Foodie Friday Train Wrecks & Bloopers: Don't Shoot That Turkey -- He's Someone I Know (or Don't Believe Everything You Hear or Read!)

Today is Foodie Friday at the delightful Gollum's equally delightful blog, Designs by Gollum. While I've been on a blogging break, I simply could not allow another Train Wrecks & Bloopers Foodie Friday to go by without participating. Since every day in my kitchen is a train wreck, I decided to shine the spotlight on my big sister. After all, that's what she gets for not reading my blog [among other sins, past and present] ;-)

[my sister on the left plotting who knows what and me on the right in my typically clueless state]

Christmas for me always evokes images of Norman Rockwell's illustration of a family gathered around the table celebrating together. Growing up, Rockwell's illustration could have easily been our extended family. And divine dishes issued forth from the family kitchen: pecan pie, coconut cake, ambrosia, caramel cake, fudge, divinity, salted pecans, tomato aspic, cranberry congealed salad, hot fruit compote, broccoli casserole, squash casserole, sweet potato casserole with marshmallows, teeny tiny biscuits with butter and crab apple jelly or fig preserves, cranberry sauce, bread and butter pickles, stuffed celery, ham with ham sauce, tenderloin with Jezebel sauce, and always everyone's favorite turkey and dressing with homemade gravy! My mother, aunt, and grandmother could have given Paula Deen, Rachael Ray, and Julia Child a run for their money and did... every year!



While my oldest sister was responsible for her own feast that included feeding a large group of my always-on-call-doctor/brother in law's extended family, no matter where we were in the world, my middle sister's family and mine always made the trek home. Then the unthinkable happened. Mama checked out. She up and quit on us. Simply went to Heaven and left us to fend for ourselves. (Gee, thanks, Mama!) ;-) And as if her leaving us weren't bad enough, finding out what she did in that kitchen every year was akin to the shock of discovering there isn't a real Santa Claus!



That first Christmas, my middle sister invited us to come to Charleston (where she was living at the time) and join her family there. She also invited a bunch of friends who were alone and her husband's brother's family. There were over a dozen of us expected for Christmas dinner.



Now, my sister and I can do many things. We can identify silver patterns at a glance. We can talk literature, art, history, and architecture till the cows come home. And speaking of cattle, we can identify a Hereford and an Angus, a Guernsey and a Holstein, a Texas Long Horn and a Brahman. We can saddle a horse in either Western or English tack. We can tell you how to blow your hair dry to get extra lift. We can tell the difference in petit-point and needlepoint, counted cross stitch and cross stitch, tatting and crochet (not saying we can stitch, much less stitch well, but we "know"). We can recite the preamble to the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Twenty-Third Psalm. We can dance everything from the bunny hop to the waltz. We have even been known to host a brunch, a luncheon, a shower, a dinner party, a cocktail party, a picnic, a tea, a coffee, a birthday party, a church banquet, and a fundraiser or two, but Heaven help us when it comes to cooking that infernal bird known as a turkey!



I tried it once, and I have since figured out ways to: A) get invited to someone else's house on major holidays involving turkey or B) become best friends with local restaurants, grocers, or anyone who knows their way around a big bird. On the other hand, my sister married a self-proclaimed turkey expert, the Great Turkey Chef, and since her ex [notice I said EX] husband had served a bird that received rave reviews at Thanksgiving, he gave her explicit instructions on how to cook a turkey breast in the convection oven/microwave for Christmas dinner.

BIG MISTAKE!

Note the following instructions I found online, and I quote:

“Convection Cooking - Produces flavorful, beautifully browned results.”

PEOPLE! PEOPLE! DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ!

On Christmas Eve morning, we had cooked ALL morning, and my sister had used every single one of my mother's recipes and did well with them. Then she put the turkey in the convection oven as per the Great Turkey Chef's instructions, and we went upstairs to get ready for the day. I was the first one down and thought I smelled something burning, When I told big sister, she said that she was cooking it according to the Great Turkey Chef's instructions and everything looked fine. So my sister, Mr. Magpie, my niece, and I set out for a day of shopping on King Street and lunching with friends. We would be back in a few hours. The timer was set on the convection oven so we didn't have to worry about that. Yeah. Right. ;-)



We thought when we got home we would be greeted by...



And by...



Instead we were greeted by the Great Turkey Chef turned Mr. Crab...



And by what once had been a turkey breast that now had the consistency of a hockey puck...



And resembled what passes for lunch with a group of headhunters in the Amazon Basin (with slightly less pronounced facial features and minus the hair on the shrunken heads* below)...




And the following head was connected to a gruesomely interesting article on same...


[*Note: You can actually buy these things/replicas (and some really scary ones) on the internet! Maybe we missed our chance to recoup our financial losses when we dipsosed of the turkey puckette before we could carve it into something profitable!]

Depending on your strength, you needed either a hatchet...



A hacksaw...



Or a chain saw ...


To even BEGIN to cut it!

It didn't help our case they we broke into gales of uncontrollable laughter at the sight of what had once been a turkey breast. Nor did it help matters that the Great Turkey Chef [now known as Mr. Crab] had to be at church for the early service, having volunteered to be in charge of the acolytes.

Never fear! The cavalry arrived in the form of S&S Cafeteria, and we got the last pan of sliced turkey in all of Charleston! And furthermore, it was GOOD! And we bought some cornbread dressing from them (because the chaos had made us gun shy), and it was even better than yo' mama makes. They truly saved the day. So I want to give them a shout-out even though it's been many years since they became our heroes! :-)


If I learned one thing from this train wreck, it's that a train wreck doesn't have to be the end of the line. You gotta grow a sense of humor and deal with it. I'm firmly convinced that dinner would have been just as good if we had displayed the charred turkey on a pedestal and then served all of the delicious sides. After all, we had enough to feed an army, but being surrounded by carnivores, we had to make concessions. If that video was playing in Heaven, I know my mother and father were screaming with laughter because they had, among other great attributes, a sense of humor and a love of the absurd.

This also taught me the inestimable value of restaurants in a crisis. I had a similar crisis when we had Mr. Magpie's family for Christmas dinner (mid-day) at our St. Augustine getaway, and the gravy gotaway from me. [Note: we didn't have aka eat Mr. Magpie's family for dinner. We had them OVER for dinner. Just wanted to make that clear with the headhunter mention above!] The chef at the highly acclaimed 95 Cordova bailed me out that time, and as payback, we decided to do Christmas Eve with him there on three different occasions. If you're in St. Augustine, try that restaurant! It's wonderful!


In the mean time, please join our lovely hostess Gollum and her friends by clicking here. There are more train wrecks and bloopers as well as some successful recipes to entertain and tempt you! Thanks for hosting us, Gollum! :-) Oh, and Mama Magpie, if you're looking down from Heaven on the 19th anniversary of your arrival in that locale, I want you to know who is having the last laugh this May 15th. See this spoon...



Yes, that would be the one, the one, in fact, that Daddy bought for his gumbo and oyster stew obsession and on which he changed the monogram from a "K" to an "R" so no one would use it but him, the very spoon you guarded for him like a pit bull guarding a bone...



Well, guess which one of your very own chicks is using said spoon now?! ;-)



Quintessentially yours...

XO,

Mrs. Magpie (Sheila) :-)


*(Illustrations above are by famed "Saturday Evening Post" illustrator Norman Rockwell)