By Laura Grimes
My mom is swimming her way south and the meat marathon has begun. Look what we got cooking on the stove:
We bought turkey wings just to make turkey stock just to make turkey stuffing just to go with Grammy’s turkey breast.
When Mr. Scatter asked The Meat Guy for “two turkey wings, one for each side,” the guy replied, “I don’t know if I can get you a matching pair.”
By Laura Grimes
If you’re wondering about Mr. Scatter, he’s been busy with paying gigs so we can afford all this meat we’re cooking for Thanksgiving. If you read the last post, you know by now that even though most of us in the family are vegetarians, somehow we’re cooking both a whole chicken and a turkey breast.
OK. OK. No somehow about it. I’ll admit it. It’s all because I’m an advice column failure.
But forget that for a moment because we have an emergency. The meat in our freezer is multiplying. And we don’t even have the whole chicken or the turkey breast yet.
The freezer already contains several kinds of elk meat and antelope sausage (which Mr. Scatter fondly keeps calling “gazelle”), which we got in exchange for pickles. And now — hold your breath — we have a giant turkey. More precisely, we have 21.12 pounds of bird, or $35.69 worth. It was FREE.
By Laura Grimes
My mom’s coming for Thanksgiving. I’m pretty excited. I’ve already talked her into making pie (it didn’t take much).
We have to get a turkey breast just for her, though. None of the four Scatterers eats turkey. We had a long conversation at dinner one night just to solve what to do about meat for Thanksgiving. The one carnivore in the house, the Large Large Smelly Boy, said he didn’t like white meat, and he wasn’t interested in turkey legs or thighs. He requested chicken. We dreamed up cooking a whole chicken, which is not a small thing in the Scatter house. We were relieved to have a plan, and even kind of excited. We could make stock, just like we used to. We could freeze it. We could make all kinds of things for the Large LSB. Boy, that chicken decided it. We were going to get the whole house cooking! Bring on Thanksgiving! Could it come sooner?
By Laura Grimes
Thanksgiving always fills the Scatter homestead with both anticipation and trepidation. We love our sweet potatoes, but we cannot explain why so many of our turkey feasts are disasters.
These aren’t garden-variety disasters like the cranberry jelly didn’t set or the buns got burned. No, we do it up whole hog. Like the oven catches fire, the furnace breaks, the toilet overflows, the smoke alarms go off.
We once moved the entire household. Like, that day. Which isn’t exactly a disaster, but it’s not sleeping off the pumpkin pie with a cozy fire and a football game, either. And this wasn’t three decades ago, when we were young and limber and owned but a few chairs that we could transport in a sedan across town. This was three years ago, which meant we moved because of mobility issues and required a lot more than a van, a pickup and a semi-truck to haul a few tons only a few blocks.
We’re pretty safe with sharp implements and know proper food handling procedures, so we’re not really sure why this particular holiday is often marred by a giant black cloud. Sometimes literally.