Boast About Your Roast

So you volunteered to host Thanksgiving this year. Sure, you’ve got time to plan, but why not start to gear up now?

For example, consider the following hypothetical:

SCENARIO ONE: Thanksgiving Dinner without this Mr. Captain 3-in-1 18/10 Stainless Steel 12QT Roasting Pan with Rack and Lid

The charcuterie is out. The sides are in good shape. The table is set. Everyone is drinking wine and laughing in the next room. And the oven is preheating. You’re in great shape.

Only, there’s one problem: What are you going to cook this turkey on?

Panicking, you open and shut every cabinet door in the whole kitchen, clanging and banging your way around the room, but all you find is an oversized cookie sheet, which you take out, willing it to be something else.

“Everything going okay in here, kiddo?”

It’s your grandfather. He stands in the doorway, clearly worried about you after hearing such a commotion. You explain the issue to him, along with your fears that your oversight has ruined Thanksgiving. But no worries, you insist. You’ll run to the grocery store. They have to have something you can use there, right?

Your grandfather chuckles and walks across the room. He takes the cookie sheet from you and says, “This will work. In fact, it’s what I always used to use. Why don’t you leave this to me? I’ve got a way of cooking turkey that’ll knock your socks off. My brother-in-law taught me. Pierre. He was from Paris. Came over to be the executive chef at Tavern on the Green when he was just sixteen, met my sister throwing pennies into a fountain in Central Park. They fell in love immediately.”

What a relief! You gladly hand over the reins to him and, at his insistence, leave the kitchen to watch a little football and cool down.

You didn’t sleep well last night in anticipation of all this, and so when you drink a glass of wine, your exhaustion catches up to you and you nod off.

Your mother wakes you. How long has it been?

“You’ve been dozing here for a bit!” She smiles. “I’ve never seen the host of Thanksgiving so relaxed before!”

You tell her it’s all taken care of, that gramps has things in hand, that maybe this’ll be nostalgic for her, given he must have cooked their turkeys for the Thanksgivings of her youth, unless Pierre maybe did it? Then again, that’d be a lot: having to cook in such a high-intensity kitchen only to be forced into another on a rare day off!

Your mother’s smile fades. “Pierre?”

You tell her the story your grandfather told her, but she just shakes her head. Your grandfather doesn’t have any sisters, she reminds you. He and his brothers grew up outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. They did masonry. She’s not sure he’s ever been to New York.

The two of you rush to the kitchen. Even before you get in, you can smell burning. He’s set the oven to 88 degrees. The turkey hasn’t cooked at all, which, on the one hand, is disastrous, and on the other hand, is okay, given your grandfather didn’t take it out of the plastic. The burning then comes from three pots, all of them on burners turned all the way up, all of them full of dry spices. The smell makes you two woozy, and you soon realize why: among the spices he’s taken out, your mother finds Ajax and Barkeeper’s Friend.

Your grandfather is nowhere to be found.

Thanksgiving is ruined, but that’s not your biggest problem. You need to get out of the room before the fumes knock you out.

SCENARIO TWO: Thanksgiving Dinner with this Mr. Captain 3-in-1 18/10 Stainless Steel 12QT Roasting Pan with Rack and Lid

The charcuterie is out. The sides are in good shape. The table is set. Everyone is drinking wine and laughing in the next room. And the oven is preheating. You’re in great shape.

Only, there’s one problem: What are you going to cook this turkey on?

Duh! The roasting pan you got for this exact purpose. You pull it out of where you stashed it, causing a few clangs and bangs.

“Everything going okay in here, kiddo?”

It’s your grandfather. He stands in the doorway, clearly worried about you after hearing such a commotion. You assure him everything is fine, a few pots just shifted when you took the roasting pan out.

“Oh, okay, good, good.” He turns to leave but stops himself. “I ever tell you about how we used to do Thanksgiving on the beach back when I was a kid living near Big Sur?”

You’re surprised you hadn’t heard of this.

“Oh yeah, it was beautiful,” he says. “Of course, this was a long time ago, back when Thanksgiving was in the summer.”

You nod along, thinking: of course. Your grandfather isn’t from Big Sur. He grew up in the Midwest somewhere, though you can’t recall exactly where.