Thanksgiving with the Hiatts or The Trouble with Turkeys

(reposted from 2002 account, written by Steven J. Hiatt)

This was the first year that we have ever had Thanksgiving alone, without worrying about whose house we would spend it at, without having to socialize with relatives, without having to drive home after getting totally stuffed somewhere else. It was also our first time that we cooked our own turkey. This is easier said than done.

We purchased a 15-pound turkey for $4. It came frozen. The directions on the label said to start defrosting it sometime around Labor Day in order for it to thaw by Thanksgiving. This is odd to me as normally I just stick things in the microwave and press “defrost’ and magically it defrosts. When I get frozen burritos I can stick them in the microwave and it goes from totally frozen to totally cooked in two minutes. The people at the turkey factory must be a little behind the times. (I tried anyway; the turkey didn’t even fit in the microwave. Shucks.)

So for several days our turkey defrosted in the fridge. On the morning of Thanksgiving we took it out figuring it must be totally defrosted by now. Nope. It still had ice on it. I don’t believe that anything on earth can actually get this frozen. I think the turkey farmers secretly ship the turkeys to the far side of Pluto to the packaging plant out there. That’s the only explanation I can come up with.

It’s time for Plan B. This involves sticking our turkey ice cube in the sink and giving it a bath. Slowly we begin to see progress, only to notice more problems: our turkey has a hole in it. Right in the back between the legs. A big hole. Spelunkers could get lost in there. Whoever sold us the bird must have known about the hole because they tried to conceal it by stuffing a plastic bag full of unwanted turkey parts in it. We remove this (with difficulty because it’s frozen in there) and find something else in the hole: more ice. The Pluto Planet Turkey Freezers do their job well. We freshen the bath and continue to wait.

As the turkey slowly returns to its earthly temperature, I start to wonder what this turkey has been through. Looking carefully I notice that someone has handcuffed its legs together. Is this like the mafia giving someone “cement shoes” before they dump them off a bridge to “sleep with the fishes”? Did this turkey get leg braces before being sent off to Pluto to “sleep with the Martians”? And then I find the other hole. This one is where the neck used to be. Now my mafia theory gets a little more credence. Someone has filled the hole where the neck once was with – the neck! Talk about your cruel jokes.

So we have a hollow, futuristically frozen turkey that’s been bumped off by the mob and we are going to eat this to show our gratitude for our blessings. And this is an American tradition? I see.

Finally the turkey is thawed enough that we can fill its empty void with tasty bread stuffing, wrap the whole thing in a plastic bag, jab a metal prong with a thermometer on it into its thigh, and shove the whole thing into a hot metal box. Ah, the joy of holidays.

For the rest of our menu we had mashed potatoes, green beans, butternut (if you’re not familiar with butternut, think Jimmy Gourd), rolls (from scratch, not even using the bread maker thingy), salad (torn from real lettuce, not even one of those prepackaged salad dealies), and of course apple pie and pumpkin pie (the crusts made from scratch, with the apple pie having a lattice-style top, though the crust didn’t quite go all the way to the edges so it sort of fell apart if you actually tried to remove it from the pie pan. It looked pretty though.)

The turkey ended up turning out very well considering. The only problem we had was making the gravy. Every recipe we saw basically said “take all the turkey juice from the bottom of the pan, add a little flour while heating on the stove and presto: gravy!” These people are obviously liars. What came out was only sort of somewhat kind of similar to a gravy-like substance. Other than that everything went well.

Next we just had to cut it up into nice turkey slices. We cut two or three slices off of our 15-pound turkey, as that is all that would fit on our plates after everything else. The kids, who have been snacking all afternoon because “they were hungry” hardly eat a thing. The rest of the turkey we cut up and put back into the freezer (I can’t help feeling a sense of Déjà vu at this point).

Editor’s Comments: MaeLyn seems to be under the impression that the bag of unwanted turkey parts was hidden in the neck cavity while the neck itself was stuffed into the hollow body portion, thus disagreeing with my description above. If the only disagreement we ever have in our marriage is where the giblets were then I think we’re doing fine.