Non Traditional Holidays

My DH and I had already planned on having a non-traditional Thanksgiving. It was to go something like this; we were going to spend the actual  TDay watching movies and relaxing  with our boys, with Friday being spent with family and friends. It was a good plan, win-win for everybody and the day went well, if you don't take into consideration that the dog ate my pie crust! The rest of the plan, however, went slightly askew from there...

Friday morning came, DH and I did some Black Friday shopping, took a well-deserved nap and awoke refreshed and ready to get the party started!  I re-made the apple pie, peeled potatoes, cut up yams, put the meatballs in the crockpot to warm in lovely cranberry and bbq sauce (yum!), threw together the hot crab dip in my fondue pot and set the wine outside to chill in the balmy 24 degree air.  Precisely at 1:30, the stuffed 20.99 lb turkey went into the oven and all that remained now was to get cleaned up, fill the dishwasher and wait for the guests to arrive at 4:00, which they promptly did!

We visited while noshing on appetizers, watched a little tv and generally had a great time, the boys even had an impromptu snowball fight with the neighbors in our front yard...I did find it a bit odd that I couldn't smell the turkey at this point, it's delicious aroma should have been wafting throughout my house enticing us.  Well, not to worry we'll just pull the roaster out and give that bird a basting and check its progress.  I lifted the lid, everything looked okay, the skin was browning nicely and the drumsticks appeared as if they were almost done, hmmmm....I'll just adjust the oven temp a bit to speed things up, put the lid back on and slid him back in the oven. 

The dinner hour arrived at 6:30  and still no lovely roasted bird smell met my eager nose, so again I pulled the bird out and this time noticed that the broth was still yellow not brown, nor was it bubbling, it was then that I located the source of  the problem...the element to my oven had broken in half!!!  It's not very often that I am left without a clear plan of what to do next, but I have to admit, my mind was blank and at this point a bit frantic.  It was now 7:30 and I had 8 hungry guests waiting for me to present them with a much anticipated feast! Yikes! Home Depot is just up the road from us, they should have still been open, but by the time that we would have gotten another element, assuming that one was in stock, we would have been eating around 9:00...the bird still had about an hour left to roast!

My girlfriend from work Kim, looked at me and laughed...it was really all we could do at that point, that, and send the guys down the hill for pizza!!! So, we ate pizza, it was good, but it wasn't the turkey and all the trimmings that everyone had their hearts set on.  My kitchen, was a complete disaster and it at least looked like a holiday meal had been prepared and enjoyed. (Sigh) Not all was lost, I suppose, we still had pumpkin and apple pie for dessert AND we did  accomplish the fact that our Thanksgiving was (extremely) non-traditional! I vote that somebody else in the family is responsible for the Christmas feast!