I really love Thanksgiving. It’s one of my total favorite holidays. I love how my mom makes the turkey and all the sides but when I’ve tried it on my own, I’ve had some real mixed results.
Omitting all the times I went to Other People’s Thanksgivings and had to learn to live with another way of making stuffing or cranberry sauce (can of glop? ick!), I can roll down several of my own Turkey Days where I could have learned a thing or two from the Turkey Hotline People.
- Thanksgiving 1998: first Thanksgiving living out in San Francisco. My sister and I decided to tackle just cooking a turkey breast. We did everything fine, but since we marinated it in red wine — for whatever reason — all the meat was a little pink. And scary.
- Thanksgiving 1999: big ol’ potluck. Together with my roommate, we hosted about 20 single fun people in our Castro district apartment. All the sides were there, but I miss-timed the turkey by about 90 minutes. Oops. Luckily my friend Brad was not a moron like me and he could tell when it was done. We had fun shoving the leftover carcass down the trash chute.
- Thanksgiving 2007: two kids and a home in Berkeley, hosting the in-laws. I decided to make it easy on myself and buy all the sides from Whole Foods and just cook the turkey. In my enthusiasm I bought it too early and it went bad. The in-laws got us a frozen-solid bird the day before Thanksgiving and we thawed it in the kiddy bath-tub amidst several very heated food safety arguments.
- Honorable mention: first time I met Whitney was Thanksgiving 1996 and we were both newly dating a pair of best friends from opposite sides of the country. One of her great friend’s brothers made me a wonderful turkey and trimmings in San Francisco. Maybe that’s why I moved here. hmmm.
Do as I say and not as I do this year. When in doubt, call the turkey hotline people and save yourself hours of aggravation and some potential salmonella poisoning.
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This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by Butterball. They didn’t pay me or anything but maybe I’ll win fabulous cash and prizes in the form of poultry for sharing.
