The Thanksgiving Without (or Almost Without) a Turkey

 

This is in response to the StoryWorth question: Do you have any funny or embarrassing Thanksgiving memories?

For several years now, I have made the Thanksgiving dinner and invited my kids, my parents, and my niece Sydney and her now-husband Casey. For a few years, my brother-in-law and his family have also been able to travel from Ohio to be here. My son’s friend Will has come several times for Thanksgiving also. So, sometimes we have a pretty busy Thanksgiving holiday.

I usually make the turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, cornbread, pumpkin pies, chocolate torte, and maybe another side dish. My daughter Roxanna usually makes the cranberry sauce. Mom usually brings ham, green beans, and fried corn.

Now my son Cameron is kind of interested in cooking. One Thanksgiving, he told me that he would cook the turkey and I wouldn’t need to worry about it. He had watched Alton Brown cooking a turkey and he wanted to use his method. Cam told me that he was going to brine the turkey and it would need to brine for so many hours, I think that it was 24-48 hours but I can’t remember for sure.

Well, as 48 hours was closing in, I said,  ”Cammy, don’t you need to get the turkey brining?” He answered that 24 hours should be good enough. So 48 hours came and went. Now, 24 hours was approaching and I asked him if he was still going to brine the turkey, and sometime a bit shy of 24 hours, he got it brined.

Now, Thanksgiving morning arrived and as usual, we were having the Thanksgiving meal at around 1:30. It started getting later and later in the morning and I asked Cammy if he didn’t need to get the turkey on to cook. He told me that It only needed to cook 2 ½ hours and that he didn’t want to overcook it like I usually did. I told him that 2 ½ hours just did not seem to be near long enough to me and that I thought he should get it in to bake. Well, he finally got the turkey in, much later than I would have. I let him take care of it and I took care of the other things I was making.

Finally, everything was done; the taters had been mashed, the gravy had been made, the ham that Mom had brought was already spiral-sliced. So, Cammy had taken the turkey out and it had rested. We started carving it and the breast was still quite pink. I told Cammy that we would have to put it back in and overcook it because we could just not eat an Alton Brown pink turkey.

So, everything else was ready except for the turkey. We said our blessing and had our cranberry sauce and dressing with ham instead of turkey. Thank God that Mom always brings a ham! After we had our pumpkin pie and chocolate torte, we had a second dessert of turkey when it finally got done!

I have to say that Cammy’s Alton Brown turkey had a very good flavor after it “overcooked” but it would have been better appreciated served with our Thanksgiving meal instead of as a second dessert. We did have some great turkey sandwiches later and I have started to brine our Thanksgiving turkey now.  I do insist that I  overcook it though.  

So that is my funny/embarrassing Thanksgiving story. Alton Brown may be a famous and well-paid chef, but sometimes Momma knows best.