Unhinged Hilarity in the Kitchen

These stories are fabulous! Have you all heard the radio story - I think it was on the Splendid Table - with the woman who was basting her turkey with cognac, and it wound up shooting a massive fireball out of the stove? It's hilarious. Anyway, for my own part, several years ago my now husband plus several friends and I celebrated Thanksgiving at a friend's house. She had picked up a large bucket of fresh oysters and clams to shuck and eat as appetizers while we finished up our meal preparations. My husband and another friend were put to work shucking the shellfish. The friend had an actual shucker, my husband was using a semi-sharp table knife. Suddenly the hostess and I hear an "oh, holy s*&t!" coming from the kitchen, and our friend is running around in a crazed whirlwind saying "we need a towel, somebody get a towel, we need a towel!" And, my husband is sitting there looking stunned while massive amounts of blood are pouring out of his hand. My friend, the hostess, grabs a kitchen towel and wraps it around his hand, and we set off to find some antibiotic ointment and bandaging to wrap it up. Her roommate at the time was in nursing school, so we figured there ought to be good medical supplies. Except, her roommate was really only into alternative medicine, and the closest thing we could find to neosporin was some calendula oil "for minor cuts and bruises". And, there was not a single bandage or band aid in the house. So, we wound up taping a sanitary pad to my husband's hand with duct tape (and a tiny drop of calendula oil, for goo measure), and he had to wear it all through the rest of the evening festivities.

LOL lori -- too funny!

Wssmom--So glad i checked back for this! We would have LOVED a can of veg-all! My husband, Dale, would have sworn an oath that broccoli was purplish-gray, not green. He'd never eaten a raw vegetable except a carrot or turnip! Veggies were something that were bought frozen and boiled to a mushy mess...although the creamy white flesh of the turkey did offset that slightly lavendar tint of the veggies!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! May your turkies be golden and succulent and her gravy lump free!!

I think you win the diversity sweepstakes! I hope your mother in law has learned to communicate a little better!

@lorigoldsby are you sure we don't have separated-at-birth mothers-in-law? About two weeks before my first Thanksgiving at the Spouse's parents' house in New Jersey, my mother-in-law, whose idea of a good side dish is a can of Veg-all, ordered a 22-pound turkey from the kosher butcher. This was done, she told me (the Irish-Swedish daughter-in-law) and Debbie (the New England WASP daughter-in-law) to accommodate Sharon (the observant Jewish daughter-in-law). Renee - whose idea of keeping kosher was to make matzoh brei out of any leftover matzoh during Passover - assumed that Sharon was going to take charge of the holiday meal to ensure it wasn't trayf and told the Spouse and I all we had to bring was the wine (also kosher); Debbie and Jeffrey were to provide dessert (ditto). Early Thursday morning, when Michael arrived with Sharon, Renee took her into the kitchen and with a grand sweeping gesture, proclaimed, "The kitchen is yours!" Sharon looked her straight in the eye and matter-of-factly replied: "I don't cook." Two hours later, when the rest of us showed up, the 22-pound turkey was still in the refrigerator, next to Renee's mini-marshmallow-pineapple-pecan lime Jello mold and a can of cranberry sauce. Somehow, with the aid of several bottles of the very good kosher pinot grigio and a good deal of imagination, Debbie and I managed to come up with a reasonable facsimile of a Thanksgiving dinner. And the next year? Renee ordered the WHOLE dinner, not just the turkey!

AJ you must be very blessed, indeed!

LG and B, i have the lovely Dacor range that's now in my kitchen due to a Christmas kitchen "disaster" a few years ago. I had an ancient gas stove and oven that may well have been installed in our house in the 50's. It worked reasonably well, actually, for most purposes, and I was just so busy with everything else that I never replaced it. It was a bit quirky, in that when the igniters wore out, I had to light the burners with a match, but I really didn't mind that much. Then, on that wonderful/fateful Christmas (2008, I think), I was cooking my usual Christmas spread, and I could not understand why everything was cooking so quickly. Well, I soon realized t that even when I turned the oven way down, it was still very hot. And in fact, I could not turn it off!! No worries. I just finished cooking the meal, and then had Mr. T turn off the gas at the valve going into the wall behind it. And the next day we went shopping for a new range. I actually feel that the event is emblematic of the life I'm so fortunate to be leading. My oven decided to die in the friendliest way possible . . . by allowing me to make my Christmas meal, and then (after Mr. T turned the gas back on), allowing me to continue to use the stove, until the new range was installed a few weeks later. ;o)

So anyone wanting that new convection oven needs to follow B's "recipe" for a new kitchen !

The first Thanksgiving that my sister and now husband were in California, we celebrated Thanksgiving together. I got the lovely turkey in the oven, and everything progressed very nicely. The turkey did seem to be browning awfully quickly. Oh, well. We simply moved things along a little more quickly. When it was done, my brother-in-law lifted it out of the oven and reached to turn it off. In doing so, he asked if I'd intentionally set the oven to Broil. The turkey was a bit dry, but the stuffing was fantastic. After dinner we decided to run the Oven Clean while we were playing some kind of board game. My brother-in-law mentioned that it smelled like we were roasting the turkey all over again. He peeked into the semi-dark kitchen, motioned to all of us to come see something. Out of the element connection on each burner, a lovely little flame was burning, almost like stove-top candles. Evidently, all of the turkey spatter had collected on the oven roof. We'd planned to get a new oven at some point. My husband for years referred to it as the most expensive damn turkey ever.

I made my first batch of croissants to be ready on Christmas morning a couple years ago. Everything was going swimmingly until I decided to bake them on a rimless baking stone (I use a baking stone whenever I can for the lovely crust it gives and how evenly they bake). The butter melted, pooled in the bottom of the oven, and caught fire. My father, at the time a volunteer fire fighter, stood there as if to say, "Don't look at me. I don't know what to do!" Finally, my mother put the fire out. The croissants turned out great, though. Lesson learned.

At this time of the year, I NEVER fail to see one or two wild turkeys gobbling about outside my kitchen window ...Dunno if its because they know my kitchen is vegetarian or if there is an invisible turkey frequency only' sign flashing from my chimney that advertises a safe haven...

the only thing "unhinged" about this was me...the first year I spent Thanksgiving with my new in-laws, i am in the kitchen offering to help. My mother-in-law does not like to cook or entertain. She pulls the turkey out of the oven, removes the foil and it is snow white but completely cooked. My mind was spinning...is she waiting to baste it before everyone else arrives at the last minute? Now i have always had "foot-in-mouth" disease and I am almost apolectic trying to figure out a way to help her salvage the turkey without needing to salvage our relationship....

Sinks ALWAYS clog at Thanksgiving--because people think that garbage disposals can handle a bigger load of potato peels than they really can. Dishwashesr always die just as holiday guests arrive--that one, I haven't figured out. Why I've had spaghetti alla carbonara for Christmas dinner--twice!--that's a story I'm holding for the perfect FOOD52 moment. Let's just say that I avoid turkey for ALL holiday meals--it's a fowl curse.

A true disaster just can't be fully appreciated without witnesses. Witnesses who will help spread the story.

And then there was the Thanksgiving at my house, had about 12 people including 4 children between the age of 4 and 6. 2/3 of the through the roasting of the turkey and the side dishes the power went out all over the area due to a huge windstorm. No lights, no heat, no food - we lit a fire in the fireplace and had fruit, crackers and cheese. Power came on 3 days later - all food had to be thrown out. That Thanksgiving an overly dry turkey would have been great!

The first Thanksgiving my sister hosted when she moved here from Denver was very exciting. The sinks plugged up half-way through cooking. Get a plunger! Plunged - dirty water forced out of the sink rained over the kitchen, the turkey, the side-dishes. Locusts looked kind of appealing at that point.

Yikes! Lucky there wasn't a plague of locust I suppose. That really was a disaster!

The time there was a massive flood from the upstairs apartment--they were on vacation so it's anyone's guess how it happened. I think it was the day after T-day and I had invited a guest for the Sabbath meal to help finish up the goodies. The turkey was sitting out on the stove ready to be served. The flood waters, having travelled through several layers of flooring, concrete, plaster, paint and whatever else there is inside walls and ceilings poured onto the turkey. I think I apologized profusely and sent the guest home. We have remained friends, miraculously.

When my family used to live near enough to each other, we had large Thanksgiving dinners at a long table in my grandparent's house. The kids tended to be at one end, but everyone was at the same table. One Thanksgiving, when I was around 10 and most of my cousins ranged from 2-6, there was a bowl of peanuts being passed around the table along with everything else. They disappeared pretty quickly and no one thought anything of it. Until, our bellies full, we began to push back our chairs and retire to the living room. Under the chair of my 4-year-old cousin, we found a pile of peanuts. As we'd been passing food, he'd been grabbing fistfuls of peanuts and putting them under his chair! My dad called it The Peanut Farm and everyone thought it was hilarious. Not exactly a disaster, but certainly a bit of cleaning up out of the carpet. We still laugh about that one every Thanksgiving.

One year I decided to make a capon, I ordered it from the butcher (it came frozen, no fresh capons available) left in the fridge to thaw 2 days before T-day. That morning I opened the plastic wrapping and it was bad, I mean really bad. There were no stores open other than bodega's or little deli's so that Thanksgiving we only had sides.

So I ordered my fresh, organic turkey well in advance. I picked it up when I said I would. On The Big Day, I removed it from the refrigerator (but left it wrapped) to let it creep up on room temperature. Naturally, there's a lot of multi-tasking going on on The Big Day; you know, football scores to be checked, last-minute dash to the store, table to set, people coming and going. And animals underfoot. I'd shooed the dogs out the back door, so I know they were at least innocent. I came into the kitchen from wherever I'd been, and someone had chewed through the plastic wrapper, and down into the breast of that lovely turkey. I suspect more than one cat was involved, though it'd have taken DNA testing to figure out which ones.

You got me there, ok now my pugs are envious of the determination and ingenuity of that little pug. I won't give them any ideas!! Hilarious!

The cat ate my turkey! It really happened the first Thanksgiving meal I ever made.