thanks for the comment, Kathleen. I had no idea they sold giblet free turkeys. The less giblets the better as far as I’m concerned.
My story isn’t as good as some of the ones already posted but I’ll tell it anyway.
I was determined to make homemade pies one year and I chose to try a pecan pie for the first time. (I have never attempted this again) I don’t know what I did or didn’t do but it never solidified. I pulled it out of the oven and it was still liquid. My only saving grace was that I also had made homemade vanilla ice cream so I just poured the yummy pecan “sauce” over the ice cream and everyone enjoyed it. No one new it was a pie disaster until I told them. Maybe if I ever stop being embarrased I will try again.
Hi Patti. Thanks for sharing your story although I have to say that pecan sauce over ice cream sounds yummy. I’m amazed at how creative some of you are when serving your delectable disasters!
My first turkey was roasted breast side down instead of the suggested breast side up. It still tasted alright. When I shared my mishap with my boss who had graduated from a rival college, he replied, “You may think your college is better than mine, but at least we know where to find the breasts.”
Ha ha ha. I can’t even respond to that. THanks for sharing, Sharie.
Thanks for the chuckle. Glad to see you are able to write at this hectic time of year. I’m not reading, writing or much of anything but holidaying at this point. By the way, I’ve got you beat for odd Thanksgiving food………….shrimp! It was my daughter’s birthday, and that was her request.
Thanks, Linda. I’ve never thought of serving shrimp for Thanksgiving. Far more manageable. I’m adding that to my list of future Thanksgiving dinners!
Loved the article! My episode is below….
My roommate Bonnie and I were to cook the Thanksgiving Turkey while the guys spent the day skiing on the mountain. Off to the kitchen we went.
We cleaned up the bird and set the giblets aside for gravy. We named her Morticia! Morticia had cleaned up nicely, was stuffed with a lovely dressing, and was carefully placed in the roasting pan and into the oven. She was a hefty 20 pounds of delight!
Morticia was about halfway done as we went about preparing the rest of the dinner. We decided to pour ourselves a bourbon to celebrate the day. The brilliant, and I mean brilliant, idea came to us that maybe Morticia would like a drink too and that the bourbon would add a bit of flavor. So we opened the over and gave her a really good shot straight from the bottle!
Back to the other dishes we turned. About twenty minutes later there was a loud explosion coming from the oven. I swear we both went up in the air a good foot from our being startled by the noise!
The oven door had flopped open and was still bouncing as we turned in that direction. There, in the oven, was Morticia, all ablaze, pieces scattered about the oven as bourbon burned. Her skin blackened, we stood patiently waiting for the flames to die out as we laughed hysterically. After all, what were we to tell the guys? We blew up the turkey?
It was a Thanksgiving that I will not forget and every time I put a turkey in the oven I think of that fateful day!
Hi Barb. After reading all of these comments I’m beginning to think the Thanksgiving turkey needs to wear a proceed with caution sign. I’m definitely getting some plot ideas – DYING FOR A TURKEY DINNER? Thanks for sharing.
LOL, Cindy, you’re hilarious. My turkey story happened several years ago. My oven died in the middle of roasting the turkey. It just gave up, right in the middle. I had a half-cooked turkey and guests arriving in a few hours. Thankfully, I had a large microwave oven (back in the 80’s, all microwaves were large) and I was able to nuke it. Since the skin was already semi-dark brown, it wasn’t half bad!
Nancy
Thanks for sharing, Nancy. I’m constantly amazed at how versatile all of you are when these turkey disasters occur. Seems like everyone has at least one big bird story to share.