turkeyed

I'm on vacation this week so I went to the grocery store late in the afternoon to get all my Thanksgiving meal necessities.

Have I told you how much I love Thanksgiving? It is, to me, the perfect holiday. All you have to do is cook and eat a shit-ton of food and be thankful for what you have. So not only do I get to go all Food Network and cook all day long -- no, really, I enjoy this -- but there are no presents to buy. No one gets mad because you got them a medium shirt instead of a small or because the Pokemon cards were the black and white and not legends or some shit. And if someone does complain? You heap another pile of mashed potatoes and gravy on their plate and tell them to stuff it. Also, there's wine. Lots of wine. And pie. Lots of pie. And I get to kick everyone out of my kitchen unless they have a written invitation. So I get to cook, I get to assign sous chefs and I have absolute and complete control over the dinner. It is awesome.

So today I ran to get my sweet potatoes, mashing potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, fresh herbs, dressing, rolls, whipping cream and turkey.

Only when I got to the meat section, there were two elderly women blocking all access to the turkeys. So I pulled up my cart and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Woman A - lets call her Florence - was trying to figure out what size of turkey she would need. She had her list, written in flawless Palmer script on an envelope, but nowhere on that list did it tell her how much her Thanksgiving turkey should weigh.

Woman B - we'll call her Hazel - was doing her best to help, but it was clear that Hazel was not in a position to help.

"I just don't know. How much turkey do we need?" Florence asked, fingering the tags on a few turkeys, trying to find the weight.

"Well, what did you have last year? Are you having the same number of people?" Hazel replied.

"I just don't remember. I think we had a 20-pound turkey, but that can't be right. We didn't have 20 people and I remember..."

This is when I decided to make my way to the dairy section. These women obviously needed more time with the poultry. So I gathered my whipping cream and my eggs and my milk and my butter and I headed back toward the poultry. Hazel and Florence were still there.

"I'm looking at this 16-pound turkey and it doesn't look much different than the 18. Maybe I should just get the 18."

I wheeled around and headed to the frozen foods, baffled by this discussion. This clearly was not their first rodeo. I'm guessing each woman was in her 70s, and not the sprightly, sassy 70s. These women were wearing sensible shoes from the 1970s and wool dresses. They probably go to Mass every day. Just ballparking a guess here, I'd say each woman was easily on her 30th Thanksgiving. Not knowing your turkey needs? Rookie mistake.

See, I'm on my 10th round hosting Thanksgiving. I've been hosting Thanksgiving for more than a decade, except for that one year my mom scheduled the meal during the Packers game. It's the holiday I volunteer to host. I don't have to decorate, I don't have to wrap presents and I don't have to dye eggs. I just have to cook. But I've got it down to a science. I take a poll, I gather recipes, I calculate my turkey and then I head to the store. I do this the Monday before Thanksgiving, so the turkey has time to thaw. (Well, except that year Nature Boy went out to the yard and killed a wild turkey because he thought we'd run out. We didn't have to let that one thaw.) I'm darn near a pro at this. Almost. I can't make my grandma's Parker house rolls. That's my last hurdle before I clear my semi-pro status.

By the time I returned from the frozen foods, Hazel and Florence were gone. I'm assuming they finally figured it out and heaved a bird into their cart. Or they had the nice man from the meat counter do it for them. Or maybe they decided not to get a turkey after all. I'm not sure. I just hefted my 18-pound bird into the cart and headed out.