Welcome to My Turkey Pleasure Palace

Chuckle #476 | November 30th, 2011
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My family celebrated Thanksgiving, just the five of us, and it was very relaxing. Big family gatherings are nice too, but there are risks associated with having 4 cooks and 20 extra dysfunctional mouths to feed. One of those risks is incarceration. We’d all like to think we wouldn’t beat grandma senseless with a wooden spoon, but in reality, we could snap at any minute.

Why is Thanksgiving such an emotional holiday? Why are crimes of passion so prevalent?

Maybe it’s the combination of tryptophan and alcohol, or maybe it’s just that cooking together gets people’s dander up. The various family “stuffing factions” are intractable and belligerent, and holding kitchen knives. By the end of the meal, the pro-chestnut half the family won’t be on speaking terms with the pro-raisin half because, well, most of them are nuts.

And be honest...has the dog ever NOT thrown up on Thanksgiving? I rest my case.

I don’t want to go to jail simply because I was provoked into a violent act by an uncouth second cousin I never liked. Guests should behave like proper guests. Thanksgiving should not be treated differently from any other civilized event. Having dinner with your extended family is not an invitation to act like a caveman, really.

For example, if you are lucky enough to be invited to someone’s house for Thanksgiving, eat what your host serves, smile, and otherwise keep your mouth shut. Make polite conversation but refrain from expressing your opinion on how much celery to put in the stuffing. This is both unwelcome and potentially life-threatening.

Because we were on our own this year my husband got to cook the turkey and the stuffing all by himself, with only minimal interference from me. (And no, you may not ask my husband to define minimal.) Being in charge of the signature Thanksgiving dish is apparently very stressful, which explains the four fingers of Highland Park, but does NOT excuse the stuffing fiasco.

Let me summarize. The stuffing recipe that my husband chose (Betty Crocker, 1950) called for two heaping tablespoons of salt. Sadly enough, Betty Crocker died from hypertension in the 70s. Someone from the 21st century, with even a tiny bit of common sense might question that amount of sodium. My husband didn’t.

The stuffing was so salty that we could have used it to brine one of the kids.

The turkey, on the other hand, was stellar. You see, we always cook our turkey “breast down”, ever since the unorthodox but fortuitous Thanksgiving of ‘89. That was the year we accidentally learned that cooking a turkey upside down lets the legs and thighs cook more, while the breast stays juicy and moist. That was also the year I got to watch my husband awkwardly grope a turkey and fail to figure out where its breasts were located. You’d expect a guy to be better at something like that.

The pros of having Thanksgiving on your own is that you get to use as much butter, salt, and cream as you want, without regard to 15 other people’s dietary restrictions or unreasonable demands. The downside is that the day can be a bit dull without the traditional house full of sociopathic relatives.

The worst thing about our relative-less turkey day is that I don’t have any insanely funny Thanksgiving stories of near death to share with my friends like I usually do. They’ll be disappointed.

While I don't have any good in-law food fights or vicious femur snapping “touch” football tackles to talk about, I do have a tale of salty stuffing and a husband who got to second base with Tom the Turkey.

You know, on second thought, I might be able to get some mileage out of that last one after all.
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