Thanksgiving Football

Thanksgiving FootballI know Thanksgiving is a long ways off, but I was reminded yesterday of the worst Thanksgiving holiday I ever experienced and I had to share.

This was several years ago. I was perhaps 10 or 11. My aunt had agreed to cook the holiday turkey dinner. She purchased a rather large bird and we set off on the long drive to her house. Now my older sister was more than skeptical of my aunt’s cooking. So much so that she downed an entire box of Keebler Townhouse crackers on the way there in case the food was inedible. My mother chastised her. My other sister and I laughed and said there would be more for us.

If only we had heeded her warning.

My aunt had neglected to put the bird in the oven. How one can forget that the 20 lb. bird on their counter is beyond me, but she did. She realized her faux pas when we were perhaps 40 minutes from her house. Just as nine women cannot give birth to a baby in a month, a turkey cannot be cooked faster by cranking the oven to 500°F for an hour, but my aunt gave it a go anyway.

An interesting thing happens to turkey when cooked at clay-firing temperatures. It becomes a regulation NFL football. Sure, the insignia and stitching are missing, but crack off the drumsticks and you can throw a perfect spiral.

19 Comments

  1. My ex-sister, who betrayed her Canadianist heritage by finding some guy in a chatroom, divorcing her idiot husband and marrying the loser from New Jersey, was a very lazy cook.

    In our home we loved kippers, and so as my mother was a great non-practicing cat’lick, we had kippers on Fridays. My sister — because she was either fat or ugly — or possibly both — had stayed home Friday night to bake cookies. She neglected however, to clean the cookie sheet that my mother had used to prepare the kippers. The result was memorable.

  2. You should sell them for $29.95 a piece.

    “Turkey Ball, Turkey you can play with, then eat!”

  3. I was 9 and my step-mother, having somehow found out that lasagna was my favorite dish, decided to cook it for me. Up until then, she’d only been capable of microwaving frozen burritos and making mashed potatoes (from-the-box kind). Dad and I were scared.

    Her mother, a much more accomplished cook, told her to put a tiny pinch of sugar in the recipe. Thinking that sugar was the secret magical lasagna ingredient, she put in two full cups. :dead: Needless to say, I can’t eat much lasagna anymore.

  4. So your sister was the winner after all.

  5. Frisko5

    Wow, such culinary delights, perhaps they would have been better if the cook had added food coloring to the dish, and asked for a divorce during the meal.

  6. Spud

    I’ve got nothing, plus I’ll not bore you with weak ancedotes.

    Suffice to say, your aunts bird story is clearly a winner, worthy of a punt.

    :geek:

  7. Davezilla, now I understand why you are a vegatarian.
    Rust, you frighten me,
    Spud, I am with you. Got nothing .

  8. In defense of my sister, I have to say that the above story is true. She did marry a guy from New Jersey that she met in a chatroom. She divorced her husband who is an idiot (and who still hits on my poor sainted mother for money because he’s unemployable).

    I did, however, leave out one detail: yes, I ate the Kipper Kookies anyway.

  9. A T-day over at the sister’s ex-in-laws’ house many, many moons ago, included nothing but an all dark meat turkey, dry wheat bread rolls on the side, and desserts of a questionable nature. Didn’t help that the poor lady who made the feast was partially blind. The Kipper Kookies would have been a welcome relief.

  10. DK

    Dave, I invited a lady friend for Thanksgiving in like 1989. I bought a turkey (but didn’t know it was a smoked turkey. It also came with two necks. I cooked it upside down by mistake, and couldn’t figure out why the breast had no meat. When we finally found meat, it tasted like ham (smoked), so we through it out and though maybe we had purchased a chinchilla or some other animal by mistake. True story. 🙄

  11. I hope Aunt Listeria didn’t try to cook any other meals for you.

  12. So, one of my friends was making her first Thanksgiving dinner for the family. Her mother-in-law snuck into the kitchen early on, and secretly stuffed a cooked Cornish Game Hen into the turkey’s cavity. When the time came to carve the bird, and the tiny bird inside was discovered, the MIL was aghast, “Oh my God! You cooked a PREGNANT turkey?!?!?!”
    It made for a memorable dinner, let me tell you!

    My friend is still in therapy, seven years later…

  13. spidertoes

    I hate to brag, but I do put out a rather impressive spread at Thanksgiving. However, one year my son and I found ourselves at the card table of my sister-in-law’s very cluttered home enjoying a dinner consisting of a turkey breast, stove top stuffing and canned corn.
    Mmmmmmmmmmm

  14. Mollie

    So’d you play a game of football with that turkey???

  15. :mrgreen: I’m so glad I discovered your place.

  16. turbance

    😀 My sentiments exactly, Pearl!

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