Thanksgiving at our house is always wonderful but for the past few years we have had a special “guest”. A wonderful local farmer grows a special turkey for us with the caveat that it be as big as possible. Last year he and his son worked hard and we had a 55# (after it was all cleaned) beauty! This year he was sad to tell me ours would only be 48# but still in the OK range.
Going back in time a few years to our first BIG turkey which was only about 38#: I called the Butterball Hotline and asked about cooking such a behemoth. There was a tiny pause and the woman on the other end said, “I think you need to talk to a supervisor.” Actually we have it down to a science now. Of course I had to buy a $125.00 restaurant strength pan which was large enough and every year our first Thanksgiving prayer is that the 50+ year old ancient oven in our basement will work. It is from before the time that ovens cleaned themselves and has a huge inner baking space.
This year our Los Angeles son who works in the entertainment industry had a boss who wanted one of the special Wisconsin turkeys so Ed the turkey farmer grew one for him too and named them Pilgrim (ours) and Hollywood (to be shipped to California). We don’t know for sure what (if any) celebrities ate Hollywood but we had a wonderful group of friends and family. Our friends St. Louis Sally and her husband thought they were going to get the prize for coming the furthest even beating out Laura’s wonderful in-laws who came from Minneapolis but NO…
We had invited other friends who had been in Mississippi who thought they would be home the day before the holiday but they had a home owner nightmare which delayed their departure. Who knew about something called a “grinder pump??” Apparently when your house is below sea level you need to have everything ground up and then pumped up and when it breaks you need to fix it NOW. They drove straight to our house just in time for dinner and won the “came the farthest” prize.
I did absolutely no cleaning up. Sally washed all the dishes, and son-in-law Brian and Paul (fresh from his trip up to get Grandma Dolores in Milwaukee) did the pots and pans. I did sit down and then the knitting came out—Sally was working on a beautiful bamboo baby sweater, Laura’s mother-in-law Barb on as scarf, and I even got to do some on a sample of a scarf pattern I am working on as a gift for all the wonderful Signature customers.
As we gathered family and friends we were thankful for health and all the blessings we have, we remembered those who were not with us this holiday, and hugged the ones who were and were grateful for all grinder pumps wherever they may be.
This is my dear husband Kent and Laura’s wonderful father-in-law Tom in the picture to show some perspective. As you can see Pilgrim was a beauty. We don’t cook stuffing inside and it actually only takes about 6 hours to cook using dear departed Grandma Hazel’s method.
