Thanksgiving needs more hurdles

In August I was so hungry I told my husband “I can’t wait for Thanksgiving.”

He suggested I make myself a sandwich, and perhaps that would tide me over.

Food holidays are the best of all. There are no sizes to get wrong or cards to address, and when the fourth Thursday in November rolls around the toughest decision any of us are force to make is what kind of pie to slab on our plate. Of course it’s a problem easily solved, just try them all.

Perhaps I haven’t learned enough about cooking to be intimidated by turkey day, or perhaps it’s just because I don’t have a love affair with food that makes the possibility of a kitchen disaster more fun than fearsome.

My mother once steamed a turkey over the stove after the element on her oven decided it was quits midway through a 30 lb. bird. She came up with the plan out of desperation, as she was hosting a houseful. The fact that her mother-in-law raved it was the most succulent turkey she’d ever had became a bragging right for my mother.

My own mother-in-law tells about the time the cloth she soaks in broth and drapes over the turkey disappeared following the final baste. It turned up during the meal, when, to her horror, her dog came coughing into the dinning room and retched up the rag.

We have friends who have scorched their lawns beyond repair or nearly lit their houses on fire by frying turkeys in the backyard. And there’s been talk of people cooking all kinds of things by accident along with the turkey — from band-aids to sink stoppers and even, sadly, pet rodents. Every time I hear the tales all I can do is furrow my brow and wonder —
WHY DOESN’T THIS EVERY HAPPEN TO ME!

I think those little catastrophes are exactly what our Thanksgiving needs. How else would we know to be thankful? How else are we to tell one from another if not by the year the turkey blew up, or the time the dog ate all the pies while we were watching football?

I’ve hosted Thanksgiving more than a handful of times, and the most exciting thing that’s happened is the time I forgot to remove the package of gore the people at the turkey factory leave behind.

I am by no means a perfectionist. There is no innate talent that causes the turkey to always be tasty, the potatoes to be fluffy and light or the stuffing to have just the right blend of seasonings. My husband’s specialty — creamed pearl onions — are always tender and savory. My mother’s gravy is consistently creamy and smooth, and the wine, thanks to my father, is always reserve and plentiful.

Somehow it seems as if there should be some obstacle that makes Thanksgiving a headache. It is after all a HOLIDAY.

I’m fairly certain that if the electricity went out in our house on Thanksgiving morning and stayed out all day, my husband would figure out a way to cook the turkey with a blow torch or a space heater. If it didn’t work, of course, we could be the first in our family’s history to serve a gathering of 10 hungry souls cold cereal and juice boxes. Now that would be a story we could proudly hand down to the grandkids.