Another Estes
Thanksgiving Day Epic Saga
November, 2002
Okay, so, the Estes family Thanksgiving this year was filled with
drama, comedy, tasty food, suspense, a Thanksgiving miracle, and
m-y-s-t-e-r-y...
My brother Wayne, sister-in-law Rita, and their daughters Allison and
Jennifer were coming down from Bristol to join us, which required
trying to keep Mom calm while she was freaking about all the
preparation things she was inventing for her ridiculous to-do list
(it's Wayne, for crying out loud, he used to live here, plus, y'know,
it's WAYNE).
I decided to help by trying to take care of the turkey.
I had done some stuff the weekend before Thanksgiving for Mom's friend
(and defender of me) Dot, and she always has a big ol' country
Thanksgiving meal (53 people this year) and her son Brian fries turkeys
for it. Mom raves about how good they are, and we're always
joking about how awesome it would be if they did ours. Since I
knew Dot would want to pay me and I couldn't allow it, I tossed in a
suggestion that if she asked Brian if he had room in his schedule for
one lil' turkey breast (we go maybe 9 lbs, while Dot has 22 lbs
turkeys), that would totally be a barter for us (and one less worry for
Mom) and she said sure! (But she still wanted to pay me, which I had to
duck.)
So I told Mom and Dad when I got home, and, of course, Mom went into
her high-Southern degradation-of-putting-other-people-out tirade, which
Dot and I were both expecting. (My favorite was when she started
wailing about the extra work, the turkey breast needing to be
"defrosted and cleaned..." I was like, what were you planning to
do before with turkey you were going to roast?) Anyway, Dot
called and confirmed that Brian said it wouldn't be a problem, and then
Mom began her "Now I have to shop for a turkey breast..." tirade.
(I said, uh-huh, and what were you planning to do before...?)
That was Sunday.
Wednesday, the day of the evening when Wayne's crew would arrive, who
needed turkey when we could have served sliced TENSION for
dinner? I was expected to perform the miracle of cleaning up my
dungeon room basement office because that's where the nieces would want
to play (never quite accomplished it -- several laws of physics
prevented putting things in places where there just wasn't room), but
it was a good hiding place while Mom was upstairs freaking out about
cleaning the house, pre-preparing the fixin's for the dressing (any
offers of help were met with the Friends
Monica maniacal "NO! I'LL do it!" perfectionism), and not having
a proper meal for Wayne's family who Dad and I assured her wouldn't be
here until nearly 9 and would have all ready eaten.
Eventually, when I had to go upstairs to get something, Mom was walking
out of the bathroom, pale from shock and shaking her head in
near-tears. Dad, it seems, while cleaning the bathroom in his
attempt to help, broke the bathtub -- accidentally snapped off the 30
year-old metal knob that holds and releases the water from the tub --
and now the tub won't drain. I peered into the bathroom, and Dad
was bent down over the tub with a screwdriver and a cleaner
brush.
So, while I was helping bale out the water and jiggling the screwdriver
into the wall of the tub to release the rest of the water, Mom
announced that she was leaving to have her hair done -- don't touch
anything. Dad asked her what else she wanted to do before the
evening, and she listed all sorts of minute royalty-arriving chores
that she didn't want us to do, along with more steps for the
dressing. "Can I chop the celery and onions for you?" I offered,
and her eyes nearly popped out of her head to visually strike me down
-- "No! Don't touch it!" "Can I set the table?" "NO!"
So, after Mom left and I defied her and cleaned the place settings (I
was getting tired of her friends assuring her that I'd help, and then
her rolling her eyes like it wasn't her idea to chase me out of her
kitchen), I went to Dot's to deliver the turkey. Dot's son was
going to inject it with Cajun seasonings and let it marinate overnight,
then fry it up in the morning. When I told Dot about Dad breaking
the bathtub, she dropped her head into her hands and started rubbing
her forehead, sighing, "Lord, I hope we don't ruin the turkey!"
Wayne's family arrived at 6:30, and hadn't eaten dinner yet. Mom
was torn between glaring at me and Dad and bursting into tears (which
to do???). She went for the glare, and all of us leaped into how
much hotdog and sandwich stuff there was in the fridge and how no one
expected or wanted anything more than that, but Mom upgraded into
ultra-fretting about not having a proper meal for them upon their
arrival.
Thanksgiving morning (after my first of three nights of sleeping on the
living room sofa), after we ate a scrambled eggs and grits breakfast
and were watching the Macy's Parade, the phone rang.
The turkey!
I was so busy watching Kermit and Miss Piggy, I'd completely
forgotten! Allison went with me to Dot's to pick up the turkey,
and I finally got to see a turkey fryer up close and in person.
Brian had it set up outside her house -- a deep metal pot, gurgling
grease (a second turkey was submerged), with a propane flame
underneath.
He said he hoped ours was cooked through -- a 7 lb turkey breast in 40
minutes (he allowed a little extra time to be sure) -- and said it was
inside the house. Dot greeted us with the turkey and a can of
salmon with a note for Mom -- she said she HOPED it was a joke --
explaining that salmon patties were a delicious backup in case the
turkey wasn't any good.
When I got back and preparing the big meal was getting into full swing,
Rita and I stood chatting in the kitchen, next to the dining room where
Wayne was working on his Sunday School lesson on the dining room
table. "Can you move your conversation somewhere else?" he
asked. We stared at him. "Or I could move," he suggested, in a
tone and expression that suggested he was suggesting more sarcasm than
sincerity. Rita and I opted for the latter. "I think you
should move to Dad's office," I suggested. "It was quiet before
you --" he began. "Wayne! It's the KITCHEN on THANKSGIVING
DAY! It's going to get NOISY," I proclaimed. "It wasn't ten
minutes ago," he countered. "That's because I was in the shower,"
Rita shot back. Wayne laughed and left.
Finally we sat down to a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner -- made more
wonderful by Mom's addition of some hot cheesy macaroni salad (an
excellent distraction from the dressing -- people filled up on it as I
loaded extra dressing onto my plate). Everyone flipped out over
the turkey -- even Dad, who's not that crazy about turkey, loved
it. Throw in some sweet potato casserole, crankleberry sauce (as
Dad calls cranberry sauce), a new orange and carrot gelatin salad Mom
discovered, and French onion bean casserole, and we were set. All
this was followed by pecan pie, chocolate chess pie, the first rum cake
I've ever baked instead of Mom (following Aunt Dee's classic recipe),
and a lemon icebox cake Mom made especially for Wayne since she hadn't
made it in so long and knew he loved it. (I couldn't remember her
ever making it and she said she made it all the time. When she
presented it to Wayne, he was as happy with the new dessert
introduction as I was. She took that moment to ask him if he
remembered her ever making a mushroom soup chicken with rice casserole
that I was asking her to make again that she swears she's never made
even though I assured her she cooked it once a week when we were
growing up and it was my favorite. Wayne said, "Yeah, it was like
a staple!")
During kitchen clean-up (when Mom joked about calling Dot in the middle
of her frenzied dinner for 53 and asking for that salmon patties recipe
again, just to scare her), we were completely befuddled by a missing
piece of Tupperware -- a large, red, pie carrier plate that was in our
hands when we brought out the desserts. In a kitchen of soft
pastels, how was it possible to not find a large, red, pie carrier
plate? It was 13 inches in diameter! Rita, Mom and I opened
cabinets after each other and each even looked behind the refrigerator
in case it happened to do a funky fall and roll. Nowhere!
Everyone was asked about it -- I suspected a pixie in our midst of
nieces, but my not-that-accusing questions were met with Mom
admonishing me in an admonishing grandmother tone that made me sound
infinitely more accusing and mean. (I guess that's what happens
when you suspect the prince's children).
The dressing leftover count was glorious. The family ate a huge
plate of it, yet the dish the dressing was cooked in looked hardly
touched. Mom fretted that it wasn't any good, and I was about to
tell everyone to be sure to eat more of it during the next leftover
meal to spare her feelings, until I remembered it was dressing and I
wasn't going to encourage anyone to deplete my leftover
stockpile. Still, it did seem strange that so much was left in
the cooking dish. When more was scooped out for another container
and it again barely looked touched, Rita and I decided that it had
risen really high during the cooking, and every time we removed some,
it sort of sank back in, covering a bunch of the empty space, thus
giving the illusion of hardly any being taken out -- or better, a
container of dressing that kept refilling itself. "It's a
Thanksgiving miracle!" I proclaimed.
That night, another Thrasher's hockey game (awesome high-scoring game,
with the Thrashers beating the Rangers 7-4 -- and our last seemingly,
as Wayne's contact from Gatorade is retiring so he won't have the
zillion ticket access to their suite), and Rita went home with her
sister so they could be at the malls by 6 the next morning. And I
went to bed on the living room sofa, rejoicing that it would be the
last night of sofa sleeping, completely forgetting that they weren't
leaving until Saturday.
Then it was Friday morning, which meant, of course, monkey cake!
Mom had been keeping the packages of biscuits necessary for monkey cake
(an easy-and-fun-to-make breakfast food that kids can help bake and
it's fun to eat) since the last time the girls were expected and
something cancelled the plans. Since Mom was up early and
rattling around in the kitchen and my sofa was within rattling wake-up
distance, I woke up and suggested we make the monkey cake, c'mon!
Okay, she was game, so we started mixing up the sugar and cinnamon for
the biscuit bits, and she started melting the butter and sugar on the
stove for the pour-over pre-bake stuff. I returned from the
basement refrigerator with the biscuits, and discovered they were all
spoiled -- a bit overdue on the expiration date. Mom, still not
recovered from the broken bathtub and unprepared with a worthy meal
upon Wayne's arrival incidents, had really just about had it, and I
threw extra clothes over my jammies-and-jeans pre-breakfast combo and
said I'd be back from Kroger in 15 minutes -- before anyone was
stirring!
So I raced to Kroger, found the biscuits, practically ran to the
register, then made the mistake of small talk -- "So we were putting
together a monkey cake and the biscuits were spoiled...." -- with a
cashier who clearly was more interested in the outside world than
thrilled with working at Kroger the Friday after Thanksgiving before
breakfast. "Monkey cake?" she asked, stopping her ringing up
process and holding the biscuits hostage. "How do you make that?"
Oh, I couldn't have just said breakfast...?
When I got back -- a few minutes later than I had intended -- no one
was up yet, and Mom and I resumed our chopping and sugar coating
process. Then Mom turned back to the pot of melted butter and
sugar she had taken off the flame, and discovered that she, in a moment
of over-efficiency, poured the sugar in before the butter had melted,
so when she was heating the sugar with the butter it had caramelized
and now cooled -- her spoon wouldn't break it. AIGHHH!!!
She didn't care, she just reheated it, left the solid bits that
wouldn't melt in, and poured it over the cake.
Everyone walked in early, and the cake was demolished. The rest
of the day was lying around, watching the Arkansas-LSU game to see who
Georgia would play in next week's SEC Championship (Arkansas, in a
last-minute score), and eating leftovers.
But still no red Tupperware pie container plate. Where could it
be? Mom assured us it would turn up...
Then two days later... mystery solved!
Sunday evening, Mom and Dad finally finished the delicious lemon icebox
cake and were just putting the Tupperware cake holder into the wash,
when Mom discovered the red pie plate was wedged underneath and inside
the cake holder bottom. The cake holder must have been removed
from and returned to the
refrigerator at least five times since the pie plate's disappearance.
"I guess we set the cake on top of the pie plate, and it got stuck!"
she said.
Or it was hiding.
Thanksgiving
The holiday scene
The
Marilyn Website home
Copyright Marilyn Estes
1997-infinity