I hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas. We did and now we are looking forward to the New Year.
We spent the earliest hours of our Christmas morning battling a couple of demons: For Tommy it was the proverbial coffee pot. For me, it was the turkey.
I have written before about our half-price Cuisinart coffee pot that sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t (it didn’t take long at all to figure out why it was half-price). Tommy once said that it had so many bells and whistles on it, you had to program it to tell it what NOT to do.
On Christmas morning it decided to take a vacation. Everything seemed to be lined up perfectly. It made about two cups of coffee (10 were programmed), and then it stopped ... dead ... in the middle of the brew. No bells or whistles were going off — no red light on. Nothing, nada, niente.
So Tommy reprogrammed it and started again. Same results. Was it Einstein who said stupidity is doing things the same way and expecting different results? Well, we epitomize stupidity when it comes to this fickle coffee pot. Somehow, after about three tries at doing things exactly the same way, it decided to “take,” and we finally enjoyed the nectar of our labor. I did notice this morning that Tommy had moved the pot to a different plug. Maybe that’ll be the ticket.
While Tommy was battling the coffee pot, I was doing what half the wives in Murfreesboro was doing — putting the turkey breast in the oven. Only this Christmas morning there was a twist. As I was rinsing it off, I found all these extra “parts,” attached to and tucked inside the breast cavity. It kinda looked like a neck and some joints. I have tried hard to remember if a “neck” comes attached to a whole turkey when you buy it. I rarely do whole turkeys any more, but if memory serves me correctly the neck is in an additional packet, not attached to the body. Anyway, on Christmas morning this additional “appendage” did not appeal to me, so I tried to cut it off. The sharpest knife in the house wasn’t up to the task (I hadn’t opened my whiz-bang knife sharpener from the Drydens yet — thanks, Drydens). I tried the kitchen shears, again, without success, and even resorted to the hacksaw, but when the blade popped off the hacksaw, I was too impatient to try to screw it back on. #*%#%!
I finally felt around the bones and found a joint ... snipped at what appeared to be the weakest part of each joint with the kitchen shears, and that enabled me to cut this piece off. I cooked the extra “part” alongside the breast, and although it was overdone, the cat seemed to enjoy the little morsel I gave him as a Christmas treat.
Since we all shop at the same stores in Murfreesboro, I know I am not the only cook who faced the extra part dilemma. When did we start adding unwanted parts to our packaged meats to beef up the weight and make us think we are getting what we aren’t?
In some ways I am sad to see 2007 leave, yet in other ways I am happy to see it go.
On the “good” side, I got my four new beautiful pearly white tooth implants that Dr. Chitwood has been working on for a couple of years. I LOVE ‘em!
My 32-two-year old daughter got married to a man I couldn’t have hand-picked better for her, and the wedding was initiated and completed within five months.
On the minus side, two of my three children still live far away from Tennessee, and I have to travel two and a half hours to be with my siblings.
That must all seem insignificant to Rita Ash, whose son Hugh Hanna, is off for his second tour as a Marine in Iraq. To Gary Orrand, who lost not only his father but also his mother and stepfather this year. To Marsha Trimbleʼs mother, who has had to relive her daughter’s death in public limelight for the past 30-some plus years.
So as a resolution for the New Year, I promise to be grateful for what I have and try not focus on what I don’t.
Coffee pots and turkey parts are mere inconveniences.
Good health, a wonderful family, the best friends a person could have and a community second to none are real gifts. Who could ask for more?
ʻTil next year.
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