What A Turkey

Man, what a crazy time of year this is! Everyone has been so busy lately; the parties, the get togethers and reunions, the huge meals and the gallons of cocktails, not to mention the nationwide celebration of thanks. And that was just my birthday! I had a pretty delightful birthday this year. A very low key dinner, a few drinks and then home with my new Xbox. Relax possums, I didn’t buy the $400 Xbox 360, so those of you who are video game geeks can put it back in your pants. It’ll be some time before I can afford the 360, thus I settled on a gently used original Xbox for a mere $100.

I think this was money well spent, and quite the birthday present to myself. (One of two. If you have to ask what the other one was, you’re too young to be reading this.) I also picked up two new used games that have completely captivated me, which may also explain my lack of updating what USAToday will soon be calling The Best Blog of 2006. In the meantime, grab a cup of your favorite guilty pleasure, kick your feet up and read on.

Tonight I was going to write about the most recent, and most disturbing apartment story, but as so often happens, fate decided to intervene. When Thanksgiving was approaching I thought it would be nice to write an entry about all the things I’m thankful for, despite what a challenging year it’s been for me and so many people I know. (Seriously, 2006 sucked and I for one am glad it’s nearly over.) I woke up Thanksgiving morning and that plan was shot to shit.

Like most of America’s youth, I went to bed Thanksgiving-eve with visions of cranberry sauce and turkey breasts dancing in my head, which may very well be the first time I lay in bed thinking of breasts. See, if there’s one thing I cook well, it’s Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t know what it is, but I turn that shit out! My mashed potatoes, with their secret ingredient, are creamy and smooth, my turkey with its special basting cocktail melts in the mouth and we won’t even TALK about my pecan pie. I call it the Happy Ending.

I thought it would be a good idea to cook the pecan pie on Wednesday so I plopped in my cheesy holiday music cd, and dove in. All in all, it was a pretty normal pie baking experience, with one significant exception that would prove to be very important on Thursday. My oven is nowhere near true to temperature. I don’t know what temperature it thinks it is when I’ve set it to 350, but it was pretty far off because it took about 20 minutes longer to cook the pie than it should have. One would think that I would make a mental note of that for the next day when I had to time an entire meal based around how long it would take to cook a turkey breast, but one would be wrong.

On Wednesday night I had the most horrible case of insomnia. I figured it was either the nerves about all the work that had to happen the next day, all the caffeine I’d had, or just the excitement of good friends coming over to partake in my Thanksgiving blowout. At about 3:00 I’d had enough of tossing and turning in bed and dragged my pillows and blankie to the couch. Along the way, something registered deep in the bowels of my brain, but it wasn’t until much later that the import of this transient bit of information hit me. When I hopped off the bed, my feet landed on the floor and turned into blocks of ice. When I walked into the living room, I had to wrap my blankie around me to ward off the chill in the air. I should have thought, “Self, this is not good,” but I didn’t. I thought “the couch looks so good,” and promptly threw myself into its welcoming cushions, hoping for at least three or four hours of decent slumber.

At about 9 in the morning, I plied my eyes open to a new day, thought about all the work ahead of me and decided to go ahead and get started. First, and most important, was a shower to wash the cobwebs from my head. I plodded over to the closet, grabbed my cutest holiday-ish outfit and went into the bathroom. I always keep the window in the bathroom cracked to get a little fresh air in the apartment (you know, because of the curry) so I’m used to it being chilly. Chilly. Not arctic.

Still, I was so groggy, this didn’t really register and I opened the shower curtain, took my clothes off (calm yourselves) and turned on the water. I was so tired, though, I decided to bring out the big guns; it may have been 9 in the morning, but it was time for a diet coke. Something about the walk from the bathroom to the kitchen was… not right. I may have been in my birthday suit (not Prada), but judging by the amount of shrinkage taking place it was freezing in my living room. Yes ladies, shrinkage is not just a Seinfeld episode, it exists. I grabbed a diet coke and scurried back into the bathroom where a steamy shower was about to envelop me. Or so I thought.

Astute readers may have deduced by now that Apartment 21 had no heat or hot water, but this had not really occurred to me yet. Until I stuck my hand in the running water to test the temperature, the thought had never even crossed my mind. When my hand shot back in agony, it was clear; I was about to host four people in an apartment with no heat or hot water. Cursing, I dragged my sorry ass back into my bedroom and began the grueling process of getting dressed. There is nothing worse than feeling grimy and having to put clothes on without showering.

Then I picked up the phone and started dialing. First I called my super. Voicemail. Then I called my landlord. Voicemail. Then emergency voicemail. This was at 9:30 in the morning. It would be 7:30 that night before I heard from either of them. That emergency voicemail works very well obviously. Next, I called my friends to tell them the sorry news. I was seriously considering canceling the whole affair, but nothing could be more depressing, so I told them to bundle up and come on out. My friend Anthony came over right away so that I could run to the gym and shower.

Freshly showered, I ran home to start the cooking. Now I was behind schedule and we were going to have to push dinner back about an hour. When I got to my apartment the rest of the crew had arrived, and I greeted them all with apologies about the cold, and decided to go ahead and turn the oven on. It was way too soon to start cooking Judy (the name I gave to my turkey breast) but at least it would take the chill out of the air. And honestly, once we started seriously cooking, it was blazing hot in the apartment anyway.

As I only do any real cooking about once a year, my apartment is not really outfitted for big meals. Anthony had to bring over knives because, well, I don’t have any. Why spend $100 on a set of knives I’ll use once a year? My plan was to wash dishes as we went along, but clearly that was not going to work, so we kicked it old school and kept pots of water warming on the stove to wash dishes with. That worked surprisingly well, until such time as we actually needed the pots to cook with. All we could do at that point was pile them in the sink.

The hour before the turkey is ready, as I’m sure you know, is when things go nutso. The chef, in this case me, has to be the conductor of a carefully orchestrated machine. Things have to go on the stove and come off the stove, drinks have to start flowing and the table has to be set (because in New York your table is your counter space). In those fifty or so minutes, if you’re not helping, you’re in the way, so I put everyone to work. Some may call it bossy, I call it efficient.

At about 5:00, the last of the side dishes was done, Judy had been resting comfortably in her pan on the counter and the biscuits were golden brown. You can smell it can’t you. I grabbed one of the borrowed knives, picked a spot, and starting the carving. I’m not by any means a carving kind of person, but the knife slid in easily enough and I didn’t seem to do any major damage, so I went a little further. When the juices started pouring out, my stomach growled and I declared that Judy was a success.

But like her namesake Ms Garland, Judy was half-baked. It’s fine for a person to be half-baked. A turkey? Not so much. My heart sank, and I turned to the wide eyed crew of four, with their forks in hand, and said “Uh oh.” Imagine if you will for a moment you have chosen the best gift in the world for your boyfriend/girlfriend/
transgender domestic partner. They open it. They scream in joy. They cry. They laugh. And then, out of nowhere, a vulture flies into your house, snatches the present out of their hands and bolts out the window. Now imagine your loved one’s face. That is how my crew of friends appeared to me. Stricken. Shocked. Saddened. Bereft. “Fear not, this is fixable” I said. I pieced poor Judy back together as best I could, cranked up the oven and put her back in.

An hour and twenty minutes later my gang and I dug into a perfect turkey, and a bevy of lukewarm side dishes. Sure, we microwaved them, but mashies just aren’t the same when they’re not fresh out of the pot. The biscuits we won’t even discuss. My friends were great sports, and we all had second helpings, but I couldn’t help thinking that my meal was kind of like Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes; something was just not right. At least we all had a Happy Ending to look forward to, and it did not disappoint. The matter of the dishes was left until the hot water came back on, which was mercifully about 9:00 that night.

So that’s Thanksgiving 2006. Pretty damn apropos if you ask me. I hope that you and yours all had the most fantastic Thanksgiving ever. And because I think it’s important, I’m thankful for: my friends, my family, the health of those who are still healthy and the strength of those who aren’t so much, that there are only 777 days left of George W. Bush’s presidency and that I still live in a country where saying that won’t get me killed. So far.

Until next time, be well, and stop thinking of me naked scurrying around my apartment.