Louisa Cornell, ladydawgfan, KateS and Kelly Ryan are the winners of Fun Contest Saturday!
Lori Austin's (aka Lori Handeland) An Outlaw in Wonderland has been named one of Publisher Weekly's Best Summer Books of 2013!!
A big CONGRATULATIONS to Goddesses Lori Austin (Lori Handeland) and Sabrina Jeffries for being named as RITA finalists for their historical romances BEAUTY AND THE BOUNTY HUNTER and A LADY NEVER SURRENDERS!
Sign up for our newsletter by filling out the JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER form in the right column of this page!
Made by one of my holiday guests!
I take a big risk on the fourth Thursday of every November. I turn on the oven, slide in the turkey, and leave the house. We go to the movies.
This year, as usual, I crossed my fingers and headed out to see Daniel Craig in the latest Bond film. I’m usually pretty carefree about what’s happening at home during the hours in the darkened theater, but I admit that anxiety sets in as we head back to the house and the unattended bird. (For those of you who have seen Skyfall, I did wonder if my house might look like some scenes in the movie, with flames shooting out of windows.) I was particularly worried this year because I had a sneaking suspicion that my turkey’s poundage was mismarked. It was supposed to be over 22 pounds, but as I pushed the roasting pan into the oven I could tell by the way it cleared the top that maybe it wasn’t quite so large…
There were no flames when I arrived home, but the bird didn’t need the additional hour (it didn’t need an additional minute!) I thought it would require in the oven. We had to pull it immediately and tent it in foil to keep it warm. And as you’d suspect…it was a dry turkey. But, I thought resignedly, I’m sorta known for that (perhaps I should stop going to the movies?). Still, I was a bit disheartened over my bird debacle until I recalled that last year we had a wonderful, delicious, moist turkey. Sure, I had not been alone in its preparation since I was recovering from my fractured leg and subsequent surgery (my mom flew in to help out), but I’d had recent turkey success! To cover up my embarrassment over this year’s near-mummified result, I crowed (heh heh) over last year’s bird to anyone who’d listen (the entire table of fifteen) until Son2 reminded me where last year’s turkey came from…my in-law’s brought it over fully cooked.
So I officially make lousy turkeys. Have you had a holiday food or other kind of disaster? One time I lit a cabinet on fire at our Christmas party. At another holiday get-together here, a guest’s napkin burst into flame when he got it too close to a candle. Tell me the Ridgways aren’t the only ones with these kind of near disasters!
50 Comments on “The Bird & Other Potential Disasters”
You can track this conversation through its atom feed.
I once pulled a chicken out of the oven only to drop it unceremoniously on the floor.
I would have rescued it & pretended it had not happened, but I had witnesses.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 3:43 am.
The three-second rule didn’t apply? I would have tried to bribe those witnesses!
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:03 am.
I had a disaster with coq au vin once. I got the wrong red wine and so it turned out purple. I swore to myself that if I ever do it again I will not deviate from the wine suggested and in fact will write the type of wine that it was supposed to be down. A couple of years ago I was hosting Christmas lunch and had cooked the chickens in the oven for the required time and what I thought was the right heat but the chickens turned out to be raw in the middle. Apparently the oven hadn’t heated up to the correct temp for me to do the two chickens at once. Needless to say but I was not happy and complained to my property manager about the problems that I had been having with the darn oven (amongst other things) but she pooh poohed it because according to her the oven heated up fine when she tested it.
At a dinner party that I was hosting one night my sister dropped the pavlova that she and my brother in law had brought along onto my floor. It was a mess because a food fight followed afterwards where pavlova ended up on the walls, carpet, all over me and on the ceiling. I had a hell of a hard time trying to clean it off the ceiling later because when that stuff sticks, it sticks like industrial strength super glue.
At one stage my sister was known for making scones that turned out hard as rocks while mine keep turning out beautifully so she hated me for that for a bit.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 5:45 am.
Your purple coq au vin reminds me of the blue soup in Bridget Jones Diary. And I really am interested in the pavlova food fight…plus the secret to beautiful scones. Yum at the thought.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:07 am.
You are far braver than I am. I would never leave the house while the turkey is in the oven. I’d still be cleaning the house. This year the biscuits burned but that was the only disaster. I thought Skyfall was a great movie. We saw it the week-end it appeared in theaters.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 8:08 am.
Wasn’t Skyfall great! The action kept me from thinking of what might be happening at home. Bummer on the burned biscuits but I bet they were eaten anyway!
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:08 am.
LOL, welll…I wish I could console. But even what we consider disasters tend to be tasty turkeys. We never leave the bird unattended.
For a few years we had burnt potato karma, but that only delayed things, it didn’t stop them.
In our defense we were trained early by our Grandmother on the turkey and it’s always a basic bird. No brining, no injections under the skin, just a really good sausage stuffing and seasoned bird.
I am however, in awe of your leaving the house. We’d never be able to leave it unattended, we’d be nervous wrecks.
However, with that said, one of my cousins has Turkey karma like yours. She just orders hers pre-cooked, picks it up Thanksgiving morning. Works for her, and quite frankly for us. The important thing is the memories of having the family around.
I’m sure years from now your children and grandchildren will be talking about “Grandma’s Movie Bird”.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 8:33 am.
Oh, I love that, Pesky! I now officially am calling my turkey the Movie Bird. Clearly I don’t do anything fancy either. No basting, of course, though I do put fresh chopped herbs and olive oil under the skin against the breast. The house smelled wonderful when we got home (this is the part my kids love the best, coming home to that great smell). I will say my mashed potatoes turned out fab. I do a make-ahead mashed potato casserole and this year I put them through a ricer after boiling them. They were so smooth and creamy!
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:12 am.
The gravy was lumpy this year, and a bit runny, but it had good flavor. No one felt like cooking, so we just had the basics. SIL is preggers again, and sick on top of that, and nervous about their 1-year-old, so there was lots of other stress not centered around the food. Turkey turned out great, though, because I was watching it while my mom was busy with the baby. I even managed to make dressing from a box mix. I’ve been cooking from scratch so long, that boxed mixes confuse me. We forgot to actually put the rolls on, so they weren’t burned at all!
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 9:09 am.
I’m seeing a pattern here. Watch the bird=turns out wonderful.
So, do you usually make your own dressing from stale bread? My s-i-l does that. I use the boxed cubes but jazz it up a lot. Our gravy turned out fine but my s-i-l and I always agonize over it. Congrats to new baby in the family! I got to hold a 3-month-old on Saturday at a birthday party and loved it.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:15 am.
Yeah, I usually do that, and make pies, and make jello salad, and make (fill in the blank). In past years, preparing T-dinner started in mid-October with watching the sales, freezing the heels of the bread loaves for the dressing, and making many lists. This year, I so wasn’t in the mood for all of that, so we did simple. It worked out to be a less stressful holiday. Now, if I can convince everyone that we need to use paper plates with festive Turkeys on them!!!
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 6:44 pm.
Just in case anyone wonders, putting lumpy gravy in the blender and leaving the top off when you turn it on is not recommended; my bff’s and I did that in HS. My dad laughed about that every time the subject of gravy came up, which was often.
A good and quick thickener for gravy is cornstarch and it doesn’t interfere with the flavor like flour sometimes does.
My niece made free-form pie crust for the pies, she rolled out a circlish piece of dough,slid it into the pans and then proceeded to pull and pat the crust into the desired place. Her mother and just watched and let her go, she was having fun and the pies still tasted good.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 6:22 pm.
Yeah, while the blender idea sound fun, it shouldn’t be recommended
My flour wasn’t thickening. So, being helpful, Mom added cornstarch without mixing it with liquid before it hit the hot pot, thus the lumps. I was able to get them to a small enough size that it wasn’t like eating a cornstarch bomb.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 6:46 pm.
One time during the pre-turkey festivities someone hit the off button on the stove, so the turkey never got cooked. That was fun. We had to hack off the done parts and make do.
So, no, you aren’t the only ones!
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 9:14 am.
Oh, I can see that happening at my house! There’s so much going on in that it would be easy to overlook a mishap like that. You were very brave to make do with what you could find done…I obviously have a fear of underdone poultry.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:18 am.
Once while cooking pre-packaged brownies, the pan they came in tipped over. I didn’t realize it until my daughter yelled ‘Mom, there are flames in the oven window!’ I quickly went to check it out, and sure enough the brownies had tipped, and landed on the bottom of the oven on top of the burner. I think I was more upset with not getting to eat the brownies, then I was with the mess it made in my oven.
Also, a few years ago at Christmas, I had my in-laws for Christmas dinner. My MIL brought a homemade butterscotch pie. It was sitting on the counter under the cupboard where I keep all of my spices. While reaching up to get something, I knocked the bottle of vinager, and it fell right into the middle of the pie. It crushed all the lovely cream peaks on top, and put a big hole into the pie. I felt so bad, but luckily she wasn’t upset. It was still a good pie, and it gave us something to laugh over during dessert.
I think mishaps come with holidays, and they make for good dinner conversation, as long as you don’t take them too seriously.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 9:21 am.
I would have been very bummed about those brownies too, Amy. As to pies, I make a pumpkin chiffon pie (my grandmother’s recipe) that requires chilling in the fridge until serving. In trying to make room in our garage refrigerator, we had to set a bottle of teriyaki sauce on its side. A few drips landed on the top of my pie. Bleh. Was easy enough to skim off the top, but an unpleasant combo to think about.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:20 am.
Wow! It sounds like Holiday celebrations in the Ridgway household are exciting!
There was one year that my parents left my brother and I home alone on Thanksgiving morning. (Why or how this happened I don’t know. We were pretty young!)By the time the family came back my brother ate all the pumpkin filling out of the pie, while I had eaten all of the Cool Whip! I recall my brother trying to blame the dog…
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 9:55 am.
LOL! I have to say the pumpkin pie filling calls to me in just that same way. That’s a great story…and blaming the dog genius!
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:22 am.
Sorry, I haven’t ever had a Thanksgiving feast disaster. Don’t hate me.
And a 22-pound bird should take 4 hours to roast — plenty of time to go to the movies.
Did you slather it in butter? Stuff it with oranges & onions & sage? Do the first 30 minutes at 500 then lower the temp to 350, cover it w/ a foil breast-plate (sprayed w/cooking spray so it doesn’t stick to the delicious turkey skin), add 32 oz. of stock to the pan? That’s my fool-proof approach to turkey.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:03 am.
Next year I’m following your directions! I’m convinced the bird’s poundage was written wrong. I also thought I had plenty of time. I did do one thing different this year (saw it on a video on allrecipes.com). I put a little tent of foil over the stuffing. I would have put another over the breast for the last 30 mins (my intention) but when I got home it was already time to take it out. I usually do ham at Christmas but may tackle a turkey again just to prove I can do it right.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:25 am.
It’s very impressive that you keep trying! I envy your tenacity.
My strategy to always ensure the turkey is to my liking? Be a guest. I’m not that fussy – just don’t make me cook and I’m happy.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:08 am.
Since I have it at my house and pretty much do everything (my brother’s family comes from out-of-town) I don’t hear many complaints, honestly. I also make dinner Wednesday night and bake tons for the kids so really, it’s just the turkey I feel bad about doing wrong. We had a fabulous time despite it, though, which is all that really matters. (Plus I bought some very cute over-the-knee gray boots on Black Friday, which just added to my fun.)
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:28 am.
My mother brings the turkey most of the time, but I can ruin pretty much anything else. My worst habit is to wait too long to start the potatoes, then they are lumpy and not quite mashed, if you know what I mean.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:28 am.
I do make-ahead mashed potatoes to avoid all that. Plus mine were awesome this year. As I said above, after boiling, I put them through a ricer. My new technique!
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 11:28 am.
I’ve blocked everything from my mind but this: I ran out of food.
I don’t remember the party, the occasion, the season. I don’t remember the guests or the decorations. All I remember is that I hosted a gathering of Many People and
I RAN OUT OF FOOD!!!!
It’s haunted me ever since. Now, whenever I’m hosting a ‘do’, I buy more food than I could possibly need . . . and then I buy a bit more.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:35 am.
Oh, I so fear this. I think it happened to my mom one time and so I’m always, always overloading the table. Same with drinks…always too much, but at least the sodas and wine don’t go bad.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 11:30 am.
I have never made a turkey, though I have left sauce on the stove at a simmer – gone out shopping, running errands, and come back to find the pot warped and the suace unedible. Maybe I should invest in better pots? I also make my own dough and have left it on the stove to rise, run errands and come back to find it have overtaken the whole stove, even tried putting it in the fridge overnight to have it grow into the dough “blob” where I found yogurts, soda cans, even fruit within it’s mass. – Now I don;t leave anything. No running errands, it gives me a great excuse to kick the family out and pick up a book while “watching” the stove.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:44 am.
I’ve had the dough problem before, too! Though usually it’s the opposite, my dough refuses to rise.
I like your idea…must watch the stove so everybody go away to leave me alone to read!
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 11:31 am.
My brother in law one year decided he was going to deep fry the turkey. I told my mother that she still needed to make one, if only for the stuffing. Thank God she listened to me because, while the deep fried turkey looked good, it was like a scene from Christmas Vacation. There was nothing to eat on that turkey, but Mom saved the day!
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 10:46 am.
I only hear scary stories about deep frying the turkey. (Was the cause of a fire on this week’s episode of Chicago Fire.) I bet it smelled good though. The dh brought up the idea of brining this year, but if I did a lot of early prep no way could I have left for the movies like I usually do.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 11:35 am.
This is why I am glad I don’t cook. That booze assignment is hard to over do.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 12:19 pm.
Nobody minds if there’s too much booze!
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 12:40 pm.
I have been pretty lucky so far. I have had some semi-disasters, but nothing major. I have had a few come out dry. I also wanted to make one in LA and (luckily) found out beforehand that my pink 1963 oven was too small for roasting pans, so I moved turkey cooking to the studio kitchen.
Now, my mother – she was an amazing cook. Not fancy, but everything she made was sooo good that her odd string of turkey misses were so surprising that she never lived them down. (I think it made her more human in our eyes. lol)
One year, we had Birdzilla. It was a rather large turkey…she always picked up a big one so my brother had plenty of leftovers to Hoover down… and the thing Would. Not. Cook. We waited HOURS for that bird to be done. She had even put it in at her usual early morning time. We had eaten most of the sides and then my brother and I (the angels that we are) started asking every 15 minutes if Birdzilla was done.
“Is it done yet?”
“How ’bout now?”
“Is the turkey done?”
“mooooom we’re hungry!”
I’m rather surprised she didn’t take it out and throw it at us. lol
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 12:24 pm.
Love the Birdzilla story! See, even great cooks can have their disasters. It is pretty embarrassing for me to make the same mistake over and over, though.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 12:42 pm.
Well, this year the food was all good, but my 10-year-old nephew wasn’t feeling well and went up to lie down on my bed. I went up to check on him and he started making that unmistakable sound of a kid who’s going to barf. On my bed. So I stuck out my hands and closed my eyes.
Evidently I won the aunt of the week award. But it was really about my bed. *g*
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 12:45 pm.
You are the Aunt of the Year! My Son1 would always barf on Thanksgiving…even before any of the food was eaten. We finally figured out that he was just overexcited because his cousins and aunt and uncle were staying with us for the weekend. He grew out of it by about age six.
Being barfed on is no fun. I once just stepped into the shower fully clothed with barfing baby and everything. I used that for an upcoming book…art imitates life!
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 2:28 pm.
AAAIIIIEEEEEE!!!!
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 2:44 pm.
It is well known in our family I DO NOT DO BARF! I could clean up after my sons, fruit of my body and all, and my g-girls; but that is it! Any yarking happens and someone else cleans it up. My stomach is so lightweight I would add to the problem if I tried to take care of any messes.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 5:28 pm.
You are the best aunt! I’m with evlqn. Now that my kids have outgrown the grossness that goes with babyhood, I can’t handle anyone else’s bodily functions. In fact, I handed my nephew off to my brother and sang my old diaper changing song as I was leaving the room
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 6:55 pm.
I can do cat barf, but no dog barf. I also do not clean up cat-killed items, which included lizard tails when no lizard is in evidence.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 8:12 pm.
Last year I decided to do an apple cider brine. It didn’t do much for me, but then, again, I’m not a big turkey fan. It did make amazing gravy, though. This year I just stuck to the classic brined turkey from Trader Joe’s. No major cooking disasters. But now, two of my sisters have GREAT cooking disaster stories. Let me just say that peanut butter cookies with 1 CUP of baking soda, taste AWFUL.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 1:44 pm.
LOL! 1 cup of baking soda! Totally yuck. I made a pie crust once that I somehow screwed up with too much salt. We had guests who politely were eating when I took my first bite and nearly spit it out. The filling was good, though, so we just avoided the over salty crust. Never did figure out what I did…probably got interrupted and kept forgetting I’d already added the salt.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 2:30 pm.
The first time I cooked a turkey, I was 18. Mom left the instructions, as she, my dad, grandmother and aunt and Uncle were away on this big trip to England and France. Result was not so much that the turkey turned out bad, but in trying to drain out the grease from the pan to make gravy, some of it hit the burner and started flaming. I was screaming, my older brother was trying to find something to put it out and my younger brothers I knew were thinking, “We are not letting her cook a turkey ever again. There have been some mishaps over the years, but not many by me…
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 2:58 pm.
That first turkey is the hardest, isn’t it? I’m still squeamish about the neck and gizzards, too. Glad your fire wasn’t any more serious than that!
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 3:35 pm.
I haven’t needed to do this but Bobby Flay says to slice the turkey and put it in warm chicken broth and voila..not dry anymore! I also make a pumpkin chiffon pie and never thought to add teriyaki sauce
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 4:09 pm.
I love that Bobby Flay tip! (Putting into memory banks.) Another pumpkin chiffon pie maker! ::wave:: We are a rare breed. I like any kind of pumpkin pie, but I’ve only ever made chiffon.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 8:14 pm.
It wasn’t really a disaster unless you count all the people who were too blitzed when the invitation was tendered to remember to show up and DH bought a 26 pound turkey for two adults and two kids. There are not enough leftover recipes to consume that much turkey, the end of the turkey was turkey tacos and I would not recommend that meal to anyone. If you ask my kids what meal stands out as a major mom disaster they will say “turkey tacos”, they were only 5 & 7 at the time (38 & 40 now) and they still remember.
Have you tried using roasting bags for your turkey? They keep the bird moist and self basted, less mess too.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 5:11 pm.
A roasting bag would be ideal for me. Maybe that’s what I’ll do at Christmas! We are pretty much done with T-giving leftovers now. There’s still a little turkey that the dh might be interested in, but the mashed potatoes are gone and the dressing no longer appeals to me (even though it’s my favorite side). Tonight I’m making meatball and tortellini soup because it doesn’t feel T-givingish.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 8:16 pm.
Last night we had homemade nachos for the same reason. But I got more cranberry sauce at the store so I can eat more turkey, need the cranberry sauce.
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 8:52 pm.