I started my Thanksgiving morning with a bit of television nostalgia. A friend posted a clip from WKRP in Cincinnati, one of my favorite shows from back in the day. It was the Thanksgiving episode where the fictitious radio station did a “turkey drop”, releasing dozens of turkeys from an airplane. Of course, the punch line was, turkeys can’t fly.
But I happen to know turkeys can fly…maybe not when dropped from a plane in flight…but they certainly can fly from one side of the highway to the other. My sister once totaled her car hitting a turkey. She didn’t even try to avoid it. My mother had always told her not to swerve for birds; they will get out of the way at the last minute.
For the record, that rule doesn’t apply to turkeys. Turkeys will not get out of the way at the last minute. They will dent the hood, then the roof of your car, shattering your windshield on the way. For a bird, they do a great imitation of a deer when you hit them. I guess it’s a little like driving fifty-five miles per hour down the highway and having someone toss a bowling ball into your path. At least that’s what my husband said when he finished laughing at the story of my sister and the turkey.
When it comes to turkey facts, my husband is full of them. Out of the blue yesterday, he mentioned the statistics of how many people blow themselves up while attempting to deep fry a turkey for Thanksgiving. Apparently, you can’t deep fry a frozen turkey. Who knew? Hubby did. Obviously as a native of New York, I have never even considered deep frying my turkey. And for the record, I’ve also never cooked it with the bag of innards still inside the bird. But with my track record in the kitchen, it’s a wonder I haven’t done worse. Then again, I suppose there isn’t much worse than sending a turkey into space on the tail of a deep fryer.
As for us, we had a fairly uneventful Thanksgiving at my house. Nothing was burned. Nothing got broken. I even managed to convince my husband to forego the woodland creatures this year. So no rabbits were harmed in the making of this dinner. And no turkeys were dropped from airplanes, hit by cars, or launched into space via deep fryers. We cooked our bird the old fashioned way…in the oven.
And trust me…he was delicious.
Until the next time…I’ll be recovering from the food coma!