Turkey at 2

How many of you had family in from out of town last week? We did.

Wasn’t it blissful?

On Monday, our son, our oldest daughter and her hubby both showed up from the ends of the Earth (literally). The next day, a wayward nephew from two states over appeared on our doorstep unannounced. On Thursday, our in-state daughter Allie and her hubby Skyler came. Along with MaryLee’s mom and dad (Yia Yia and Pop), and her brother and his family and a few other stragglers, the head count was like 15.

The week was fun, but it was mayhem

I mean, 25 visitors descending on your home and camping out for an extended period of time is a defi nite disruption to your way of life, or at least your way of living.

On work days those 35 people kept us up way past our bedtime, playing Mexican train dominoes (house rules) at the dinner table, then staying up and making drinking noises into the wee hours of the morning.

With 45 people in the house, the kitchen always seemed to be crowded with someone cooking baklava, or taking the last cup of coffee, or putting the dishes away in the most creative places they could think of

The idea of me making a quick breakfast burrito to choke down in the morning before work was absurd.

“I’m gonna make a burrito, who wants one?”

Apparently all 55 of them.

So, now we’re not cooking a couple eggs in a little skillet and throwing a bit of cheese and chile on it, wrapping a tortilla around it and running out the door in three minutes. Now we’re scrambling three dozen half eggs, someone has volunteered to fry fi ve pounds of potatoes and the question du jour is, “Dad, where’s the bacon?”

Right where I hid it.

We had our Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday and the kids brined the turkey on Wednesday.

Dinner was scheduled for 2 p.m., so I awoke very early Thursday, fi red up the barrel smoker, de-brined and rubbed the turkey and got it started on the slow heat at around 7 a.m.

It was a beautiful, peaceful morning. Our 65 guests were either asleep in their beds, or were scheduled to start showing up at around 11 and yes… dinner was at 2 p.m.

There seems to be some social media debate raging about the ethics of holding dinner at 2 p.m. instead of a more traditional 6 or 7 p.m.

First off, for MaryLee and I, based on just our schedules, there is no traditional dinner time. She teaches school. I’m a newspaper man. There is no regularity in our schedule and we eat when we can.

Maybe once a week the stars, biorhythms and harmonies align and converge and we are able to spend time in the kitchen together, creating food at a semi-traditional time, have a nice dinner, then fall asleep in front of the TV like everyone else.

But on Thanksgiving, MaryLee and I prefer to eat at 2, so there’s time to clean up and still enjoy each other before the old people get grumpy and want to leave (MaryLee and I).

Truth be told, I have very little infl uence on the establishment of dinner-time. I prefer to eat whenever my wife tells me to have the turkey ready and for holiday meals, it’s usually at 2 p.m.

Haters gonna hate, but I personally like having a little turkey, stuffi ng and gravy leftovers at around 8 p.m. after the football game and listen to this you 6-p.m.- traditionalists. By 8 p.m., our kitchen is clean and we’re ready for some board games; but y’all are just now cutting pies and looking a those piles of dirty pans.

But okay… for those of you who have dinner at 6 p.m., that’s you choice and I respect it. I just have to ask, “Why?”

Granted, because of the 2 a.m. dinner time, I was up Thursday at the turkey waddle of dawn getting the bird in the smoke. Stand by for a little bird smoking lore. At 225-250, fi gure 30-minutes per pound of cooking time. Don’t get it any hotter for extended periods of time trying to rush things — it’ll dry things out.

So while I babysat the smoker maintaining temp, basting, cutting big oak into little oak and keeping the little fi re little but alive, MaryLee and the girls made taters, gravy, casseroles, pies, stuffi ng, and sweet taters, while son and son-in-laws hung out and talked about sports and guns, or made sure I was doing my job right, and pitched in where they could… generating garbage 12 ounces at a time, then taking it out to the dumpster.

It was like a day-long choreographed dance. At 1:45, the turkey was close to temp, so I removed it to allow the juices to redistribute as it rested.

At 2 p.m., I started carving when the last of the 85 guests arrived.

I think this happens every year, but that was the best turkey I had ever smoked. Everyone agreed. Even the experts among our head count of 95 people said it was the juiciest turkey they had ever had.

Here’s another little secret I’ll now reveal about our reasons for eating dinner at 2. Once you put the pie away, most of the 105 people leave, all but the 115 people who are staying at our house. It takes these people a couple more days to get the hint. They seem to think they are supposed to wait until the day their planes leave.

Our son headed out Friday morning and our oldest daughter and hubby left early Saturday.

When MaryLee and I sat down on the porch to enjoy the silence that had returned to our corner of the world, a melancholy so intense gripped us that she might have shed a tear, and we almost wished the kids hadn’t left. We were gonna miss them. A lot.

But really… not so much that we wanted them to turn around and come back right then. Eventually, maybe.

We like our corner of the world when it’s quiet, too.

Merry Christmas

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