It’s not Thanksgiving unless there’s a calamity in the kitchen, and in most cases it involves fire. Or knives. Or flaming knives with a highly toxic, salmonella-ridden turkey. How festive.
My family went to my mother’s house in Tampa this Thanksgiving. I got the holiday rolling the night before when at dinner I said to my mother, “So obviously you heard about Scott (my brother) breaking his foot while riding his motorcycle.”
Apparently it wasn’t so obvious. She hadn’t heard.
“What?!?” she yelled. “Why doesn’t anyone tell me anything?”
I know how to start things off at family gatherings. My brother came in the next morning hobbling on a crutch with a big black boot on his foot. I thought my mother might break his other foot.
So began a typical Thanksgiving at my house. But that wasn’t the cause of the fire. The flames didn’t come until closer to lunch. I actually missed it. My aunt had forgotten the wine and we were dispatched for alcohol while food was hitting the serving trays. If Thanksgiving dinner isn’t so cold that it induces frostbite when you eat it, then you know you’re doing something wrong.
So as the food chilled, we went for wine, only to come back to the smell of smoke filling the house and a little bit of dark, black soot floating in the air.
“You should have seen the flames,” my sister-in-law Holly told me as I came in. “I mean like a forest fire in the oven. I thought I was going to have to go outside and get the hose.”
My mother is not always the most attentive person — not when a lot of things are happening at once. For that matter, not even when nothing is happening. She can forget the car is still in drive after parking. She used to forget my brother and I at school. And it’s not that uncommon when she comes up to visit to hear her blurt out, “Oh my God, I forgot Sunday (her dog) at McDonald’s in Palatka again!”
So a platter of sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top just inches away from the broiler? Never stood a chance. In my experience, you don’t leave something like that unattended. But my mother would leave something like that alone for a week, come back to find the house burned down then wonder what happened. “I only left it for like a minute to drive up to St. Augustine for the weekend. I just can’t understand how this happened.”
It’s a mystery.
It’s also a mystery how she’s never horribly maimed herself considering her carving knife is duller than the edge of a 2×4. Maybe it’s because she’s never had to actually use it. Instead she thrusts it at me and says, “Here! You carve the turkey.” Some might think it an honor, but my mother is no dummy. It’s her attempt at self-preservation.
You know the blade is dull because if you run your finger across it, the knife bleeds. This might lead some to wonder how it could possibly be dangerous. It’s because when something’s that dull you have to go to extraordinary lengths to get meat off the bone. It forces you to hack at the bird like you’re wielding a machete or stab wildly at it like you’re Norman Bates. If you try to slice the bird and apply too much pressure, the blade will slip off the golden skin and make for one of your vital arteries. It’s really a terrifying experience.
So you really give thanks after a dinner experience like that, mainly because you all survived in one piece. Thank you for no major injuries during the preparation of dinner — only the existing ones we brought with us.