You Should All Be Baking Pies Right Now
During this week in November I usually write about things that I am not thankful for. I do this because everyone else has already spent a week talking about how they’re grateful for sunny days and lemon zest and cozy socks and by the time Thursday rolls around, you could throw up from all the sentimentality. In general, I believe that the people who express the most thankfulness at Thanksgiving are the ones for whom the holiday means a day off from work where they go to someone else’s house and eat until their belt starts to cut off their circulation. For those of us for whom the holiday means some form of additional work, crankiness is the watchword.
For example, a week ago last Monday, I went to the store to buy a turkey. Correction: I went to three stores to buy no turkey. It used to be that turkeys were anywhere from 8 to 14 pounds and if you needed to feed more than, say, ten people, you either bought two turkeys or you bought one turkey and a ham and then twice as many people in your family would be slightly put out all through dinner because they didn’t get a drumstick. In the last few years, however, you are lucky if you can find a turkey that doesn’t require that you first call in a handyman to attach your stove to a wall stud so that when you place the monster bird inside of it, it won’t tip over. Since I never have more than six people over, even in an ordinary year, turkeys are too damned big. This year, however, Thanksgiving is going to be just me and my mom, which is something I actually am thankful for because my siblings and their spouses are lovely as individuals, but when you get them all in a group, after about 45 minutes I want to clonk their heads together.
I knew getting an appropriate amount of turkey for two people was going to be a challenge, which is why I started early. My goal was a three- to five-pound “Li’l Butterball,” which has achieved a mythic status within both the Spinster Network and Double Income No Kids Coalition. I think I got one once in the early 2000s, but maybe I just dreamed that. My more realistic goal: a three- to five-pound turkey breast (or half-breast, depending on how pedantically you characterize your cuts of meat). I first went to the huge, new Safeway with the terrible parking. They had approximately one thousand turkeys, all of them 20 pounds or more. I then went to the small, old Safeway with the terrible parking. They had two turkeys, because why plan ahead, both of them also in the 20+ pound range. Then I went to the medium-sized, new-ish QFC with the terrible parking. They had a reasonable number of turkeys, all larger than 20 pounds. They also had a butcher (for those of you playing at home, go ahead and drink) putting out packages of ground beef. As I was running out of both stores and patience, I decided to ask him for help, even though historically, this has not worked out for me.
Me [miming oblong shaped item, the international gesture for turkey breast]: Do you have any turkey breasts, or do you only have the whole turkeys?
Butcher [pleasantly]: We should have some. [walks over to frozen case where I've already looked, finding nothing] GOD! I’LL HAVE TO GO CHECK!
Five minutes later, I’m still waiting, so I stomp over to the counter where I find the butcher pulling frozen breasts out of a box, weighing, and pricing them, but since the scale doesn’t seem to be working correctly, he is mostly slamming things around and swearing.
Butcher: WE HAVE SOME!
Me [eying the gigantic turkey breasts dubiously]: OKAY!
Butcher: I DON’T KNOW WHY SOMEONE DIDN’T PUT THESE OUT EARLIER!
Me: YES! SOMEONE SHOULD HAVE DONE THAT!
Butcher: WHICH ONE DO YOU WANT?
Me: I’LL TAKE THE SMALLEST ONE!
Butcher: THEY’RE ALL EIGHT POUNDS!
Me: THAT’S TOO BIG! DON’T YOU HAVE THOSE THREE POUND ONES?
Butcher: WE’RE GETTING A SHIPMENT TODAY OR TOMORROW! WE’LL HAVE BABY BUTTERBALLS AND TURDUCKENS AND ALL THAT OTHER CRAP THAT NO ONE BUYS!
Me: I WILL COME BACK IN A COUPLE OF DAYS THEN!
Butcher: THAT SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN!
Two days later, they had two turkey breasts. One was eight pounds and one was two and a half pounds. I got the two and a half pound one, a package of turkey drumsticks, and some throat lozenges.
I need to go bake a pie now, so I think I will save my list of things for which I’m not thankful until the Festivus Airing of Grievances. Instead, I will tell you about something I am thankful for. And that something is Coach Ben Wade from Survivor, the most annoying, delusional jackass to ever play the game. He’s a 40-year-old man who refers to himself as “the dragonslayer.” He insists that everyone, including his own parents, call him “Coach.” He claims that he once escaped from cannibal pygmies in the Amazon. I was not happy when he appeared again this season to play for the third time, but a couple of weeks ago, he said something that made it all worthwhile. In one of his many pompous talking heads, Coach:
said, “some of the greatest inspiration is borne of desperation,” and he attributed that quote to Marcus Aurelius:
when in fact, it was not Marcus Aurelius who said it, but rather Comer Cottrell:
the inventor of the Jheri Curl:
Happy Thanksgiving!
I will be baking pies later today, does that count? Also, is the international gesture for turkey breast anything like the international gesture for human breast? That could get confusing and/or embarrassing.
No, it’s different. If it were the same, it might have put the butcher in a better mood. Also, someone other than me doing some of the cooking ALWAYS counts. Remember that if anyone tries to give you attitude tomorrow.
My annual Thanksgiving tradition has become staying home alone to watch TV all day. More accurately, watch the computer. This year it’s a Fringe marathon. Nothing says Thanksgiving like gory sci-fi.
I prefer it this way, at least until I get hungry and then I’m pissed that I have no Thanksgiving goodies to eat. This year I planned a little better for my Thanksgiving-party-of-one. I learn things, see.
I’ve done the Thanksgiving-for-one. I studied for finals and had a turkey burger. It was not such a bad day, really. This year, while I’m cooking I’ll be watching Miracle on 34th Street. I’m sure NBC will class it up by interspersing it with various witnesses’ memories of Natalie Wood drowning.
As a former jherri curl diva ( it was 1985…I was trying to find myself) I concur with your assessment of Thanksgiving. I keep hoping the day will come and go so I don’t have to pretend so hard to be interested in people who I take great pains to avoid every othe day of the year. Btw, I officially subscribed to your blog even though I’ve been following along for quite a while now. It was the sexy Morrocan that made me take the plunge. Hope your Turkey Breast comes out a success !
Okay, this comment is making me laugh because I have no idea what “sexy Moroccan” refers to. The closest I can get to it is Ron Swanson, but he’s from Indiana. It just goes to show that at least 50% of the time, even I don’t know what I’m saying. Also, I know what you mean about missteps on the way to finding yourself, as I once wore leg warmers.
Someone else is bringing pie, so today I cooked the (16.5 lb.) turkey. Yes, I cook the turkey the day before, then just reheat it on T-day. It’s better that way. Really.
Every year, I swear I am not doing turkey again. I don’t even like turkey. This year, I bought a free-range one that still had the neck attached. I have a shelf full of cookbooks, some of which I have never even used. Surely I can find something more inspiring to cook on Thanksgiving.
The things I am thankful for this holiday are the things I am thankful for everyday: hot running water, flush toilets, and central heat/AC. The rest is just icing.
The non-turkey Thanksgiving is only okay if everyone is aware of it and agrees to it beforehand. And maybe not even then. No turkey at Thanksgiving is like no potato salad on Independence Day. People will go along with it, but then they will talk about you behind your back. I know someone who served ratatouille one year instead of turkey and was so offended when she found out that her parents cooked and ate a turkey at their own house the next day that she never celebrated another holiday with them again. Of course, she was mean and crazy, which was probably the bigger reason.
I am ruining a pie right now! If Libby Pumpkin Mix wants me to add one (5 0z) can of evaporated milk and not one (12 oz) can of evaporated milk she should really make that A LOT MORE NOTICEABLE.
I had a similar experience recently when a food blogger I (used to) like declined to specify what kind of pepper to use in a stir fry, assuming that we would just figure it out from the photo. Which I did, but only after I discovered that dinner was inedible. For the record, one teaspoon of red pepper flakes? Adds flavor and complexity. One teaspoon of black pepper? Hotter than the sun.
After being a vegetarian for more than ten years, I recently added fish and free-range poultry back to my diet. I eat chicken so seldom, still, I am always shocked by the difference is size between the organic poultry and the commercially-raised chickens. They literally look like different animals. It’s scary how much steroid-like growth hormones must go into those behemoth birds.
Every year, I consider getting a heritage turkey (and then decide against it when I see the price) and the photos of the live ones look nothing like the kind of turkey that gets a White House pardon. Just in terms of proportions, they look more like pheasant. Aside from the price, the other thing that makes me hesitate to buy one is that I’m so used to factory-farm birds that I might not like a turkey that tastes like turkey.
Hope you had a good Thanksgiving! Coach refers to himself as Zeus as well… he’s just too… too… argh.
That whole Greek god thing was weird and wrong. Especially Cochran as Hercules. Hercules captured the Hound of Hell, Cochran told a story about going to the bathroom in his pants. Yeah, that’s the same.
On occasion I publicly state what I am thankful for but more often I keep it to myself since if it doesn’t directly concern or involve other people I’m not sure I want to share it, or even if they care to hear. Oddly, I am thankful for lemon zest, and citrus in general. I find it often elevates something lackluster.
I have a fantasy (which I will never live out) about spending Thanksgiving alone. I cook for a community center dinner and for my family dinner and am done by about noon; at that point, feeling I have done my bit for the holiday, I dream of laying on the sofa and watching a Walton’s marathon or an old movie and eating cranberry sauce off potato chips. I have never tried that last part but my instincts tell me it would be excellent.
I never think about The Waltons, but now that you mention it, it occurs to me that it really is underrated. I’m starting to feel annoyed now that The Waltons is never shown in syndication reruns, yet Little House on the Prairie is on at least twice a day. John Walton is so much better than Charles Ingalls, if for no other reason that he didn’t cry in every episode. John might have cried a little when Livvy had polio and they thought she’d never walk again, but other than that he was pretty stoic.
I’m going to lie on the couch today, eat leftover stuffing, and watch a movie. Either All About Eve or Gremlins, depending on how I feel later.
I am thankful for your wit. You never fail to make me smile (and sometimes laugh out loud). BTW, I prefer John Walton as well.
He was so much better, wasn’t he? I give a lot of credit to the overalls. Also Ralph Waite has said he was hungover a lot when he was playing him, which pleases me for some reason.
@Catboy, the idea of cranberry sauce on potato chips is so intriguing! I’ll have to try it later.
I made a ten pound turkey that was originally supposed to be for just the husband and me; but then our neighbors came over bringing the total people eating up to four. Of course they also brought over a ham, so it was altogether WAY too much food. But hey! Turkey for everyone for a week!
I am thankful for your hilarious posts, especially ones that reference the Jheri Curl, because: awesome.
Hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend!
I am completely envious that you had a ten-pound turkey. Even though it’s twice as big as I wanted, it’s still half the size of anything I found, and now you get to have turkey sandwiches. When I decided to go the Frankenturkey parts route this year, I had completely forgotten that leftover turkey sandwiches are my favorite part of the holiday. Turkey sandwich, no guests, sweatpants, couch, TV. Damn. I might have to make another turkey now.
I just looked it up and Hallmark Channel shows The Waltons daily, but we missed the boat for a while. They have moved on to their all-Christmas all-day schedule and The Waltons won’t be back until next year. Ironically, they showed a Thanksgiving episode yesterday so I could have done my fantasty Thanksgiving if I’d planned ahead.
I checked Hulu to see if they have The Waltons, but no such luck. They do have something called Double the Fist, which … I can’t even … Let’s just move on. But in Hulu’s favor, they don’t have Little House on the Prairie either.
I really really wish I could spend Thanksgiving alone! My family is great, but also totally crazy. My mom complains about going to her sister’s house for the holiday, and then is totally miffed when not invited to a dinner less than a week later for her sister’s birthday. I said, “Why are you complaining? You HATE going to her house!” She said, “Yeah, but we were SNUBBED!” sheesh.
Now that Thanksgiving is over, I’m trying to think of a way to get out of Christmas. So far, I’ve come up with two plans: (A) I spend Christmas out of town, or (B) I contract bacterial meningitis. I’ve ridden the bus several times this month, so Plan B is a real possibility.
My Jheri curl was a valid choice (*tear*)
If you actually had a Jheri curl back in the 80s, I am going to need to make a retroactive phone call to CPS. You can’t put activator on children! They’ll grow up to be DeBarge!
Thanksgiving is over, but I’m thankful for those last four photos, because they just made my day.
Last night Coach was blathering about something and attributed it to William Shakespeare. I still need to check that quote, but I’m hoping it will turn out to be something the ShamWow guy said.