A Turkey Tale

In November 2008, JPug and I were living in Gainesville, FL for JPug’s temporary work assignment…building a self-sustaining power plant for the University of Florida’s Shands Hospital.  Being budget and vacation-conscious, we decided to stay in Gainesville for Thanksgiving and make our way back to the Midwest for Christmas.  My mom and her other half, Joe, joined us for the holiday.

Rather than cook a grand Thanksgiving meal for four, we had been invited by a co-worker of JPug’s, Jimbo, to spend Thanksgiving with him, his wife Linda and their family.  Potentially our one chance in life to enjoy traditional southern Thanksgiving…YES PLEASE!  They were taking care of all the food and we were in charge of dessert.  I scoured my stash of cooking magazines and came up with a Caramel, Chocolate Pecan Pie…sounds delicious, right?  

One of my (few) downfalls is that I’m HORRIBLE at reading recipes in advance.  I get through the ingredients, maybe step 1 and lose interest from there.  This M.O. has lead to a lot of waiting for the oven to preheat and scrambling at the last minute but things usually turn out OK.  Mom and I started making our pie Thanksgiving morning and the process was no good from the start.  The tiny galley kitchen in our apartment was impossible to maneuver with two cooks in the kitchen.  Our electric stove, homemade caramel-making combination made for a disaster and we ended up abandoning the first batch and starting over…all the while, time continued to count down.  

Finally, the layers were complete and we assembled the pie…chocolate pecan layer, caramel layer, homemade whip cream.  It looked divine!  We had just enough time to clean up the kitchen and ourselves and travel from Gainesville to Williston for our celebration.  Before jumping in the shower, I read the last line of the recipe “Chill for at least 6 hours before serving”.  EEK!  6 hours…we barely had 1 before we needed to hit the road.  I opted to put the pie in the freezer while I showered and changed, hoping it would set-up as much as possible.  I balanced the aluminum foil pie-plate on a tub of ice cream and made a B-line for the bathroom. 

As my mom and I finished up, JPug and Joe gathered our things and got the dogs ready for their cages.  JPug opened the freezer door where we kept peanut butter popsicles (Kongs filled with peanut butter) and that’s when it happened… Opening the freezer door jolted the pie just enough that it managed to flip over in the freezer, slide down the vent at the front, down the fridge door and onto the floor.  Our pie, which took a combined 6+ hours to put together, was OBLITERATED!  Sometimes these incidents are salvageable but this one was definitely not.  We couldn’t let the mess sit (or freeze in the freezer) so we took to disassembling the freezer vent, cleaning everything and travelling to Williston (late and with no dessert in hand).  

On the way, I think we stopped by a gas station and purchased a handful of personal-serving pecan pies that had probably been on the shelf since Thanksgiving 2007.  Luckily, the Williams family didn’t mind that we were late or that we came without dessert.  We had a wonderful time and a pretty entertaining story to tell.

This Thanksgiving, I hope your day is less eventful than the one we experienced three years ago but no less wonderful.  Enjoy great company, great food and great football.  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!