Dan's Shorts

Adventures in Thanksgiving Dinners

Kris and I decided to have our first Thanksgiving dinner at our place, and wouldncha know... something had to go wrong. We were halfway through cooking the turkey when the oven, you guessed it, quit working. Luckily we had already cooked the pie, but the turkey was only halfway done and we hadn't cooked the stuffing yet.

After pulling the oven away from the wall (carefully, the turkey was still inside) we unplugged, replugged, kicked, screamed and cursed to the Thanksgiving gods to try and get the damn thing to work. Well, nothing doing...

So what's a Texas boy to do when the turkey's not done? Find the only hot thing in the place... the barbecue. So we fired up the grill and threw the 12 pound turkey on there. Got some water with herbs in it down there and made a fire. Great... now put the lid on... nope... won't fit. The turkey was too large for the barbecue grill. So back to good old Reynold's wrap. We put foil over the top and hoped the turkey didn't get too hot/dry/fried/burnt. After two hours of continuous checking and burnt fingers pulling the foil on and off, it was finally done.

And miracle of miracles it was tasty. One of our friends (Brent) never had a good piece of turkey in his life he told us. Always dry and yucky. We've redeemed his faith in the bird, and he now claims that we have an official "recipe" and will be required to do the same thing again next year. Hopefully without the frustration (and a larger grill).

Epilogue: To add insult to injury, we turned the oven on this morning... and it worked... bastards...