Away in a Roasting Pan
Check the cavity,” Mom said after I removed the plastic wrapper from our Christmas Day turkey. Apparently, she’d been speaking to my Aunt Lulu earlier in the morning, and Lulu had poured hot water over her bird's cavity.
“Lo and behold, there was a bag of guts inside,” Mom said.
My eyebrows knitted as I contemplated this unwanted meddling.
“This is a frozen turkey, Mom, the whole point is to cook it from frozen.”
“Lulu’s was too,” she nodded. “And yet, guts.”
I tossed the plastic label into the sink and spun the frozen lump of poultry around on the counter. The drumsticks were frozen tightly together at their dainty ankles; no getting in there anytime soon.
But, what was this? I prodded at what looked like a twist-tie wrapped around the legs, holding them in place.
What was worse, I wondered as I pried at the bright yellow fiber embedded in the goose-pimpled turkey flesh: roasting a bird with the guts in, or roasting one with a plastic leg-band?
My fingers were numb by the time I moved the bird into the sink and started pouring hot water over the business end of its anatomy.
Mom was phoning my sister, Suze. “She'll know what to do; she worked in a grocery store,” she relayed to me, as if I may have forgotten where my sister worked.
The flesh was thawing surprisingly quickly. I tugged at the plastic tie, now determined to get a peek inside the bird. But the stubborn strand of plastic was entwined in a manner that said, "Go away, Mary, no room at the inn."
I flicked over the wrapper again and scanned the directions. “Cook from frozen,” it stated in plain English.
I hadn’t factored in thawing a turkey today. Everyone knows it takes days to safely unfreeze a bird in the fridge. If you do it wrong, you can poison your dinner guests. Now I was sloshing a slippery white bird around in quickly cooling water. My sister Marcy and her hubbub were arriving in a couple of hours. They’d been promised a fully cooked Christmas dinner with all the fixings. There wasn’t enough time to thaw out this turkey to check inside for a bag of gizzards and a neck.
The phone rang. Mom answered. It was Suze calling back. “She talked to Bob,” Mom yelled from the living room. Bob was the meat manager at the store where Suze had worked. “He says, go ahead and cook it from frozen. The plastic is food-safe.”
Well, then, if Bob said so.
But I had my doubts about cooked plastic, supposedly food-safe or not. I knew all about xenoestrogens and polychlorinated-whatchamacallits. They had no business showing up at a Christmas dinner uninvited. However, I had no choice. I had to get this turkey, frozen guts and all, into the oven now, or no one would be eating tonight.
I lugged the 13-pounder into Mom’s large metal roasting pan; salted the skin; and into the cavern of the oven it went. I prayed silently to the ghost of Julia Child, “Please watch over this bird this afternoon.”
Hours passed, Suze came home from visiting her daughter, and our guests arrived bearing mashed potatoes in a crock pot. The house filled with the delicious Christmas-y aroma of roasting turkey. Basting religiously, I noticed our beast emitting an extravagant amount of juices as it cooked. There would be gravy.
Finally, when the skin was golden and crackly, the drumsticks loose in their sockets, and the meat thermometer read 185 degrees, I took it out.
Around the dinner table that night was a small group, our early pandemic bubble. We ate turkey, cauliflower stuffing, peas, mashed potatoes, and O little town of Bethlehem…so much gravy.
A frozen bird is a juicy bird, I’ll give you that. A gizzard and giblets would’ve been nice to make the gravy with, but you can’t have everything.
For dessert were the requisite pies: apple and pumpkin, with copious globs of whipped cream; a couple of mincemeat tarts; and a plate full of Christmas cookies.
Later, after Marcy and her hubbub went home, Suze and I put away the leftovers. We scraped the dishes and filled the dishwasher, and I heard Mom back on the phone to Aunt Lulu. “It’s just not how I did things when I was in charge,” I heard her exclaim.
I looked at Suze, and she rolled her eyes. “Merry Christmas,” she said.
As always, I’d love to hear about your turkey travails. Hit reply on this email so we can chat, or post your comments wherever you’ve read this. I read them all.
Big News!In case you missed it last week, my latest novel, Odd Mom Out is now available for pre-order on Amazon! The e-book is currently priced at .99 so reserve your copy now; the book will be published on January 1, 2024. Click to get a look at it: Amazon
Waiting for the paperback?
Stay tuned. I may have copies before publication date available exclusively for you.
Thanks for reading me!
To all my writer friends:I urge you to join Substack to share your magnificence with the world. Use the button below to create your own Substack and connect your publication with Sandy Day
