<p>One of the challenges of courting in one’s late 40s and getting married at 50 to someone as equally aged is that we both have well-established preferences for certain things. H likes the pumpkin pie recipe he’s used for years, and I like the pumpkin pie recipe I’ve used for years. </p>
<p>Thus, every year we have a Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie Face-off. </p>
<p>The first year of the pumpkin pie face-off, I was taking my pie out of the oven when I inadvertently (because no one would do this advertently…) touched the hot rack with my hand. It was instinct; I recoiled. The pie flipped out of my hands and onto the open oven door; it landed nearly perpendicular to the door before falling over.</p>
<p>I stood there for a few seconds looking at what had been a lovely pumpkin pie, and then decided what the hey – the oven door was hot, it’s not as though anything dangerous could still be alive on the inside of the oven door, so I grabbed the pie pan, pot holder in my left hand, dug out a large spoon out of a drawer with my right hand, and put all the pie stuff right back into the pan.</p>
<p>We didn’t serve it to the guests we were having that day, but we did eat it later; we dubbed it “pumpkin plop,” and though it was not a lovely pie, it was still delicious.</p>
<p>Two years ago we had a house full of guests, probably 30 people. I had just drained the huge pot of potatoes and mashed them with butter when I remembered a casserole in the downstairs oven, so I asked one of the young guests to grab the bottle of cream from the door of the fridge, pour it into the potatoes, and keep stirring.</p>
<p>I forgot that I had mixed coleslaw dressing in an empty cream bottle, and that’s what went into the potatoes…it wasn’t very good.</p>
<p>owlice, you’re perfectly safe. Haven’t you heard of the “two bounce” rule? </p>
<p>Any food that is dropped, and can be caught before the third bounce is perfectly acceptable. It used to be be three bounces, but they have tightened the standard. Damn government regulations… ;)</p>
<p>This is the one day a year DH wanders into the kitchen to help. No complaints, he does lots around the house. Salmonella seems to be something he’s totally unaware of as he touches the turkey and then everything else. No problem, he’ll wipe everything down. And he does, without soap! 18 people and the only thing I’m sure I’m serving is Salmonella. I love you darling but get out of the kitchen!</p>
<p>Salmonella seems to be something he’s totally unaware of as he touches the turkey and then everything else. No problem, he’ll wipe everything down. And he does, without soap! 18 people and the only thing I’m sure I’m serving is Salmonella. I love you darling but get out of the kitchen!</p>
<p>OMG, that’s exactly what I went through today. I was following behind my turkey-toting husband with a bleach-soaked rag. He thought I was being ridiculous.</p>
<p>S1 got the turkey out of its plastic wrapper in the sink then decided he needed to wash his hands. I stopped him just in time before he pour soap into his hands and soapy water all over the turkey.
But, hey, he is a college graduate. He’s learned critical reading skills. He can read recipes out loud and tell me what the next step is.
The turkey was delicious. Not a hint of lemony soap!
S2, the math whizz, left the job of cutting pies to someone else whose idea of 10degree angle was no one else’s.</p>
<p>This year I did such a good job of creating a moist turkey that when I was lifting it from the pan to put on the platter both of the legs fell off and stayed attached to the rack. </p>
<p>Not presentation worthy. It looked like some torture gone wrong from the Middle Ages. I almost fell over laughing so hard. That’s how my day has been.</p>
<p>We finally ate at 8:45 tonight. My brother cooked the turkey, as he does every year. He lives a mile away, so he came over while it was cooking. He went back to get it when it should have been done. It wasn’t ready yet, so he brought it over & put it in my oven. It was quite a bit bigger than usual, because everyone wanted leftovers. The popup thingie wasn’t popping up. Finally, it had been so long that we just figured the popup thingie was stuck. We took it out & got it out of its cooking bag. It looked great … until he carved into it. It was still pink! We just carved it up, put it in a pan, and cooked it the rest of the way. About 45 minutes later, it was finally done. Whew!!</p>
<p>It was wonderful, though! </p>
<p>By the way, my new purchase came in very handy given the situation. I bought a 3-dish electric warming tray. It kept the potatoes, sweet potatoes, and stuffing warm!</p>
<p>Last night walked into kitchen, where DH and my cousin’s husband were carving up the turkey, to find CH wiping the floor with paper towels and husband asking for a rimmed cookie sheet to put the aluminum turkey pan into…apparently it had been pierced with a knife and the pan drippings were seeping out the bottom. I decided to exit and let the men deal with this one (since I had been on my feet all day cooking and the guests at the table were ready for me to start serving the next course). Sometime during dinner my cousin asks me “why is the dog’s head all wet”? She was under the table hoping the kids would accidently drop something. I called her to me and sure enough, my (newly groomed)westie’s head was soaking wet…and smelled like turkey! All I can think of is she must have been in the kitchen at DH and CH’s feet when they spilled the pan drippings! Well, I couldn’t deal with her right then, in the middle of supper and later on the fur on her head dried stiff like “turkey smelling mousse”. The last thing I felt like doing after cleaning up supper was bathing the dog! I put her in the sink and shampooed her head and ears. Despite this, I could smell turkey all night long (since she sleeps right next to me).</p>
<p>After dinner was over, I set the controls on my brand new oven to self-clean, since I had spilled a little of the pan juices in the bottom of the oven and they had baked on. About 5 minutes into the cycle, there was quite a bit of smoke coming out of the vents and a really acrid smell. Since the oven was less than a week old, I figured that the smoke and the smell were the result of some kind of coating that was burning off and I didn’t really think much of it.</p>
<p>Later than night as I was drifting off to sleep and mentally reviewing the leftovers that we’d be having for dinner on Friday, I suddenly realized that I had left the dinner rolls in the oven :eek:. This morning when I opened it up, I found about 8 tiny little cubes of charcoal in the middle of the foil pan, reduced to about 1/3 of their original size!</p>
<p>Hey, at least the turkey and gravy came out great and my Southern cornbread dressing was as good as my mother used to make :).</p>
<p>Nothing exciting/challenging happened this year, but I was reminded of the year my “mood ring” (remember those?) fell into the turkey drippings and never registered my mood again. I was sad so my mother bought me a new one.</p>
<p>Friends who have dogs tend to have the best stories of how their big galoot made off with part of dinner, either before or after it was cooked.</p>
<p>One year, she was making her broccoli casserole and realized there was no room for it in the oven, so she decided to bake it in the toaster oven. Not a good idea - broccoli casserole caught on fire, as did the recipe, which my mom had placed on top of the toaster oven! We haven’t had a broccoli casserole since - and that was about 17 years ago.</p>
<p>Same Thanksgiving…</p>
<p>After company went home, my mom decided to self-clean her oven. Shortly after, she and her H smelled smoke - checked on the oven, and there was a fire inside. The oven door locks while it is self-cleaning, so they couldn’t open it. Luckily, my stepfather thought of shutting off the circuit breaker. They were then able to open the oven door and put out the fire. Oven was fine, and kitchen was fine.</p>
<p>Yesterday my dad cooked the turkey upside-down. It was his first unsupervised turkey attempt. He wondered why the breast had so little meat on it.</p>
<p>When my mother was cooking Thanksgiving dinner one year, we were all in the kitchen telling stories of past cooking boo-boos. I had just finished telling the story of our neighbor who had mistakenly put cayenne pepper on her mashed potatoes instead of paprika…just in time to see that my mother was about to make the same mistake!</p>
<p>I have been told that if you cook a turkey upside down all the brown meat juices moisten the breast, and it is the preferred thing to do. Since I only cook a turkey breast I have not first hand experience.</p>
<p>many, many years ago, post-Thanksgiving, we found our cat contentedly sitting inside the turkey carcass, which she had wrested from the garbage. :)</p>
