A Thanksgiving Story

My daughter is currently in the living room screaming at her dad "I NEED PUPCAKES, DAD!" Wearing nothing but a diaper because she's claiming to be hot, but I know that it's in rebellion to the fact that I won't let her put on her fancy Thanksgiving dress yet. It's the whole "cut off your nose to spite your face" thing. From a 2 year old.

My husband, who has already made breakfast once, is standing in front of her, laughing. "You need a what?" Closer now, with yelling unnecessary, he finally understands she wants a pancake.

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is on the television in my office, while Mickey Saves Santa plays in the living room, and football is on the little tv in the kitchen. I'm still in my pajamas, the ads from the newspaper are strewn across the floor, though I have not taken the time to study everything on sale. It's very sad how much I truly look forward to doing that.

Sadder still how I force myself out of bed at the unreal hour of 4:30am in order to take advantage of the deals and feel the atmosphere of a bunch of equally crazy people the day after Thanksgiving. This year, armed with a Santa hat and an arsenal of lollipops to give to the kids whose parents are dumb enough to take them along. I hate that. One year, I watched as a mother and father yelled at their baby of one year for not sitting still and being quiet. Yeah... like it's the kid's fault that he's bored and tired. So, this year I plan to battle my instincts to beat the holy crap out of the parents with lollipops. Futile, yet hopeful.

I will, later today, inevitably regret not going to my Grandmother's-- even though the choice to stay at home with my little family is not a bad one. While I will miss my larger family, it is more my Grandmother's veggie casserole. The only dish at the table that my family cares anything about. One day, my grandmother will realize that we'd much rather have a turkey carved out of her vegetable casserole than actually have the turkey itself.

In a few hours, I will leave for my in-laws house for Thanksgiving dinner, all the while thinking about the first Turkey my sister and I cooked ten years ago.

She was a week shy from her first wedding anniversary, and I had been married for nearly two years. She had a big house and we both had a rag tag fugitive fleet of relatives that we were going to cobble together for Thanksgiving Dinner.

We got together and planned the menu which included a turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, stuffing (from a box-- which ironically turned out to be a "big" deal. We had parents panicking because it wasn't the real thing! LOL... crazy.), gravy, and cranberry sauce. (Obviously, this was pre-invention of Grandma's veggie dish or we would have found a way to include that too.) For beverage, we were going to get sparkling cider. I was all about "presentation", my sister was all about research. We needed to know how to cook a turkey.

My sister spent the week before calling all of our relatives, including my Grandmother, to obtain information on how to cook a turkey. But the only advice that she could get was to make sure to remove the giblets. I remember her telling me in serious tone that it must be a really big deal to remove them because every single person she talked to mentioned it. So, okay, get turkey, remove giblets, put it in the oven. We could do that. We were even confident that if we seasoned it a bit and smeared butter on it, it would taste great. There was something about basting too.
I got to my sister's house at 6:30 in the morning to get the turkey in the oven. It was about 12 pounds, so we figured it would probably take about 12 hours to cook. When I went inside, she already had the turkey out of the fridge and had finished rinsing it off. She put it in the roasting pan and we set to work getting the giblets out. I reached inside and pulled out... something. After examining it, we determined it must have been the neck. We were off to a fine start!

I reached in again, and... nothing. I couldn't find anything. I bent down and peered into the turkey, the smell of raw meat tickling my nose, but it was too dark in the cavity to see anything. It was still frozen inside, so sticking my hand into the bird once again didn't tell me anything. What I thought was a frozen rib, could easily have been the bag of giblets frozen to the side.
"Get a flashlight. Maybe we can use that to look for the giblets." I told my sister, watching as she walked down the hall to the laundry room to grab one. She came back and together we upended the bird and proceeded to examine it more closely than a forensics scientist.

No giblets.

I looked at my sister, at the look of uncertainty on her face as she nibbled on her lower lip, and commented about how weird it was that we would get a fluke turkey after all the warnings about the giblets. This seemed to appease her concern and we buttered, seasoned, and stuck the turkey in the oven to cook.

About six hours later, after the stuffing panic, my Grandmother called to check up on us. My sister was on the phone relating the story about looking into the bird and being unable to find the dreaded giblets. I watched her face go from lively, to curious, to indescribable as she exclaimed, "What other opening?!"

It turns out that turkeys have a butt and a neck opening. Who knew?

Thanks to television shows like "Good Eats", I've gotten a lot better at cooking turkey, but I always remember that day as one of my favorite Thanksgivings.