Holiday disasters because misery loves company

[rthstewart]

In anticipation of a BIG WORK THING that may come out next week, I have shoved the hosting of the American gorge-fest known as Thanksgiving off on my foreign-born sister in law.  She's very excited to take the mantle from me and rightfully intimidated.  I keep saying, no, really, let other people bring vegetables, bread, desserts, liquor, appetizers, etc. etc.  Really.    Let your 12 guests help.

No, no, no, she insists.  She has, at least, realized that a frozen turkey will take a week to thaw in the refrigerator but I do wonder if she's really thought about those inevitable space issues when the turkey comes out and has to sit while you 1) make gravy 2) make mashed potatoes; 3) wait for the stuffing to hit adequate internal temperatures in the now vacated oven to cook the egg in it so you don't inadvertently make everyone sick (or used pastuerized egg product or leave egg out).  Oh sweet child of summer, you have no idea what you are in for and really you should take the help offered. 

Correllian_sugar in the December meme prompt (and spaces still open!) got all apologetic about asking for cooking successes as well as failures but, in fact, I've got a million of woops stories and I'm really excited to share them.  My personal favorite, involving a horse and an exploding sweet potato casserole, I shall save for December.  But, in the meantime, I invite you all to share in comments cooking, hosting, travel holiday disasters.  And econopodder and knitress I'm looking at you to share some as you've been at my house for plenty of these!

I'll start with a recent one, from last year's Thanksgiving when I ignored the warning voice in my head that said never, EVER use the self clean on your oven right before you are going to need it.  I have a beautifully engineered awesome double Miele oven and I made that mistake and ran the self clean --  fortunately only on the top half of the oven the weekend before Thanksgiving.  It took me over an hour before I realized nothing in the stuffed upper part of the oven was reheating.  Dinner was a bit late that year.  MORE WINE. 

Speaking of, there was the time I decide to do a lovely caramelized pear salad as a first course.  This was when I learned that I, at least, should never drink and caramelize sugar at the same time. 

And then there was the time the Labrador ate the Buche de Noel. 

When I hosted a Thanksgiving in Romania in the 1990s, we did get a turkey off a truck hijacked by Russians (could not find extra silverware, anywhere, however).  Romanian half-sized ovens only had two settings, big flame and little flame, and no window or light in the door so you can't monitor the internal temperature in the oven with the thermometer you ask for someone to pick up for you when they go to Germany for the weekend.  So I cooked a turkey with a flashlight and constant open and shutting of the oven door over 3 hours.

And then there was the time a possum got into my pot-a-feu and the racoons ate my Christmas cookies.

Next?

Comments

[rthstewart]

Pets DO make everything more fun. Cofax and I below are exchanging dog stories, so you are in good company. The possum in the pot-au-feu was a little different. I ran out of space in the kitchen and so once the meat and vegetables were done cooking, I moved this giant pot of stock and things to the back porch, and put a weight on the lid. 2 hours later, and drunk out of my mind on Beaujolais, I open the back door and there's a giant possum sitting there with her head stock in my stock pot and her babies all huddled on the stairs waiting for mom to finish eating.

The raccoons climbed down our chimney one year, pushed back a board and air conditioning unit to reach the basement, and made off with a tray of Christmas cookies. These were VERY DETERMINED raccoons.

[edenfalling]

*blinks* Wow. That is DEFINITELY some determination there.

Our dog-and-food incidents didn't really correlate to big meals. They were more like, oh, the time Gigi snagged a Tupperware container off the kitchen counter and ate through the plastic in order to scarf the Oreos it was holding. Or the time she ate half a vacuum-sealed brick of Maxwell House coffee. (The shocking thing about that is that she stopped before finishing it, and then apparently learned her lesson and never went after coffee again.) Or the time we coated a guaranteed indestructible rubber dog toy in peanut butter so she'd pay attention to it, and then of course she ate half the toy. *headdesk* Gigi also ate plastic noses off stuffed animals, limbs off of Barbies, and buttons off of clothes left on the floor. There were reasons we called her a living vacuum cleaner. Actually, one of the biggest adjustments I had to make when moving out of my parents' house was realizing that if I dropped food on the floor, I would have to pick it up myself because it wouldn't simply vanish within five seconds.

I think the most normal food snatching Gigi did was when she somehow dragged a blueberry pie off a table at my Aunt Jan's house and licked the whole tin clean.

Dottie -- my parents' current dog -- is more discriminating in her tastes, though she will still jump onto a chair and push her head onto the dinner table given half a chance. *wry*