Dear Reader Column 11-22-06

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Dear Reader,

* Suzanne is cooking her turkey and rolling pie crusts so today's column is one of her old favorites.

Some people want the white meat, some will only eat the dark, and for years our family members used to argue over who was going to get the turkey drumsticks on Thanksgiving. Every year it was the same routine. My mother would ring her china bell, "Dinner is ready. Come to the table," and we'd all start calling out "dibs" on a turkey leg. When there are only two turkey legs, but ten people want one...well, it used to be a huge problem until the year my mother made her famous Turkey Drumstick Thanksgiving Dinner. Now nobody in our family even wants to look at a drumstick. The memories are still too fresh in our minds.

It seemed like a normal enough Thanksgiving meal, until my mother announced, "I've got a surprise. No one will be disappointed this year. Everybody gets a drumstick, because that's all that I cooked." And Mom plopped down a serving platter, piled high with 20 turkey legs, in the middle of the table. "Dig in."

This felt a little strange. What, no bird this year? Only drumsticks?

Mom was smiling, so proud she'd finally found a solution for the annual turkey leg squabble. Apparently she'd begun working on this year's Thanksgiving surprise the day after our last Thanksgiving dinner. Clipping coupons, and always keeping an eye out for a turkey leg sale, my mother had been buying up turkey legs for the past year. It all sounded okay in theory, but either she didn't wrap the legs in freezer paper, or the turkey legs were on sale because they were near their expiration dates, or it was just a bad year for turkeys--because when we tried to stick a fork into our drumsticks, we couldn't.

I'm not exaggerating here, the turkey legs were nowhere near fork-tender. The tines of our forks actually bounced off of our drumsticks when we tried to pierce them. A table knife wouldn't even saw through the sinewy--who knows how old--freezer burnt, turkey legs. My son suggested we fire-up the chain saw.

Sometimes when you try to solve a problem, it merely shows up in another form, and unfortunately that's what happened the year of the Turkey Drumstick Thanksgiving Dinner. None of us fought over who would get a drumstick, instead we ended up dueling with them. Those were some tough birds.

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
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http://www.DearReader.com

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Comments

[sandy backlund]

Dear Suzanne, It's fun to hear about your Thanksgiving memories. Every year my family gets to hear this one:

Ten years old, I loved to help my mother in the kitchen. This particular Thanksgiving, dinner was almost ready to put on the table. It was in the late 50's, and with our Green Stamps, we had "purchased" a torquoise three-tiered rolling metal cart. Thanksgiving Day was to be its debut, transporting the steaming plates of food to the dining room table in one trip. No running back and forth to the kitchen!

The table looked beautiful, with our best tablecloth. I had folded the napkins according to the Betty Crocker cookbook. Only twice a year, we used the stemmed water goblets and they were ready, filled with ice water.

Mother placed our best china dishes loaded with steaming, sliced turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, beans and homemade rolls and chilled cranberry relish and pickles on the cart just before she called our family and our company, Uncle Bob, Aunt George and Uncle Gene to the table.

Then she let ME push the cart into the dining room.

The cart rolled smoothly on the kitchen floor, but two factors worked together to spoil the journey: the fact that the top tray was intended to be lifted off by its handles so it was not fastened to the cart, and the small bump at the doorway to the dining room.

When the wheels hit the bump, the top tray, (turkey, potatoes and gravy level) came loose on one corner, pitching a warm, mushy food slide to level two and the wooden floor below. The dinner was a wreck.

I remember my mother pausing, then putting her fingers to her lips in "shhhh" before she put her apron back on. Metal spatula in hand, she worked quickly, saving what could be saved right off the floor, making more gravy, slicing more turkey, finding fresh serving bowls and wiping off greasy ones with a towel. She re-loaded the cart and helped me push it in this time.

I think no one would have known where that turkey had been from my mother's calm, innocent expression during dinner, but throughout the meal, devastated, I intermittently shook with the suppressed sobs of the guilty.

Dinner was delicious, although there was a slight shortage of mashed potatoes which no one mentioned.

No kitchen disaster of mine has ever compared to this, but if I ever have one, thanks to my mother, I'll know what to do.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Sandy Backlund