Turkey Day memories: The way we whirred

I doubt the Food Network's celeb Rachael Ray has ever served up a turkey disaster. You know the kind -- the Butterball that's still frozen when you yank it out of the oven.

For her, this Thanksgiving will unfold like clockwork, even when whipping up a pot of pumpkin soup and roasting to perfection a herb-crusted tom turkey the size of a small beached whale.

In contrast to Ray's flair for flavor and impeccable timing, my family's feasts when I was young were kind of mundane -- gooey cornbread stuffing, frozen green peas with pearl onions and green Jell-O embedded with miniature marshmallows.

Despite our lack of culinary panache, that never stopped us from venturing back into the kitchen each November, a bulb baster in hand, knowing full well we would fail again to turn a broiler pan of greasy turkey residue into silky, succulent gravy.

For the most part, our failures had little to do with cooking.

As dining-room diva and former prison inmate Martha Stewart has taught us over the years, it's not so much what you cook that matters. It's how you accessorize the dish. That's the key.

Decorate a green bean casserole with sprigs of fennel and boughs of holly, and who cares if it tastes like mush (ours often did).

This was particularly true one Thanksgiving years ago, when I was 10 or 11. At the time, I had marveled at my dad's ability to carve the turkey. Well, actually, more like his inability. He never knew how to approach a turkey while armed with a knife. He especially had a hard time poking through the bird's crusty skin.

Of course, it would have helped if he had sharpened the knife beforehand. But he never did.

Enter the Hamilton Beach electric knife.

When word circulated in our neighborhood about the wonders wrought by this newfangled gadget, my dad couldn't wait to buy one.

And what better time to demonstrate its sharp, serrated cutting edges than at the Thanksgiving dinner table.

I remember hearing the whirring sound of the electric blades as dad powered it up for the first time. It's a sound that haunts me to this day.

To satisfy invited friends and relatives, Mom had cooked a massive bird, some 24 pounds or so. Dad started immediately with the easiest target -- the drumstick. It sheared off like a small limb from an oak tree.

So far, so good.

Dad then poised the twin electric blades over the supple flesh of the turkey breast. I held my breath. This was the true test. He thumbed the "on" switch and the blades began that agonizing sound. Meat flew in all directions, except onto the plate below. The prized white turkey meat, which should have fallen off in thin layers, showered down like pencil shavings.

"Oh, my God," Mom exclaimed.

My dad, of course, couldn't hear her because of that demonic whirring sound of the blades. He merrily kept on shredding the turkey, until a rather large mound of meat had piled up in front of him, easily covering the plate and spilling over onto the polished veneer of the credenza.

When Dad had finished eviscerating half of the bird, he held up the electric knife and struck a triumphant pose, much as young King Arthur must have done after he unsheathed Excalibur from its rocky crypt.

But this was no Camelot. The heroic scene quickly faded when a chunk of meat flopped to the carpet below. Luckily, our springer spaniel, Oliver, was there to gulp it down.

Though Mom didn't talk to Dad for several days after the carving incident, there was one saving grace. For the meal, Mom had whipped up a batch of instant potatoes. She loved lump-less mashed potatoes and figured Betty Crocker's "new and improved" instant spuds were the answer.

The finished product did, indeed, look like mashed potatoes, and there were certainly no lumps. Its consistency, though, was that of Elmer's glue.

Little did Mom know at the time, but these pre-fab potatoes were a stroke of genius. When rolled together with Dad's shredded turkey, it made a dollop-sized sphere perfect for swallowing. And oddly enough, the balled-up mass of meat and preservatives tasted OK. Even Oliver wanted seconds.

It has been decades since Dad turned turkey into sawdust and Mom made paste out of potatoes. They are both gone now. Dad passed away 10 years ago and Mom died last November, two weeks before Thanksgiving.

When cleaning out our family home near Chicago earlier this year, I came across a cluttered drawer in the kitchen. I found an old gravy bulb baster. The plastic bulb had cracked. It had long outlived its usefulness. I tossed it into a garbage can.

I reached deeper inside the drawer and uncovered something cold and steely -- the twin blades of Dad's electric knife. Why would Mom have kept these? But there they were, the white plastic darkened by age but the serrated edges still sharp to the touch.

I held them high in the air and watched the light from the room shine off their silver skin. Then I tossed them, like the bulb baster, into the garbage. Memories of past Thanksgivings should be carried in the heart, and not in the hand. That much I had learned over the years.

And one more thing. Always sharpen the carving knife. Always.