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AAAAaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!

I was afraid you’d mention this bird-crap-travesty.  Every year I think like Jamie on this:  Jesus, turkey is EASY.  Brine if you want (kosher salt/mollases/brown sugar/random spice or two), rub with cooking oil and a little pepper (no salt if you’ve brined), put in turkey-size oven cooking bag on top of a couple carrots and a couple celery sticks, cook for required time, open bag, drain off juice, make gravy or just serve with the damn juic, serve.  Sheesh.

In my opinion cooking a turkey is exactly as hard as baking a take-out pizza.  The timing’s just different.

Did I say, “AAAAaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!”?  Some days I wake up and want to kill all the idiots and marketeers.
/end rant

Carry on.

Oh, how I love a good spirited riposte or twelve!  Dear friends, I am even more thankful for you than ever, if such a thing could be possible.

I do want to address my lovely noncompliant friend’s comments (hi, McYou! and belated happy birthday!  and I suck for not wishing it for you in a timely fashion!), not just because she raises a valid point, but also because I received an e from someone who didn’t want to comment publicly, taking me to task for being a snob about convenience foods.  In my haste to complain about the frozen turkey in the bag, I’m afraid I may not have made my position clear.

McB, please do not feel embarrassed or overwhelmed by anything or anybody you come across here.  Seriously, if you ever feel like I’m pooh-poohing your cookery, you tell me to get over my fucking self.  Really.  If it’s any consolation, yesterday I was a master of broad physical comedy, trying to unwrap my turkey without dripping blood all over the table (I succeeded!  all the blood ended up on the floor!).  I scampered back and forth between the stove and the sink, located at opposite ends of the kitchen.  I bumped the pumpkin pie as it was going in the oven—the pie made with canned pumpkin, btw (not the presweetened pie filling, but still, it was pumpkin in a can!)—and spilled filling on the baking sheet, and I had to take it out and clean up the mess before trying again to get it in the oven.  I am not the only one who suddenly finds herself all thumbs in a time crunch, either.  I read an interview with Nigella Lawson where she describes a dinner party during which she set her hair on fire while removing a roast from the oven. 

As far as convenience food goes, the only difference between yours and mine is, well, not much, really.  I’m lucky enough to live around the corner from a market where I can get decent frozen gnocchi and ravioli.  I have been known to plan a tripartite, meat-and-two-veg meal, only to come home too exhausted to cook it, opting instead for spaghetti with grated Parm and black pepper for Lloyd, and spaghetti with butter and nutmeg for me.  Hell, on the night of the blackout in August 2003, we picked up a couple boxes of Kraft Blue Box mac & cheese for dinner (although the electricity was out, the gas was not, thankfully).  And I was glad to eat it, gladder than I would have been to eat some esoteric something-or-other.

My problem isn’t with convenience foods, per se, or with people who don’t cook every last thing from scratch—believe me, I pick and choose my conveniences, too.  My biggest problem with the turkey story, and with lots of news stories surrounding holiday cookery, is the breathless aura of “my god, who has time to cook dinner?” We are constantly being told that we have no time—and maybe we don’t, but the people framing this discussion always present it as a given, and if you try to scratch the surface, try to examine exactly what we’re spending our time on that leaves us too exhausted to cook, you shouldn’t be made to feel like some kind of pre-feminist Luddite relic.  Maybe we *are* too busy and tired to do a Thanksgiving spread like our grandparents did.  If that’s the case, though, we should be trying to find solutions that feed our bodies and our souls without our feeling we have to apologize for them.  Easier said than done, I know, but think of how much more interesting that conversation would be than just the mere shrugging of shoulders and a “whaddaya gonna do?”, which is the response that we get from these various news stories.

And for Bog’s sake, if the thought of producing a pie is overwhelming or horrifying, and the bakery at the store makes a fabulous pie, then where is the shame in saying “I bought this fabulous pie at the store!  Isn’t it amazing that a store-bought pie could taste like this!”?  Hell, if I could find a pie in a shop that tasted like I made it myself, you’d bet I’d give them my business.  It’s not an either/or proposition; you can enjoy baking pies (or baking bread, or making marinara sauce, or whatever) and still buy pies/bread/marinara sauce from someone who makes them well.  I do bake because it’s satisfying work, but I also bake because the pies at my market uniformly taste like shit, and the closest wonderful bread bakery is a subway trip away.

It occurs to me that I just said I would never hector you, and then proceeded to do just that.  Oops.  You know that it comes from a well-meaning place, right, McB?  (kiss in your general direction)