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Thanksgiving Turkey, Lessons in Poultry Intimacy

The holiday recipes on my mom's side of the family are taken so seriously, they are successfully used as blackmail over future generations.

You think I am kidding about this? I am not. I am almost certain that my mother is withholding an ingredient from the list for the traditional gravy recipe so that she will always have that bargaining chip until the end. I fully expect my sisters and I, decades from now, to be gathered around her bed with our index cards in hand as my mother gives her final lesson.

"Remember! (cough) Flour, NOT corn starch. Your Nanny insisted on this. And the last ingredient is...is..."

We lean in as if we are one person instead of three. We hang onto her every word. We all move in tenderly to straighten her pillow, smooth her hair.

"Is...is..."

And that's it. We gasp in horror as we realize that this list is not written down ANYWHERE, the last ingredient has been lost, and future generations of holiday meals will end in our shame for having failed in our mission. GET.THE.GRAVY.RECIPE.

Aaron and I decided to beg for a few lessons in cooking the Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe, just maybe, we could learn some things about poultry and roux making and gravy and stuffing and mashed garlic yams (The yams are heavenly. Pure poetry. Words cannot describe.)

Our most difficult lesson was getting comfortable with stuffing the turkey. A curiously intimate exercise that, honestly? Feels about as comfortable as...well...it DOESN'T feel comfortable. As the expression on my face betrays.

Aaron's technique seemed a bit more neighborly, less intimate. A "relationship with the turkey" equivalent to the relationship one might have with another pro-football teammate. "Good game! Nice interception." A little pat on the posterior and just move on. Didn't mean a thing. It is the reserved Swede in him.

After much basting and fretting on my mom's part, the turkey turned out moist and juicy and golden. Coco is thinking, "Man! If I were only TWO years younger, or if that counter was ONE foot lower....."

And we got most of the gravy recipe! Which was so incredibly good, you have to make twice as much because it MUST be savored again and again during 3:00 am field trips to the kitchen.

A most amazing meal. Everything made from scratch! Even the...well. Sorry, wait a minute. Cranberries do not grow with this texture. So, everything but the cranberries MADE FROM SCRATCH!

Ahhhhh. Now THAT'S a meal. Now to work these calories off in house projects. And work on figuring out that LAST ingredient....

p.s. That lovely, clean space we are working in is my generous MIL's tudor-revival bungalow kitchen. So very sweet. And her stove? IT ACTUALLY WORKS! So that helped a lot.

Posted by jeanne on November 26, 2004 at 9:42 AM (5)

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