Thanksgiving Dinner

Ricky Ginsburg - June 2019

Everything was going fine until the cornbread exploded. How the hell was I supposed to know you couldn't use popcorn in place of niblets? I mean, up until this meal, my entire culinary repertoire consisted of Spam - baked in its own grease in the toaster oven, mac and cheese from a can, and hot dogs in the microwave. I have an oven in my apartment that had already burnt the hair off my right hand and was not going to get a shot at my left. In a neighborhood that offered menus in every genre from American anything-fried-in-lard to curried monkey brains, why would anyone need to cook a meal other than for snacks? Yet, here I am, immersed in the horrors of my first Thanksgiving dinner, cooking for the best spousal prospect I've dated in the eight years since graduating college.

It took two hours of creative promises and a series emotional debts that would eventually come back to haunt me, but I've convinced my future wife to have Thanksgiving dinner at my place. She agreed, adding the word "family" to the conversation with me nodding my head without thinking. It would be a lopsided event: her two brothers (lawyers so fresh out of school that they still had ethics) along with her father, who never entertained without inviting at least one of his ex-wives, facing down the man who desperately wanted keep his fantasies alive.

The challenge I've accepted in bettering my chances to reach that goal is so far over my head that hours after she's gone home to the Hamptons, I'm still not sure of my intentions. And to make matters worse, she's made it abundantly clear: screw up this meal and it will send me back to the post-collegiate watering holes where every guy looks half my age and every woman I smile at thinks I'm some professor they haven't yet met but might have to seduce in order to secure a passing grade. A wise man never questions the veracity of his girlfriend's threats; I kissed her and assured her that it would be a feast worthy of a queen.

I've spent enough time reaching for the gold ring of women to know that Cassia Rogers-Watterson will be the ultimate prize. Her father flew in from the Hamptons, appraised me, gave his blessing, and was back on his helicopter before the blades stopped spinning. In the forty-two seconds we stood there shaking hands, he used the word "son" so many times that I almost called him "dad". Cassia smiled the entire time, kissed me once on the cheek and followed her father back into the sleek black chopper. Student loans, a mediocre position at a less than important financial institution, and ever increasing costs of living tend to favor the rich in my mind when it comes to choosing a mate. Finding a woman like Cassia, who enjoyed sex as much as me and was already linked to wealth, is the cream filling in an already tasty donut.

And so here it is, two o'clock in the afternoon, Thanksgiving day, my microwave a splattered mess of cornmeal, popcorn, and shredded jalapenos, a string bean casserole still waiting its turn for a bath in the radiation, and . . .

. . . smoke, pouring from the oven!

I grab the insulated mitts from their hiding place in the drawer of rarely used utensils and yank the oven door open, standing off to the side. The black basin flecked in white which had been spotlessly clean for the four years I've been living in the apartment is a sea of smoking grease. Apparently, the foil throwaway pan I've placed the turkey into for its cremation has sprung several leaks from punctures made by the wire rack I'd improvised out of a pair of heavy wire coat hangers. Most of it is covered with a layer of burnt drippings. Thankfully, the turkey, still as creamy white as when it had been unsheathed from the Butterball condom, is warm to the touch and appears unaffected by the greasy soot and smoke. Sliding the wire rack out of the oven, I lift the pan and place the whole thing in the sink, being as careful as possible to avoid the droplets of grease that splatter to the tile floor. Thinking about it for a second, I'm not sure if I have a mop.

When my father passed away, in my senior year at Columbia, I sold or gave away everything in the house, not realizing that my mother had accumulated a collection of kitchen equipment that would rival the shelves at Williams-Sonoma. Much of it was still in the original boxes when she died and what cooking skills she possessed never came to light in the dozen years I knew her. My own accouterments come from Macy's and Target, collected as the need arose over the years. The important stuff came first: a pizza slicer, a can opener, an assortment of plates (bought one at a time so that none of them match) and whatever glassware the local Texaco station was featuring each month. Never having had the cooking lessons a boy expects from his father, all I knew about food preparation came from television and the internet. Thus my first experience at roasting a turkey is now reliant upon "how to cook a turkey dot com" and their instructions simply say to use a large pan and a wire rack.

With the oven off, I grab a roll of paper towel and do my best to remove as much of the grease puddle as possible, singeing the hair on the back of both hands, and searing the knuckles on one of them when I hit the still hot heating element. It's just after three in the afternoon when I decide the oven is clean enough to restart the cooking process. Cassia is due back from her father's house at seven with her family.

Fortunately, the foil pans come bundled in twos, so I lift the turkey from the leaky one and place it into a fresh pan, sans the wire hangers. I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind their use anyhow and figure the fowl can cook just fine sitting in its own greasy bath. After all, the breast, with its little red popup, is on top and that's the only part most people eat.

According to the instructions on the Butterball wrapper, the turkey is going to need four and half to five hours to cook at three hundred and twenty-five degrees. It was in the oven only an hour before the combustion occurred. I figure if I bring the temperature up a few degrees, I can still finish the bird in time for dinner. I set the dial at four hundred and turn my attention to the cornbread explosion still waiting patiently in the microwave.

The cornbread recipe came from the same website as the turkey and I had purchased exactly the right amount of ingredients to make enough for six people with no spares. With the explosive mess caused by my substitution of popcorn for the elusive can of niblets, I decide it's best to abandon the dish and pull a loaf of frozen garlic bread from the freezer instead. Even though I can't remember having garlic bread at any previous Thanksgiving dinner, bread is bread and I figure its only purpose in the meal is to sop up the . . .

. . . gravy! How could I be so lame? I haven't bought a bottle of turkey gravy! I glance at the oven, pleased to see that the temperature has finally hit four hundred, and run to my study to pay another visit to the turkey dot com website. Sure enough, they have several gravy recipes. However, all of them require the use of something called "giblets." Giblets, niblets, my life is suddenly dependent upon items too small to be accurately identified much less purchased on a day when the only businesses operating are the National Football League and a every Chinese restaurants in the city. I Google "gravy" and find a recipe that uses ketchup, soy sauce, and several other common ingredients, all of which I have obtained over the years and still have stored in my pantry. Ah, liquid success is at hand.

I empty the last dregs of ketchup from the bottle in the refrigerator along with the soy sauce from a dozen packages saved from Chinese takeout meals into a glass bowl, adding most of the spices mentioned on the website. One of the other recipes on the same webpage suggests adding the turkey drippings, so I scrape several spoonfuls of greasy detritus from the original throwaway pan into the bowl. Covering it, I shove the mixture into the toaster oven to simmer in peace.

Another check of the turkey, which now has a nice brown color to the skin, and I can smell the odor of success that wafts from the oven. I wonder if sex with Cassia will forever remind me of that fragrance after today. Some errant memory from Psychology 101 about smells imprinting in your long-term flashes through my conscious thoughts and I take several deep breaths to insure the permanence of the effect.

With the cleanup complete and the casserole spinning happily in the microwave, I decide it would be a good time to let the food cook on its own and return to the study with a bottle of wine and a clean Texaco goblet to watch football. Tennessee is leading the Detroit Lions by a field goal as the fourth quarter begins, but they will need a touchdown and the extra point to cover the thousand-dollar bet I'd placed Wednesday evening.

I open the wine, a vintage Rothschild I've purchased for this evening's dinner and pour myself a glass. Regardless of what Cassia thinks of my cooking, she'll certainly be impressed by my wine selection. Giving the wine a few moments to breathe, I slip off my loafers and slide the recliner back into its position of maximum comfort. Just as I'm about to fill the glass, the telephone on my desk spoils the moment.

"Hello?"
"Hey lover, how's the turkey looking?"
"Baby, it's gonna be so good they'll be begging me to sign a contract for a weekly show on the Food Channel."
"And give up your lucrative career in the banking industry?"
I sigh, "The next great chef is waiting for their call."
"Yeah, they'll call. Only if they want someone who can make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or fry some Spam."
"Now, you don't want to insult the man who can call your auto loan, do you?"
"And you don't want to get on the wrong side of the woman who can make you scream like a . . ."
". . . Okay, okay, we don't need to go into details on the phone." I blush, thinking about the trick she does with her tongue and a piece of yarn. "You might want to take a nap before you and the gang fly over here."
"Oh?" I can hear her snicker on the other end of the line, "You think you'll have any energy after cooking all day?"
"Hey, you're not talking to some amateur chef, you know. You said that your dad likes good cooking. I'm ready." I pour a glass of wine and marvel at its wonderful bouquet. "Plus, I've got four bottles of a 1988 Laffite-Rothschild that need to be dealt with. Are you interested in spending the night?"
"It depends."
"On what?"
"Where we're going to drink it."
"I'll put two glasses by the bathtub and two in the bedroom, your choice."
"You're making me thirsty. See you at seven."
The line goes dead before I can reply.

I drink two glasses of the spectacular wine, savoring each drop as though it would be the last to ever hit my tongue, and lay back in the lounger to drift for a while. When I awake, the Dallas game, second of the day, is just coming out of halftime, tied at fourteen, and an odd smell - somewhere between burnt hair and burnt rubber - permeates my apartment. Leaping from the recliner, I run to the kitchen and find the gravy bubbling through the door of the toaster oven, angry streams of it fused onto the side of the pot and the electric heating element. What's left in the pot has no resemblance to any gravy I've ever seen, although it could easily pass for used motor oil.

The turkey has gone from suntan to sunburn - third degree in several places - and the only dish still having the characteristics of food is the green bean casserole, waiting lukewarm in the microwave. I punch the Off button on the oven and open the door to let whatever foul gasses have accumulated dissipate. Is the turkey beyond hope? I gaze at the clock over the sink - six thirty-five - there's little I can do about it now.

The gravy is a total loss. I don't even have ketchup to put on the table and my limited culinary expertise tells me that mustard is out of the question. With the insulated oven gloves I pull the pan out of the oven and place it on the counter top. The turkey website mentioned letting the bird sit covered for thirty minutes before carving. I give a moments' thought to heating a bunch of Swanson's chicken pot pies from the freezer and tossing the overcooked Butterball in the trash, but I know that won't sit well with Cassia and family, who are giving up a gourmet meal in lieu of my promises.

"Who was the idiot that volunteered for this assignment?" I ask the overcooked bird. "Someone should have marched through 'Caterers' in the Yellow Pages before risking such a task." I'm breathing faster and the sweat has now soaked so far down the back of my shirt that I think I need fresh underwear.

I move the turkey from the pan to the cutting board, turning it upside down. The undercarriage looks a lot better than the top, so at least if she comes into the kitchen to inspect, my disaster will be hidden. There's an accumulation of drippings in the pan that I pour into a coffee cup, hoping it might just work as gravy if needed. With less than thirty minutes until Cassia's arrival, I cover a pair of bridge tables from my neighbor with a red tablecloth I'd purchased that morning and six mostly white china plates from my collection. Silverware, gas station goblets, salt and pepper shakers, even a candle in a silver base - one of the few things I kept from my mother's house - go on the table laid out as fancy as I can manage. A bag of pre-made salad fills a chrome mixing bowl although the best I can do for serving utensils are two large soup spoons.

Risking the fury of my landlord, I open all the windows in the apartment and shove the thermostat up to critical mass. With the cold November wind blowing in and the steam-driven radiators chugging for all their worth, I get most of the offensive odors out of there in short order. Of course, there's little I can do about the dinner other than hope that my queen has a jester's sense of humor and that I can get the rest of her family drunk within moments of their arrival.

Cassia walks in at seven on the dot, tossing her coat on the couch. "Well, sweetheart, you're in luck. Dad and Naomi went out on the yacht and decided to spend the night. My brothers, the two amateur litigators, each made a pinata in the shape of a turkey, depending on how much you drank." She sits down beside me on the couch and puts her head in my lap. "And then they proceeded to drink everything in the house. I had Sully fly me out here and he's gone back to spend Thanksgiving with the staff. So it's just me for dinner and dessert."

I kiss the top of her head. "Poor baby. You must be starved."
She looks up me and wrinkles her nose. "I waited all day to eat. I'm ready for a feast."
In the few seconds that I hold my breath and stare at her coat, laying there next to her on the couch, Cassia senses the delay and sits up straight, looking at me with what I like to call her "Oh, no." face.
She frowns. "You couldn't do it."
"Why do you say that?" I get up from the couch and motion with my finger towards the kitchen. "Follow me."
Leading her over to the counter, I nod and take a step back with my hands on my hips. She looks at the bird as it rests on the cutting board, waiting to be carved. "It's upside down," she says.
"I know." I pause and take a deep breath. "You really don't want to see the other side."
"That's fine, I only eat dark meat."
With a sigh of relief, I stab the turkey with a barbecue fork and begin cutting chunks from the carcass. Cassia pulls a piece of loose meat from a thigh and is about to taste it when she turns and looks around the kitchen. "Where's the cranberry sauce, and stuffing?"
"Stuffing? Cranberry sauce?" I slap my forehead, dropping the knife to the floor.
She jumps back to avoid the falling dagger, shaking her head in disbelief. "How could you forget stuff like that?"
I shrug. "Spent too much time thinking about you."
"Too much?"
"Okay, not enough."
Leaning in closer to me, Cassia whispers, "But I've been having naughty thoughts about you and the cranberry sauce all day."
My knees tremble and I ask, my voice starting to crack, "Can we use gravy instead?"
She shakes her head. "Nope. It's jellied cranberry sauce or nothing."
With a quick nod, I turn and head towards the door, yanking my overcoat from the hook next to it. Cassia runs for the couch, grabs her coat, and stands next to me.
"We both don't have to go." I take her hands and pull her closer for a kiss. As best as I try to hide it, there's an element of concern in my voice. "There's a Korean grocery store two blocks away, I'll get every can of cranberry sauce on his shelves, and be back here in fifteen minutes."
"Nah." She glances back toward the kitchen, smiling. "Let's go eat Chinese. You can try this again for Christmas." She takes my hand and opens the door. "But since we don't have cranberry, make sure you save all those little duck sauce packets for later."