Event Wed Nov 26 2008

Turkey Day Follies

By Robyn Nisi

The Drive-Thru staffers have food on the brain this week, notably the cooking missteps of past Thanksgivings. For your viewing humor...

"Taking a traditional item off the menu has always backfired in my family. Green rice casserole (a tantalizing amalgamation of rice, broccoli and Velveeta cheese) has long been a staple; one year, my aunt decided to contribute "something different." I can't tell you what that something was, but I do recall the general outcry from the rest of my extended family: 'Where's the green rice casserole?! No green rice casserole?!?! What's Thanksgiving without green rice casserole?!'"

"I spent several Thanksgivings at my grandparents' country club, where they offered other entrée choices besides turkey. My mom would always order lamb or duck, which I considered sacrilege. Even if you are eating out, how can you not have turkey on Thanksgiving?"

"Fat free mashed potatoes."

"When I was about 12, we had Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant. The food was fine, but I just kept worrying about the staff. Surely they would have rather spent the day with their own families, rather than mine."

"Turkey Hot Pockets."

"When the guy in charge of cooking the turkey gets so trashed the night before that he can hardly get the turkey started and had a personal bucket at hand for most of the day. Needless to say, his normally delicious bird wasn't so good."

"I did overcook a turkey once. The thermometer that came with the bird was supposed to pop up once the bird is cooked through, but it was stuck. None of us realized this, and the bird ended up sitting in the oven for about four hours. Needless to say, it was dry as the Gobi."

"I've hosted a few meals at Thanksgiving, so I've had the chance to come up with a lot of bad ideas. A few years ago, when Glad first came out with these plastic dishes that were supposed to go from the refrigerator to the microwave or oven, I filled one up with stuffing (which I made myself, and was feeling really proud of) and put it right in the oven. I hadn't read the directions, which said to put the pan on a cookie sheet if you put it in the oven. The plastic pan melted in on my stuffing and filled my kitchen with vile fumes."

"For the first Thanksgiving turkey I ever cooked, I went to the farmers' market and fell in love with the idea of a free range turkey. The one I brought home was really tiny and muscley, and still had some feathers on it. It made for a disgusting cooking experience, I felt, having to pull the feathers out. And it made a bad meal; there was hardly any meat on it. I don't think my mother-in-law was impressed."

"When I was in college, I drove to my sister's place for Thanksgiving. I brought cheap, hardly palatable food from the local Wal-Mart--a deli rotisserie chicken instead of turkey, canned gravy and instant mashed potatoes--I was a poor student and it showed. But she supplied the mushrooms. Yeah, those kind. Despite the attempt to make the holiday an eccentric evening, neither of our contributions were that memorable."

[image from someecards]