A silly holiday story time:
At thanksgiving one year my family had all gathered at my nanaâs house for the family meal. My family are⌠not cooks. In more recent years Iâve had to warn my betrothed to lower their expectations of what weâre going to be fed. They hear the menu and think, well that sounds okay only to eat the blandest most poorly cooked food to ever shame our ancestors.
But the year in question I was still but a teenager and had not yet learned better food existed. I knew next to nothing about cooking, nor did my nana, so I was vaguely puzzled when she volunteered to cook a turkey.
It was good fortune really that I was in the kitchen when she came to check on it. I watched quietly while she opened the oven and made a sound of disgust at the juices surrounding the bird in its pan. She opened the oven door wider. She looked from the oven to her trash can. She looked back in the oven.
âAre you- uh- are you thinking to pour that juice in the trash?â
âYeah! Itâs gross, Iâm just trying to figure out how.â
I, with my mere seventeen years of life experience looked at my fully grown wizened grandparent in bafflement. âIf you pour that in the trash itâs going to melt through the bag, and also probably through the trash can itself? Itâs really hot?â
She looked surprised to hear this basic law of thermodynamics, looking at the bubbling well of turkey fat as if seeing it for the first time. She then turned back to me, a child who had never learned to cook, âWell what am I supposed to do with it?â
âI think you leave it there? And-â
What I said next was cobbled together from television, pop culture, and American teens fixation on the hilarity of the tool for sex jokes-
âI think you baste it? Thereâs like a thing you get the juice in to squirt back on the top?â
She made a thoughtful hmm and closed the oven again, wandering back into the living room. I took a moment to imagine the alternate timeline where my family cleaned burning hot fat and melted plastic off the floor.
By and by our underwhelming dinner was completed and we tucked in. My mom keeps chickens so as we finished our food we put all our scraps into a big bowl that was going to the birds. We filled it with dry under seasoned turkey, stuffing, unfinished mashed potatoes, half eaten dinner rolls, etc.
As we were all lounging in contented fullness my brother finally arrived. Being older he had the luxury of showing up to family events hours late. He greeted everyone and went to fix himself a plate. He came out of the kitchen carrying the metal bowl of scraps, delightedly mowing through it.
My mom looked up and started laughing and we all turned to follow suit.
âThatâs the bowl for the chickens! Why did you pick that instead of making a plate?â
âThis had everything!â he protested, showing us the conglomeration of every component of dinner all mixed up in one bowl.
He sat down and finished the whole massive bowl, unbothered by eating scraps, and the family watched in fascination. His only comment at the end was, âThat was great! Turkey was a little dry.â
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