Embarrassing Thanksgiving Memories

It’s been nearly a week since Thanksgiving, and I’ve only just finished digesting.
My favorite thing was the pumpkin pie my sister made from cooking down a real live pumpkin she’d grown from her garden. She gave me one too, so last night I finally cooked it down and made it into two pies. It was all going well until bedtime when midway through my workout, I decided I was hungry (this is often the way my workouts go, which is why they aren’t terribly effective). I went in the kitchen, and cut myself and my husband a big old slice of that pie—which if you haven’t tried pumpkin pie made from the real thing, you need to. It’s in its very own food group. Back to the kitchen.
Steve and I both took the first bite right at the same minute, and we looked at each other, and ran to the sink and spit it out. In sync. It turns out pumpkin pie isn’t very good when you leave the sugar out, which is too bad, since I had to throw both pies into the garbage. It just goes to show you, don’t make pumpkin pies in between driving your children home from school, while you’re doing newspaper articles, driving your children to their friend’s house, and driving your children to the school basketball game. Looking back, I realize it’s a miracle that’s all I left out of the pies.
I was so disappointed about having to dump two whole pies into the garbage, that instead of finishing my workout, I climbed into bed and ate a cookie.
I’ve read many Thanksgiving blogs in the last few days, people sharing their sweet Thanksgiving memories. It got me thinking about some of my own Thanksgiving memories—not so touching perhaps, but in keeping with the no-sugar pie.
The first turkey I cooked after I got married, I didn’t know you were supposed to take out the neck and giblets before you put the bird in the oven. It was a small thing, but a little embarrassing since I was trying to do everything just right. Another year I forgot to turn on the oven, and the turkey was still raw when it came time to eat. Then there was the time we went camping over Thanksgiving, and dumped the entire Dutch oven over into the dirt. Since we were camping, we scooped it up and ate it anyway.
These are the kinds of embarrassing things I hate to admit on the world wide web.
The most awful thing ever happened to an apple pie one year. I’m particularly fond of apple pie, and I don’t mind saying I make a pretty mean one. It just so happened that we had an infestation of mice that year--another embarrassing detail I’d rather not claim. Steve saw the mouse run across the floor, and he had the broom, ready to smack it if it showed it’s little pointy face again. The mouse scampered up the counter and dived for the first cover it could find: the tinfoil covering the fresh apple pie. Whack! There went the broom right onto the mouse shaped lump on the pie.
No, I didn’t lift the tinfoil to see what the pie looked like with smashed mouse all over it. Ick.
Mom never did love Thanksgiving that much. Just a lot a food and a lot of mess. By Christmas she was tired out, and one year she skipped the Christmas dinner altogether. After presents were open, she locked herself into her bedroom with her Sees Candies and we didn’t see her again the whole day. I remember feeling jipped as a child, with no turkey dinner to close the holiday. But last night while I was lying there in my bed with my cookie, mourning my ruined pies, I realized there’s something to be said for that after all.