When a day of thanks goes in the tank

[TexasStooge]

By KIMBERLY DURNAN / WFAA.com

This is what Thanksgiving is supposed to be: A delicious holiday meal with all the trimmings, crisp weather, football and family.

This is sometimes the reality: Cooking calamities, fire fiascos, travel traumas and other miscellaneous mishaps.

Cecilia Bralick, 50, of Irving fondly recalls the first time her mother-in-law visited for Thanksgiving.

"To make herself useful and to add a touch of nostalgia to the meal, my mother-in-law offered to make her 'famous' pumpkin pies," Bralick said. "She must have been very nervous cooking in my kitchen because instead of one cup of sugar she used one cup of salt. We didn't know until we started eating it. We had a good laugh about it."

Cooking, particularly the turkey, seems to be the most daunting challenge of the holiday traditions, says Dorothy Jones, who has offered advice for 20 years on the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line.

The 50 home economists and nutritionists who run the help line get about 100,000 calls a year. About 10,000 come during the holiday season.

"The No. 1 topic is thawing," Jones said. "People do underestimate how long it's going to take to thaw out the bird. Next week we will be getting people two days before Thanksgiving trying to thaw a 20-pound turkey."

She advises that the turkey be submerged in cold water, about 30 minutes per half pound of bird.

The calls start coming in early on Thanksgiving Day from newlyweds and first-time chefs who seem confused by giblets. "We give them permission to throw away the organ meats if they don't want them," Jones said.

What she couldn't endorse was one caller's idea of using the steam from his dishwasher to cook the turkey. Jones suggested grilling.

Cameron Buford, 40, of Athens clearly recalls her disastrous 1993 meal - the one she told relatives she would prepare all by herself.

As soon as the family sat down and finished the prayer, her husband, a Texas Department of Transportation employee, got called to work because of icy weather and slick roads.

Then the rest of the family rushed home to avoid the ice storm, leaving Buford and her fabulous meal untouched.

"When everybody left, I just cried," Buford said. "I had taken off work the day before and I cleaned the house and decorated. ... I made turkey, ham, dressing, potatoes, the vegetables that everyone liked and desserts. It iced for three days, so no one came back. I couldn't find enough containers to store all the food. The dogs got some and the rest was thrown out."

That day of sleet and freezing rain, with a low of 23 degrees, was the worst Thanksgiving Day weather on record for North Texas, said Steve Fano, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

"That's the only winter precipitation since 1898 that we've had on Thanksgiving, so that was pretty significant," Fano said.

Jeff Taylor, 33, of Flower Mound remembers that Thanksgiving Day well. He and his wife had booked a noon flight to Houston to eat dinner with family. When they finally got on board at 1 p.m., the pilot announced that they were 80th in line for deicing.

Fortunately, Taylor brought a small television, so he and some passengers managed to see the Cowboys play. The plane finally took off around midnight; they arrived early Friday.

"That's my most memorable Thanksgiving," he said.

Then there's the Thanksgiving in 1985 that Jeff Bennett, 37, of Carrollton would like to forget. A college freshman, he went home to Lubbock to spend the holiday with his extended family.

After the meal, Bennett took his 11-year-old sister's toy poodle outside for a break, while keeping an eye on the Cowboys game through the window until the commercial break. But by then the dog had disappeared, only to be found moments later, well ...

"My grandfather led us all out to the side of the house and began digging a hole," Bennett said. "We placed the small dog in the hole and covered him up. My grandfather said a brief eulogy and a prayer for the family. That was the low point. We've been on the upswing since. My sister has since forgiven me."

While some people view the game as a distraction, others consider it a necessity. Bryan Leach, owner of Custom Cable Connection in Dallas, suggests that football fans make sure their new high definition or plasma television is hooked up and working well ahead of Thanksgiving.

People also need plumbers on Turkey Day, after shoving dressing, potato peelings, turkey bones, eggshells and celery down the disposal. According to a Roto-Rooter spokesman, calls increase 47 percent on the day after Thanksgiving.

"You get a lot of people putting a lot of things in the kitchen sink and stopping it up," said Randy Staggs, president of Staggs Plumbing in Garland, who has spent some Thanksgivings under a kitchen sink while the family eats dinner.

Staggs' tip: run water when grinding food and leave the disposal and water on for a full minute after the grinding stops because it will push the garbage through the pipes.

About 1,450 residential fires break out across the country on Thanksgiving, more than any other day of the year, and cooking is the leading cause, according to a 2002 U.S. Fire Administration report. The fires cause an estimated $21 million in damages.

"There's just so much to do," said Peggy Harrell, spokeswoman for the Plano Fire Department. "You want the house to look nice, you want to look nice, you want the kids dressed and looking nice and you want everything to look perfect. There's a festive scene at the house with so much cooking and so many distractions."

Cooks should never leave food unattended, even for a minute, Harrell said. It's also a good idea to have a fire extinguisher ready for small kitchen fires. If a blaze breaks out on the stove, cover it with a lid, turn off the heat and call 911, she added.

The turkey fryer is another hazard.

"There are eight to 10 gallons of oil that has to be heated to such a high temperature, so many times it just ignites," Harrell said. "Sometimes it's being used in an unstable environment with kids, pets and alcohol around. And if it's knocked over, it's really dangerous."

Michelle Price, 29, of Frisco knows something about fire dangers on Thanksgiving.

After a festive holiday meal, her family couldn't fit all of the leftovers in the refrigerator. So they put some in the oven before heading off to the Cowboys game.

"We arrived home to a strange burning smell," Price said. "The pans were scorched black and had to be thrown away. It took weeks for the smell to go away, but we were lucky that our house did not burn down."

[Persepone]

Pipes in my house used to freeze Thanksgiving and Christmas! You could count on it! Always made for memorable holidays.

I could count on spending time with a hairdryer in the cellar (not a basement) with the spiders and other critters that lived there...

Dinner was always later than planned...

Luckily I don't live there anymore...