Thanksgiving column

Happy Holidays, Everyone!

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Tomorrow my husband and I will host about a dozen relatives for Thanksgiving.

I feel fairly prepared. The shopping is done. The card table has been pulled from the garage. My Thanksgiving decorations, consisting of a tan table runner and a stuffed turkey, have been retrieved and displayed — to the consternation of my husband, who has said more than once this week, “Where did we get that velvet turkey and why is it on our table?”

Oddly enough, I’m not anxious about preparing the meal. Instead, my big worry is that something will get spilled on my new carpet. Which is silly. I mean, we’ve got to get that first stain sometime. It might as well be when the cranberries slide off my son’s plate and splatter a three-feet circle onto the floor. Or at least that’s how it plays out in my recurring dream.

I should really be more concerned about the turkey. I don’t have a good track record with that bird.
How hard can it be, right? Well, let me see.

There was that first Thanksgiving when I decided to surprise and impress my new husband by making an authentic Thanksgiving dinner for two.

I had cranberries, corn and stuffing. I had enough potatoes to feed our entire apartment building. I had a 12-pound turkey.

And I had no idea what I was doing. I turned to Betty Crocker — and, in reviewing the instructions for “roasting poultry,” I couldn’t believe my eyes. I even called my aunt to confirm, to my horror, that I REALLY HAD TO STICK MY HAND INSIDE THAT BIRD.

“Isn’t there another way?” I pleaded. “Can’t I just run water down its neck?”

Apparently not. According to Aunt Holly, I didn’t just have to stick my hand inside the body cavity of a dead bird — I had to scrub aforementioned cavity, rub it with butter and sprinkle it with salt.

It took me so long to complete her instructions (while repeatedly succumbing to my gag reflex) that we didn’t eat until 8 p.m. I remember that day fondly as the “Thanksgiving I Almost Became A Vegetarian.”

Then there was our first Thanksgiving in our first house. Everything was going fine until it was time to put the turkey in the preheated oven and I realized I forgot to take out the middle oven rack.

My husband, the brave and burly man he is, volunteered to remove the 350-degree shelf and set it outside. He was repaid by the rack swiveling in his oven mitt and clinging to his forearm as his skin sizzled like bacon. The resulting burn mark lasted nearly to the next Thanksgiving.

And it was that Thanksgiving, apparently, that I was responsible for the feast none of my family will let me live down. And though I absolutely do not remember this, both my sisters, my mother and my husband swear that I left the giblet bag – seared brown and filled with roasted turkey parts – inside the turkey. They claim it was discovered upon carving.

I’ve either blacked this out or they’ve concocted the story to make me think I’m losing my mind. Either way, I’m going to be careful this year. And maybe, just maybe, make a ham. As back-up.