Holiday Kitchen Failures

A few of my girlfriends were sharing "cooking disaster" stories recently.  None of my personal stories ever matched the one of my childhood. Mom had read somewhere that cooking the holiday turkey in a bag would render the turkey very juicy (this was in the 60s, long before they sold bags specially made for roasting). Except she missed the part about low temperature and the type of bag. So Mr. Turkey went into the oven in a Safeway paper shopping bag, pop-out timer side down.

As the turkey roasted, the juice and grease pooled in the bottom of the bag. When the timer popped, "turkey's done" it popped THROUGH the bag, releasing all the hot grease onto the hot burner.

WHOOSH!

My brother calmly said, "Mom, the turkey blew up!"

It was the first and only time I heard my Mom say a four-letter cuss word. Dad told her to leave the door closed and the oven off until it ceased burning. He then just stood in the corner of the kitchen, muttering "Oh, the Humanity", like the narrator of the Hindenburg disaster, tears rolling down his face as he was laughing so hard. We had KFC that year as the remains were removed in a bucket.

When Mom was fighting cancer and sick from the chemo, there was another memory that stayed with me. A time at the vacation cabin on the Oregon Coast where Dad cooked pancakes. I'm unsure how he did it, but you could hardly cut through them. He gave one to our dachshund Pepper, who took it outside and buried it in the sand along the shore. My brother threw another one in the fire. It didn't burn.

I can picture that as if it were happening now, the splash of sunlight on cedar, the memory of the smell of wet dog, and the taste of laughter, of where people have lived and will always. Good times.