The planned menu started out great. A simple Thanksgiving dinner to share with friends.
We decided to serve:
◦ Mimosas & cheese platter with crackers
◦ Oyster Stuffing
◦ Steamed green beans
◦ Mashed potatoes with skins
◦ Cranberry sauce
◦ Turkey – 13.26 lbs.
◦ Gravy
◦ Tossed salad
◦ Baguette + butter
◦ Pinot Noir
◦ Pecan pie with vanilla ice cream
The real Thanksgiving dinner was harder to create than we expected…
Wednesday…
The day before Thanksgiving, my husband Khalid agreed to help me with the menu preparations. I needed help chopping vegetables and retrieving heavy items from the cabinet. I dislocated my shoulder a month ago and am still not operating at 100 percent.
I asked Khalid to get the sugar canister down as I needed it for the cranberry sauce. I keep it on the second shelf of an upper cabinet. He reached for it and I could tell something was going awry. I begged him to move other things out of the way first, or perhaps use a step stool, but he was stubborn and proceeded as usual. As he pulled the canister filled with five pounds of sugar toward him, the lid popped off and showered him, the shelves, countertop, floor, even the tiny crevices on the cabinet doors with sugar. For the next 20 minutes, as our feet crunched around on sugar, we cleaned up sticky crystals from the cabinet shelf to the floor to the counters to below the trash compactor to even the small ledges on the cabinet doors and the folding door for the bread storage hideaway. The sugary mess just added to our prep work. Sigh.
Cleaning up sugar distracted me, thus, I allowed my cranberries to boil over leaving a sugary cranberry juice mess hardening to a smooth candy-like skating rink glistening on the stove top. One more difficult cleanup job.
Wednesday night, we unwrapped our fresh turkey and prepped it for brining overnight, plucking out any stray remaining feathers and washing, salting and thanking it for gracing our table. We carried it downstairs to our second refrigerator which had more space and poured the brine water over it there. Not one drop spilled as Khalid lifted the heavy pan onto the upper shelf of the refrigerator. Finally, after a quick kitchen cleanup, we could get some sleep.
Thursday…
On Thanksgiving day, I awakened with a severe foot cramp, no doubt from standing on our wooden floors in the kitchen all day. Not a great way to begin the holiday. Thankfully, I had dill pickles at the ready since they work well to diminish a cramp.
I awakened Khalid to help me with making the various dishes we had planned to serve. Our guests were due to arrive at 5 pm and there was still a lot to accomplish. We lay in bed another 15 minutes just talking about the day to come and then I finally got up to face the day.
Out of bed yet still in my nightgown, I started moving Christmas wrapping paper out of the kitchen. The last week or so, ribbons and tissue paper and smiling Santas had taken over our kitchen and dining room as I feverishly wrapped gifts to send family and friends.
I noticed my phone and had a missed call from Kate. She left a Thanksgiving greeting. There were also Thanksgiving texts from Stephanie, David and Dalila. As I read and responded to texts, my phone rang— Anita was calling to wish us a Happy Thanksgiving. We spoke briefly of pies and Aunt Sara. Then I was once again focused on my cooking and cleaning.
Khalid eventually got up to start on his assigned tasks, but not before sipping his usual cup of coffee and munching a peanut butter smeared croissant. He cleaned a pile of Russet potatoes for mashing, leaving skins on as he prefers them. He snapped green beans and chopped onion and celery for the stuffing.
The big menu item was the turkey! My dislocated shoulder still limits my range of motion. I can’t carry anything as large as a 13.25 lb. turkey, especially when it’s in a large pan sloshing around in a bag filled with 12 cups of brining liquid. Khalid managed to carry the heavy pan laden with sloshing brine and turkey from the downstairs refrigerator to the bottom of the stairs, but then the stairs proved daunting. So I took one side of the pan with my good arm and he took the other side, and we sloshed up the stairs to the kitchen without disaster. Whew!
But wait … we still had to dump the brining liquid into the sink and get the turkey prepped for roasting. Fortunately that occurred without incident.
I turned on the oven to heat to the required temperature.
We had done the math and knew how long our turkey needed to bake. I melted butter and mixed it with the seasonings, then gently brushed the hot liquid all over the turkey, making sure to cover every nook and cranny on the big bird’s body. Khalid assisted me in trussing the turkey, leaving both of us with buttery hands.
The oven was ready. We washed the butter from our hands. All looked well to put the turkey in the oven where it would roast until it was ready for its next basting. I couldn’t lift the pan due to the turkey’s weight, so Khalid carried it from the counter adjacent to the sink over to the counter in front of the oven in preparation. I opened the oven door and felt the heat flow out. The temperature was perfect for the big bird. Khalid again picked up the heavy pan, but this time our beautiful, buttered and brined turkey suddenly slid out of the pan and onto our wooden kitchen floor. With one hand, he swooped up the buttery turkey and plopped it back into the pan and into the waiting oven. The look on his face was one of pure terror. He started cleaning up butter and assuring me that all was well.
What had just happened? I stood there in disbelief.
It appeared that Khalid had grabbed one side of the pan with its normal handle and then accidentally grabbed the wrong handle on the other side — the one attached to the rack upon which the turkey sat. So when he picked up what he thought were the pan’s handles, one side fell free releasing our buttery turkey to fly through the air and land itself and all that buttery sauce on the floor, cabinets, oven door, drawers and anything else within a certain radius of the flying bird.
The good news is that our guests never knew.
Khalid and I cleaned up butter for the next half hour. Khalid was worried that he would face my wrath. I could see it on his face as he mopped the floor. I suppose I was still in shock, but suddenly I burst into laughter and I couldn’t stop giggling. Our Thanksgiving turkey had just ended up on the floor.
When Khalid saw me doubled over in laughter, he was at first perplexed, but then relieved. It truly was one of those unforgettable moments that will remain forever a part of our Thanksgiving lore. It reminded me of the scene in the movie “A Christmas Story” when dogs come in and eat the freshly roasted turkey and the family ends up eating at a Chinese restaurant.
The year when my mother had surgery, my father roasted his first turkey with the bag of giblets left inside. I have told that true Thanksgiving story many times. This year’s flying buttered turkey story will be retold, as well.
In between all the cooking and cleaning up sugar and butter messes, I kept checking up on my senior cat Gypsy who has now lost control of her bowels. She often misses the litter box in favor of the floor, or if I am lucky, she used the pee pads I put down in the mudroom where I keep her. I can’t trust her to wander the house freely anymore. Poor thing is skin and bones, but still hungry and begging for food. Her thyroid condition requires medicine in her ears twice daily. Despite my focus on cooking on Thanksgiving day, I still had to care for Gypsy.
As if that wasn’t enough, the dining room was still filled with Christmas wrapping paper that got moved just prior to our guests’ arrival and, with Khalid’s help, a fresh tablecloth added to the table with plates and silverware set just in the nick of time.
Khalid had told me that our two young guests would arrive at 5 pm; yet he told them to come at 4 pm. So when the doorbell rang earlier than expected, I was still in my nightgown just about ready to shower and dress. Khalid was downstairs about to step into the shower himself.
Sparky started barking, her usual alert to me when someone is at the door. I ran to my room to don a robe and opened the door to welcome our guests, apologizing for my inappropriate attire. We all laughed at the miscommunication. Khalid heard their voices and wandered up the stairs … himself not yet showered or shaved … and entertained our guests while I showered and dressed. Then we switched places and I continued cooking while he got ready.
Despite the arrival time mixup, our evening progressed well serving Mimosas and cheese as appetizers. Our young guests helped chop things as I continued to cook.
The oyster stuffing still had to be made. My recipe called for cornbread which I didn’t have, so I substituted regular stuffing cubes.
I asked Khalid to carve the turkey, another interesting experience. I assumed he would be skilled in that task, but he cut huge hunks of meat, a whole leg on the platter, a huge hunk of breast … instead of neat slices. As he carved, he’d stop to gobble down some of the meat, caveman style. The turkey tasted great anyway, nice and moist despite all its trauma.
We finally sat down at the table an hour past the planned 6 pm dinner time.
Khalid’s mashed potatoes were great, skin and all. The turkey was juicy. Cranberry sauce was perfect. Green beans were amazingly simple and delicious with no seasoning whatsoever. The oyster dressing was yummy even without cornbread. My pecan pie was a frozen one I had purchased, but it tasted great topped with Breyer’s vanilla ice cream. No one wanted coffee, so we chatted over dessert until our guests departed.
After they left, Khalid found his way to the couch and stretched out. I released the cats and dog from their laundry room prison and then plopped down in the chair next to him. In minutes, he was snoring. Our cat Buddy wanted to jump in my lap, so I got up to change clothes back into my nightgown given that I didn’t want cat fur on my nice dress. I sat down again in my nightgown, finished my glass of Pinot Noir, and released a sigh of relief. Thanksgiving was over for another year. But not quite. A messy kitchen awaited me. Pans needed to go in the dishwasher. My good china and silver required handwashing. Leftovers needed to be repackaged and refrigerated for tomorrow’s soup.
The day was a reminder of how thankful I am to have a loving husband, friends and family who care, and a good sense of humor.
La Vue de rue Sleidan 