Thanksgiving Day is just around the corner which means
millions of people will put on their chefs hat and enter into the kitchen. For
some of us it will be a joy to make dinner, but for others it can be one of the
most horrifying events of the year.
I remember my sister making Thanksgiving dinner for my
family one year. On Tuesday evening I got a frantic phone call because she
didn’t think she could do it. My mother was still alive and it was the first
year she wasn’t doing anything in the kitchen for the holiday feast. My sister
told her to relax, that she could take care of everything. I did my best from
1500 miles away, explaining to my sister how to make stuffing, gravy and yes it
was most definitely time to thaw out the turkey. Wednesday she was still freaking
out as she headed off to the grocery store to pick up the final items, and on
Thursday morning, I was expecting a phone call from a hysterical woman, instead
there was none. I’ll never forget the sound of her voice when I called her that
morning…total calmness. When I asked her how everything was going (at this
point I was sure she was either drunk or taking valiums) she said that she was
just great. She had found a spray bottle at the store that made her apartment
smell like turkey, and she discovered that she could order the entire meal from
the grocery store for delivery. So on Thanksgiving Day my sister walked through
her house, spray bottle in hand, and made her home and hallway reek of turkey.
When the meal was delivered she transferred it into her own cookware, threw out
the disposable containers in her neighbor's trash can, and went upstairs to
claim the meal as her own. Till this day her secret was safe with me…and my
husband…and some of my friends…and some random strangers I met at the grocery
store one year, but I never told my family!
Not all of us can pay a ton of money for a catered
Thanksgiving meal so I thought I’d share some helpful tips to make your cooking
experience a little easier. Over the next couple of weeks I will be writing a
series of blogs to save us all from insanity, and some recipes that will cause
the familia to oooh and ahhh.