Thanksgiving this year was a joy as we had a full house of guests. Both daughters and husbands were able to be there, along with the Number One Grandson. In addition, our son-in-law, Dan, was able to get leave from his month-long Army Reserve officer’s training, so his parents and paternal grandmother joined us from Loup City, along with Don’s sister, Lynn, and her husband, their daughter and her boyfriend.

Following our fabulous smoked pork loin feast, embellished with goodies such as homemade dinner rolls, sauerkraut and dumplings, veggies and relishes, the stories of past holiday cooking disasters emerged.

Turkey, the usual Thanksgiving meat, took center stage. I shared the story of “The Turkey That Wouldn’t Cook.” The first Thanksgiving turkey I ever baked myself was in 1985, the year we got married. We had invited Don’s folks to our house, along with my Mom and his aunt, Vaunia, both who had been widowed the previous year.

Thanksgiving morning, I put the turkey in to bake at the appropriate time with the correct oven temperature and some broth to provide ample moisture so it wouldn’t dry out. At noon, when it should have been approaching golden doneness, the legs still wouldn’t wiggle and the breast was nearly rock hard, even though the bird had been completely thawed.

An hour later, our tummies all started to growl, and my mother, a 30-year veteran turkey baker for our home church’s annual Festmahl, and Don’s mother and aunt, both retired home economists, were baffled. We managed to slice off enough turkey to microwave but even then, it wasn’t quite tender.

We left the bird in the oven for another 90 minutes, finally surrendering with a white flag. It simply wasn’t cooking. We broke it down and put it in a crock pot, covered it with broth and that evening about 9 p.m. after being cooked in some fashion for 15 hours, the meat finally was done. The veterans all decided the bird had not been bled properly at butchering time and the residual effect was the tough meat.

Dan’s mother shared her turkey cooking disaster that pushed us all into fits of laughter. Early in their marriage they were living in an apartment and she and her sister had to leave for work, putting Dan’s father in charge of cooking the Thanksgiving turkey.

They had purchased a Butterball turkey and it lived up to the company hype of being moist. Perhaps a tad too moist. Halfway through the cooking time Joe called Charlotte in a panic. “Honey, the turkey juice is overflowing the roasting pan! What do I do?”

Charlotte replied, “Well drain off the juice!” Joe, being the good man he is, had already used nearly all available containers to get the juice off, which by this time was leaking out the oven door and their poodle was happily lapping up every bit of the drippings off the floor.

He continued to battle the juice overflow until the turkey was done, aided by the poodle, who was now nearly twice its’ normal size because of all the ingested liquid. The greasy floor turned into a skating rink and that turkey, which by the way both declared was delicious, became their most memorable holiday meal.

Dessert is always an important part of a holiday dinner. Not to be outdone, my sister-in-law shared her story of the “calorie conscious” pumpkin pie. In her hurry to get a pie done before their special meal one year, she forgot to put the sugar in the pumpkin pie batter. As they all delved into their desserts, Lynn took one bite and knew there was a problem. She told her guests, “You don’t have to eat that.”

One polite visitor, head bowed down, was slowly taking cautious bites, “It’s OK.”

Well, maybe not so OK, but the story certainly brought down the house at our house.