A Thanksgiving Emergency

Let me start out by saying that I LOVE Thanksgiving...it is my favorite holiday...yummy smells, good food and family with no pressure to buy just the right thing. However this year, I do believe that my kitchen is haunted by the ghosts of turkeys past! I tend to be overly efficient (some would some obsessively so!) so I cook my Thanksgiving turkey and pies the day BEFORE the holiday...that gives me time to relax, enjoy the day, set the table...oh wait...that's done the day before too...and practice for our annual "Great Nintendo Challenge". So this morning I prepared the bird, turned on the oven and plopped it in there, then went about my other chores. Checked on it after an hour or two and...well, let's just say that my oven decided to break down midway through the turkey roast! I had an only slightly warm, salmonella laden bird sitting in a cooling-off-quickly oven! No pies, no bird! My lovely daughter volunteered her oven...so I ran to the store (being uber-efficient...I had already gotten everything I needed so I wouldn't have to deal with the crowds of people at the store the day before...Revenge of the Procrastinators!) looked for already cooked turkey that we could zap (nada!) and finally decided to get two small turkey breasts and some frozen pies. The turkeys are currently defrosting in a sink full of water and the pies are cooking at my daughter's house, to be replaced by the turkeys later. Normally this kind of situation would raise my blood pressure and open my tear ducts...but I can't stop laughing about it (maybe that's hysteria!) Shades of "A Christmas Story" and dinner at the Chinese restaurant keep popping into my head! And the funny thing is...my sweetie was joking around last week, saying that we ought to tell the kids that we're having Thanksgiving at a Chinese restaurant!! All I can say is...I'm thankful for family, supermarkets, and microwave ovens!