Recipes for disaster, survival, and Thanksgiving.

Sometimes one needs a little distance to see how slowly we learn the lessons life tries to teach us.  I left my Fiat Spyder Convertible in San Diego and bought this the Toyota version upon arriving in LA.  You might be tempted to think "Well, at least it's a Toyota not a Fiat..."  but I'll just stop you there.  Almost nothing electrical worked on the car, including the pop-up lights, there was a pulley on the engine that wasn't turning, the rear suspension was bent,..  but there was just something about it! I offered the guy half of what he was asking. Actually, it turned out to be a pretty good car, turned out it had fully independent suspension with a transaxle (!).  I replaced the bent suspension component, but I realized that some damage had been done to the transaxle.  Following the Pennsylvania Dutch wisdom of "Ain't broke, don't fix it", I put off looking into it.

For Thanksgiving of 2002, Jenny invited us down to "Survival Camp" somewhere east of San Diego.  Esther and I were looking forward to it with a mix of eagerness and fear; what do they have for survival camp thanksgiving? and how are their table manners?  I decided that I would bring a turkey, and a large one at that, because if 35 people were there trying to collect enough wild hickory nuts for thanksgiving, there better be some big bones to throw around.  So, I have this...  I don't know, 48 pound turkey in my freezer, and somehow Thanksgiving sneaks up on me.  The night before, around 10 pm, Esther asks if the turkey is thawed out.  I spring into action, handily remembering the vogue recipe for "brine soaking" the turkey that I had heard from the science lady some days before.  To me, it seemed salty water at least wouldn't freeze when I dumped the sub-zero Turkasaurus into my giant pot.  Around midnight, the skin of the turkey had still not even thawed a little.  I thought, you know, if the water was a little warmer, NOT HOT mind you, it might help.  The pot was so big though, that I had to put it over two burners on my stove,..  and no sense waiting for the water to get warm, I'd turn it down once it warmed up.  I woke up to the sound water boiling over around 2:00 am.  Well,  it's nice to have the cover of an "accident" to do what you secretly want to do anyway.  I turned the stove off and went to bed thinking maybe this monster will thaw out by tomorrow.  Let's see, we have to leave at 11:00 to get there at 1:00 so I'll need four hours of cooking...  so I"ll get up at 6:30...  Great.  Off to bed.  When I finally did get up around 8:30 the next day, I got right back to Turkey preparations.  The Turkey was only thawed to about 1/2 inch deep.  With great hope, I turned stove right back up to boil the damn thing.  I pried whatever was inside it out of it to get some hot water inside it.  After an hour of boiling, the top 1 inch of turkey was thawed.  And i figured the water inside it had probably done the trick.  But I was running out of time if I wanted a golden brown turkey.  I threw it in the oven and set the temperature at 425 which I will admit is a little high, but it was such a big thing.  An hour later, I turned the oven to 600 trying to rationalize that if I could just get it hot enough, it would cook with the residual heat on the drive down.  Amazingly, at 11:00 I had practically managed to burn the skin off the poor thing (no, it was brown, but It didn't seem all that hot on the inside). I rolled it in foil and stuck it in a foil dish and threw it and all our sleeping bags, in the rather small trunk of the Celica.
  And the traffic was just horrible.  Unfortunately, in California there are only a few roads that connect certain parts, and what should have been an hour and three quarters turned into a four hour drive.  Well, actually, the traffic wasn't the only problem.  The afore mentioned transaxle had started howling on the way down and it smelled VERY hot.  I pulled over more than once to reach under the rear wheels and check on it and it was just burning up.  But what to do?  Onward.  We pull in to survival camp, Tom and Susan's place, around 4:00 - two hours after dinner was supposed to start.  And true to Thanksgiving form, everyone was just getting ready to eat.  I considered the various jokes I might make as we would hold the raw pieces of turkey over bunsen burners with our knives...  When I opened the trunk of the car, it was about 200 degrees inside, with the blankets all piled in behind the turkey.  Esther and I sheepishly brought it in and slid it onto the bar with all the other delicious looking food.  It looked,..  good.  Someone came by and sliced some off, "Smells Deeeeelicious!" and they proceeded to heap some turkey onto their plate.  We were right about one thing, they had underestimeated the amount of food necessary.  "I heard someone say "Man, this is the best turkey I've ever had" from the deck. Without offending anyone, and with Jenny and Esther as my witnesses, I have to tell you "It was."
  It was a totally awesome few days there, looking at itsy bitsy Nate, learning to make fire with sticks, walking around in the desert, trying to keep the deluge of water out of the interesting architectural structures that served as our shelter.  No one knew that Esther and I had a secret stow-away with us.  It was a magical time.  The turkey was proof.