I get by with a little help from my friends

Butterball test kitchen, October 2008

Wade and I met in 1994; I was 24 years old and just starting graduate school.  I had spent two years teaching in a boarding school, living in the dorms and eating in the dining hall.  My culinary skills were pretty much limited to melting cheese on a bagel and serving it with a good white wine.

Wade was still finishing his master’s degree — in fact, over Thanksgiving weekend, he had to write his thesis, because he was running out of time to defend and graduate.  I was young and optimistic and in love, so I announced that I would cook a turkey and we would have a nice dinner, as a break from the writing.  How hard could a turkey be!

I had no idea what I was doing.

The day before Thanksgiving, I took my turkey out of the freezer (you can guess where this is going, can’t you?) and realized that there was no way it was going to defrost in time for me to serve it the next afternoon.  I remember standing in my wee little galley kitchen, staring at the rock-hard turkey sitting on the counter, wondering how bad it would be if we had to order a pizza for Thanksgiving dinner.

(Later I would learn that Wade wouldn’t have cared if we’d had pizza, which is one of the reasons I married him.)

My girlfriends were all either terrible cooks themselves and thus not cooking turkeys or spending the holiday with their families and thus not cooking turkeys (or both, actually).  I was pretty sure my mother had said something a couple of weeks earlier about being sure to buy the turkey early so I could defrost it, and since I had ignored her there was no way I could call her now without looking like an idiot.  And this was long enough ago (1992, you all!) that there was no “Googling” the answer.

It was just me and that damn turkey.  Which was frozen.  Solid.

It wasn’t like I was completely unprepared for this; I had invited people and had gotten out my good china and had planned out the whole menu: we were going to have the turkey, of course, and buttery mashed potatoes, and my grandmother’s stuffing, and rolls, and …

OMG I could call my grandmother!  She would know what to do!

My grandmother was a great cook.  She and my grandfather would drive from Arizona to New Mexico to visit when my brother and I were little, and the trunk of their car would be loaded with food; my memory is that they jammed their suitcases into the back seat of their Buick to make room for the various coolers and boxes they were bringing us.  She made gingerbread and macaroni and cheese, both from scratch.  She would bring my mother a big jar of pickled beets and a huge container of divinity, and another one full of fudge (peanut butter AND chocolate).  If anyone could help with my frozen turkey, it was my grandmother.

I called her and after she finished laughing at me, she told me to put the turkey in the sink and cover it with cold water.  “Not hot water!” she said, “Cold water.”  Change the water every half hour or so and that would defrost it.

“How long will that take?” I asked her.  “All day,” she said.  Of course.*

Then she asked about what else I was making and we talked about mashed potatoes and how to make good gravy and about school and who was coming to my apartment for dinner.  I called her back the next day to tell her that I didn’t poison anyone!  And then I called her the next year for more turkey help.

My grandmother passed away in 1999, but I think about her every Thanksgiving, about how she laughed when I called to tell her that I had a FROZEN! TURKEY! on my counter and people! coming! for dinner!  I remember how calm and helpful she was, and how she made me feel like I absolutely could cook a whole meal for these people.  I remember her telling me that no, I was not going to poison anyone.  Thank god she was right about that last part.

Of course, I still cooked the turkey with the giblets inside, but that’s a story for another day.

*Butterball says that to defrost a turkey in cold water, you need to put it in the sink for 30 minutes per pound, changing the water every 30 minutes — so a 12 pound turkey will take 6 hours to defrost.  My grandmother wasn’t quite that precise, but the cold water method really DOES work.  You can go to Butterball’s web site for more helpful thawing tips.  But really, DO NOT wait until the day before Thanksgiving.  Seriously.

This post is one in a series sponsored by Butterball, as part of my job as a Turkey Talk-Line blogger.