AVSPBT: What I learned today...

A Very Special Photo Blog Thursday:




- You can tell an Italian woman of any age to stay out of the kitchen, that you can handle things, and she'll still hover even if she's just had surgery.

- There's more to stuffing than bread and eggs. Apparently I've been eating onions and celery all these years, and never knew it. There's also about seven different minute traces of spices that have to be added, including parsley and thyme, as well as bouillon cubes.

- Not five minutes after announcing to my mom like the smart guy I am that it's an urban legend that onions make you cry, my face was red, my nose was congested, and my eyes were stinging like I'd been maced. Onions really DO have that effect.

- Giblets sound cute, but then you unwrap the paper and have flashbacks to dissecting a fetal pig in high school. Turkey organs are JIGGLY!

- The long neck-like thing I took out of the turkey was in fact a neck, and not impressive genitalia.

- There's a lot of blood in a turkey. Before you cook, you have to rinse it thoroughly, then give it a salt massage to clean it further, then coat it with butter so it will cook. This bird got better treatment as a corpse than it likely got while living.

- Our kitchen is REALLY small, and when two people hover over a third, tempers can flare.

- My mom rocks. I can't believe how much work she does every year.

- My dad is a great help when it comes to cleaning the house but when he's hungry and asking every ten minutes “what's wrong?” and “are we going to eat today?”, it's not so helpful.

- Adding extra water to the turkey after putting potatoes around it won't make it tender and juicy like the turkey I sometimes get at a Dominican restaurant near my job. It will make it take longer to cook, and when the time comes to carve it, while the top is golden brown the bottom will still be pale. The water will have to be drained and the turkey will have to go back in the oven for another hour while my dad and my uncle call in from the living room asking if there's anything they can do to help and wondering if we're going to eat today.

- Carving a turkey with an electric carver is fun and easy, and I don't know why my dad's never done it. When the time came I called him, he didn't hear me, and then my mom asked, “Where have you been the last 31 years?” The answer was, of course, watching tv, playing video games, or surfing the net, so when I was called to the table I didn't know who put the food there.

- If I let the water run while I'm washing dishes, my dad will get annoyed that I'm wasting water, and eventually take over and edge me out of the kitchen completely. That's not something I learned today so much as realized that subconsciously I always leave the water running on purpose.

- Cannoli is the best dessert ever, something I learn every time my uncle visits with a parcel from the Italian bakery.

- Odds are, if I run down my blogroll at the end of the day to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving, the one site that will give me trouble, and not allow me to show the posting form, will belong to my oldest friend in the list. Happy Thanksgiving, clan Rey! I didn't omit you from my rounds; improbability did.

- I can cook. I needed my mom to tell me each step, sometimes getting more detailed than I wanted and elaborating on which direction to peel a carrot and with what kind of motion, but ultimately I did it. It was after 4 when we finally ate, but the food was actually good, from corn to potatoes to stuffing to carrots to salad to bread to the turkey itself. My uncle joked that I should become a chef, my dad joked that I should get a chef's hat, and my mom half-joked that I should do all the cooking from now on. At least, I hope she was joking...