Wednesday, 15 October 2008

Adventures in Thanksgiving dinner

Our family celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving on Sunday. I had bought an 8lb turkey and was excited to have a pretty simple Thanksgiving dinner. As the delicious aroma of TURKEY filled the house, our stomachs started to growl. Man oh man, was this going to be good. The thermometer read that the turkey was done. Mmm, it looked brown and crisp. I took the turkey out and began mashing the potatoes, warming the buns, reheating the stuffing, cooling the cranberry sauce, and stirring the gravy. As Joel entertained the kids in the living room, I cut into the turkey. The skin was crisp and made that cracking sound that you only hear once or twice a year. I started carving and laying the white meat in a dish. I forced myself not to have a taste, no nibbling! The kitchen was warm and cozy and smelled so good, this was going to be great! I started on the leg bone. Hmm, having a bit of trouble here. I worked on it and finally got it off the bird. As I started in on the dark meat, I noticed some fluid pooling near the bottom. That doesn't look like drippings that you put in the gravy... uh-oh.
"OH NO!" Joel looks up and the kids stop playing.
I turn around. "The turkey's not done!"
I could hardly believe it. The dark meat didn't even look like meat, it was red and had a different consistency which I will not describe to you. The white meat now looked pink, too pink to eat. I looked at the drumstick which I had so much trouble with. Yup, it did not look done.
Well, 20 minutes later we all sat down to a Thanksgiving dinner. Without the turkey. We are grateful. Because, well, that's what you should be, especially on Thanksgiving Day.
What did we do with the turkey? There was no way I was going to throw it away, I cut off most of the meat. Or, what I guessed was probably the meat. Put it all in a baking dish and baked it for 2 hours at 325F. It worked. So on Monday for lunch we had turkey sandwiches. Monday dinner we had Turkey Divon. Tuesday lunch we had turkey sandwiches, and Tuesday supper we had leftover Turkey Divon. Ahhh, this feels more like Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

2 comments:

  1. This is me taking a small measure of comfort from the fact that other people (people who I know are most excellent in the kitchen!) have a few cooking mishaps of their own! :)

    And

    Happy Thanksgiving...of course the real one is yet to come, but Happy Thanksgiving all the same! ;) (I, of course, can say this as I am currently residing in Canada)

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  2. "Or, what I guessed was probably the meat." :)

    My parents had a similar turkey incident last year. This year we're going to try making the turkey... I hope it works!

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