Thanksgiving 2007

Thanksgiving Day 2007 was a busy day for us but in the end most everyone was happy. We started our day with a 9:00 a.m. all activities workamper meeting. Next we put the table linens on all the tables and started putting the turkeys in the roasters. That's when the fun started. I've used our roaster to cook turkeys for 17 years now and have never had a problem. This time the cooking bags started melting to the sides of the roasters. I think the problem was that someone preheated all the roasters so when the cold bags hit the hot roasters the bags melted. No problem. We cut the bags apart, dumped the turkeys into the roasters and started cooking. It wasn't long and I could smell hot turkey. They had the roasters turned up too high and no water in the pans. DUH. I came home to cook my mashed potatoes and just couldn't stand it so I went back to the kitchen to check on the turkeys. I turned them down again and was standing there talking to the cook while she basted a turkey. The baster got wild and hot turkey drippings shot down my leg. THAT WAS HOT. I grabbed my jean shorts and pulled them off my leg so I didn't get burned badly. After that everything went along great. At 3:00 all the workampers returned to the kitchen and we carved our turkeys. They were moist, tasty and nicely arranged on the platters covered with tin foil. The turkey platters were all sitting on top of the roasters with the roaster lids covering them. The appropriate people dished up the gravy and cranberries and we were ready to serve. I heard one of the workampers say, "OH NO". After the turkey was placed on top of the roasters, Bruce got the hair brained idea to plug in all the roasters and add a little heat. What he didn't consider was that would melt the plastic platters. One platter full of turkey melted and dropped into the roaster so when the appropriate server opened her lid, she found a mess and yelled. The cook and I both ran over there, grabbed the turkey off the melted platter and threw it on another platter and sent the server to the table. Good grief. At the time I didn't know it was Bruce that had plugged in all the roasters and didn't learn that until about 2:00 this morning. I had unplugged all the roasters earlier and never considered that someone would plug them back in. Oh well. The meal went off without a hitch. There was more than enough food and everyone seemed reasonably happy. We had only one minor injury and that was my head. I sat down in Bruce's chair and tipped my head back and smacked it right into the steel beam that was supporting the room. Oh man that hurt. I folded over and cried. I've got a good lump on the back of my head this morning. You should have seen the people gathering up the leftover turkey. You would have thought they were never going to get another bite of food. They were taking big containers full of turkey home with them. There wasn't even enough left for one turkey sandwich. I guess I'll go buy a turkey and cook it at home so we can have a sandwich. After the residents all left, we started cleaning up. We opened some wine and went to cleaning. Four hours later, the mess was cleaned up, the linens were clean and we were ready for some fun. Several workampers came to our camper and continued the fun. Everyone except Bruce drank too much wine and Kahlua . We were going to go shopping this morning but I didn't get up until 9:30. I woke up at 1:30 a.m. and laid there until at least 3:30 so I needed some sleep. At one point Bruce said, "OK magpie, shut up!" We are really thankful to have three days in a row off work. One thing is for sure, if I ever to get a real paying job, I will be much more appreciative than I was in the past. It's just too bad I've always got to learn the hard way.