Wednesday, November 25, 2009

I don't know how to cook a turkey.

Really. I don't. In fact, cooking meat of any kind other than ground beef pretty much escapes me. Probably because while I have no problem eating meat, I prefer not to think of it as ever actually being an animal. When it's bleeding on your counter top, it's very hard to do that.

Anyway. I don't really cook for Thanksgiving. My father enjoys that, and hey, whatever blows your skirt up. I do make the pies, though. I'm quite good at the pies. Except for the part where I always forget to put them away. EVERY YEAR. They're just sitting on the stove and I'm all, okay, I'm going to bed, and my dad is all, no, you still have pies out, moron.

(He doesn't call me a moron. Ever. He's a very nice guy.)

This year I had a teeny problem with the pies, though. I paid attention to the cooking directions on the can. Ha. Haha. Stupid idea. I don't usually do that, because our stove is alternately freakishly hot or lukewarm and I don't trust whatever brand Pick and Save came up with to compete with actual food companies. But today I was hugely busy with the cleaning and so forth (no joke, I got home from Starbucks at 11:00 and finally stopped in order to watch Hotch's wife die at approximately 8:45.) that I left it in for the allotted forty minutes. In fact, NOT EVEN. It was more like half an hour.

Bad move. The pies? Were black. My father, who enjoys gnawing on charcoal, suggested that we just cut off the burned parts. I suggested that I get my keys and go buy some more evaporated milk because ARE YOU KIDDING ME IT'S ALL BURNED PARTS!

Also a bad move? Attempting to buy cinnamon (oh, yeah, we were out of that too. So Pies Part the First probably wouldn't have been too tasty anyway.) and evaporated milk at seven o'clock at night on the day before Thanksgiving? Not smart. Not smart at all. I bought what I think were the last two cans and got the hell out of there as fast as I could.

Pies Part the Second turned out significantly better, I think. Well, and they have cinnamon. So, you know, there's that.

3 comments:

mickey said...

I am so glad I won't be eating a burned pie later today:)

rockford said...

The pies are beautiful and I am sure they will be equally tasty!!! Yes, they look better than the first attempts...those were a bit burned...it was the can's fault...:)

Nicole K said...

Your first paragraph accurately summarizes my life. Also, completely freaked out about under-cooking meat that I always end up over-cooking it.