"I thought someone had died!" Chris told me later. "I was like, who died now?!" I guess that could be a reasonable thing to think when you're jolted out of a sound sleep at 5 something in the morning by a slightly hysterical woman with a severe case of bed head.
But, in order to understand this story, let me take you back to the beginning. It started with the electricity going off on Sunday afternoon... no, let's be honest. The story started with a sign up sheet on the church bulletin board for the youth's Thanksgiving Supper. You see, every year the youth do a Thanksgiving Supper for the senior citizens in the community. It's a lovely, sit down meal with turkey, mashed potatoes and the works. This year it got converted into a drive through supper but the menu remained the same, complete with your choice of pie accompanied by ice cream.
I've said it enough times that I probably should stop mentioning it, but cooking is not my thing. Cooking for other people, particularly in large amounts, terrifies me. I have no confidence whatsoever in my abilities and, quite frankly, as a general rule I do my best to avoid terrifying experiences. I mean, come on -- don't you? I confess: when there are sign up sheets for food, I go for the baked goods or the salads or the things you can just buy. I know. How do I expect to ever gain confidence? I guess the answer is, I don't. And yet I battle with guilt and humiliation every time there's an event involving food and me helping.
But hey. How about we get back to the story before this turns into one long confessional of all my innermost feelings?
So, the sign up sheet. I forgot to look at the thing, see. All the pie slots were taken, see. And the four empty turkey slots stared at me reproachfully and said "You have a turkey that's just been sitting in your freezer for...well, a very long time." And the empty homemade bread slots said "Just humble yourself and buy bread from the bakery; you've done it before." It sounds completely silly trying to explain it here but the guilt and the terror are real to me and the mental anguish I put myself through over such things is something I am quite ashamed of.
I promise there is more to this story than unending naval gazing; stick with me.
Since I've prepared turkeys so rarely in my short life (cough cough), I took to Google and dutifully put the turkey in the fridge to thaw and made plans as to how I would get it baked in a timely manner. I ordered my bread and lined up my ducks and felt like maybe I was making some progress in this growing up business at last. See, I told myself, if you had just done the Terrifying Things instead of avoiding them all your life you wouldn't be like this at 41 years old! Wise, wise words.
Sunday afternoon a storm blew in and took our electricity with it. What we expected to be a couple hour outage at the most, turned into overnight and into the next day. Between the complete silence of the night that a power outage brings and the worrisome thoughts about that turkey in my fridge, I got very little sleep. When electricity was at last restored, I pulled out the fowl and discovered the thing wasn't even completely thawed. No need to panic, I had time. They say you're not to thaw the silly things in cold water but I happen to know my mother used the cold water method and what worked for my mother works for me, or something like that.
Well, it took the rest of the day to loosen up the icy depths but, no problem. My mother also baked her turkeys through the night and so could I! I would just get up early and there would be time to debone the thing and still get to the church to help with preparations -- seeing as how I am the mother of the son on the youth committee, this is the expected procedure, you see. My stove has this handy dandy time bake feature and my husband is the expert on setting it for me, so I was all set for this slight hiccup in my well laid plans. We double checked the recommended baking temperature, counted up the hours and set the oven accordingly. Then we crawled into bed, thankful for the noise of a fan and a good night of rest.
I woke up around 5 a.m. and, like Piglet with the Heffalump, my first thoughts were of turkey. Had it baked ok? Would I get it all taken care of? Did I smell it? I thought I did but the more I tried to smell it, the more I was sure I should be smelling it a whole lot more. Did I smell it? I remembered being a child and waking up to that turkey smell permeating the whole house on Christmas morning. Did I have the Coronavirus??
I fumbled my way out of bed and into the kitchen. The oven was on, there was no question about that. I felt the heat through the door and saw the red coils inside when I peered through the glass in the door. Suddenly, a sickening feeling hit the pit of my stomach. I let out a muffled noise akin to a strangling mouse and grabbed for the fridge handle. And there, my friends, was my big granite roaster perched just where I had left it with that bothersome turkey laying innocently inside.
That's when I rushed in our bedroom, scrambled onto the bed and blurted out, "You are not going to believe this!!" in a voice that made my husband think someone had died.
I didn't cry over the whole bizarre thing until after I said (as I laughed a bit hysterically) "I can't believe neither one of us thought of it last night when we were figuring out the oven!" and he said, "I just set the oven. You said you were going to put the turkey in at 10:00." Ok then.
The rest of the story is that I stuck the thing into the oven straight away. It baked while I helped at the church and I had time to come home and take care of it. Everyone was as kind as could be and all was well that ended well even if it didn't seem very well at all at 5:00 in the morning. And that, is the Terrible Tale of the Turkey. I hope it gave you a laugh, because the one redeeming thought a couple hours after the horror wore off was -- this sure will make a good story for the blog!
