Thanksgiving Day Dinner

Thanksgiving Day started like any other major holiday in our house. Up at dawn I went to work preparing the turkey. By 9:00 A.M. the turkey was roasting, potatoes were peeled and ready to be cooked later, and a couple different salads chilled in the refrigerator. Our Thanksgiving Day dinner would be a feast with all the fixings and a 20 pound turkey.

As the Thanksgiving Day Parades started on television the younger children roamed into the living room and I joined them for a break from the kitchen duties. Sitting on the sofa I felt comfortable in the knowledge there would be plenty of time to finish dinner after the parades.

Just before noon my oldest son wandered into the room, "Mom! Why don't I smell turkey"?

Horror struck! I had been so involved in the parades I had not noticed there were no delectable aromas of roast turkey from the kitchen. I jumped from the sofa and ran to the next room. I threw open the oven door. It was warm but far from the 325 degrees it should have been.

Thanksgiving dinner would not be right without turkey. I figured out the stove worked but the oven would not heat up past 'warm'. The 20 pound turkey was ruined, a total waste of time and money.

After a few minutes of panic my logical mind took over. All I had to do was find another oven - one that worked. You might think this an easy task but have you ever tried to find someone at home on Thanksgiving Day with an empty oven? After calling everyone I knew I still did not have a way to cook our turkey.

It was time for plan B. The stove top worked! I pulled the bird from the oven and directed one of the boys to get the canning pot from the cupboard. I would boil the turkey. Not my first choice but would be better than throwing the entire turkey in the trash. It only took a couple hours to cook the turkey.

There was however one more problem. My favorite thing about turkey is the crisp brown skin. This was not going to be possible with the boiling process. This meant yet another mission.

The tripod we used for cooking over camp fires flashed in my mind. The kids thought I was a crazy but the older boys built a fire in the backyard. A friend had given us a pile of wood from an old apple tree a few weeks before so we had plenty of wood.

It took all three of us to get the Thanksgiving turkey on the tripod. They also helped turn the bird as needed. It took more time to get the fire going than it did to brown the turkey but it was worth the effort. We had crisp turkey skin.

Thanksgiving Day dinner was one of the best ever. It could have been all the extra work involved or the special flavor the apple wood added, or possibly the combination. The most important thing to remember was by not giving up, a little resourcefulness and a bit of determination thrown in we had a delicious Thanksgiving Day Dinner.

Need some motivational quotes ~

"Never, never, never, never give up." ~ Winston Churchill

"Never consider the possibility of failure; as long as you persist, you will be successful." ~ Brian Tracy

"By perseverance the snail reached the ark." ~ Charles H. Spurgeon

"In war, as in life, it is often necessary, when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might." ~ Winston Churchill

"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." ~ Philippians 4:13 (King James Version)

You might also enjoy ~
Thanksgiving Turkey (a little lie is still a lie)
Autumn in Michigan (slide show)