We’re going to celebrate Thanksgiving with some friends in Basel.  There’s only one problem.  They’re vegetarians.

“I’ll bring the turkey,” I volunteered, in a flight of fancy.

Then it hit me. My goose is cooked.

I have a history of turkey disasters.

Picture Christmas in Merry Old England, circa 1971. My friend Dan Tucker, apprenticing in a British publishing house, was living in Woodstock, Oxfordshire. Not far from Blenheim Palace, the ancestral country estate and birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill.

I arrived from New York City, wooly headed and bramble bearded, with dark horn-rim glasses that intensified my probing gaze. Naively, I expected the English village to be like its namesake in New York, site of the Woodstock Rock Festival. Visions of Jimi Hendrix playing the “Star Spangled Banner,” with hippie chicks dancing in the nude.

I was quickly abused of this notion by proper English schoolmarms bundled in overcoats, caroling, “Good King Wenceslas.”

Woodstock was quaint, but the narrow lanes were nearly deserted.  Families gathered in warm cozy homes. We were left out in the cold. All the restaurants were closed.  What are two Jewish guys going to do for dinner on Christmas Day?

“We’ll prepare our own!” said Dan, the adventurous one.

We brought the plucked bird home to his flat.  Was it a turkey, or a goose? I think it may have been a goose, but we called it a turkey — and so I shall here.

“I’ll prepare the turkey, you do the stuffing,” said Dan, leaving me alone in the kitchen.

I searched for the salt.   Dan was living on a pittance, and the bachelor kitchenette was bare.

Then I saw the salt. Hiding right in front of my eyes. I’d been looking for the blue Morton’s Salt box, with the umbrella girl singing, “When it Rains It Pours.” This box was green, and the label had been washed off.  The pouring holes were a bit bigger, but so were the granules. That makes sense, I thought, because it rains more in England. I hummed to myself, sprinkling it liberally on the stuffing.  Then I threw in a teaspoon-full of salt for good measure.

Dan put the bird in the oven, and turned on the blue gas flames, warming the chilly kitchen.

We took a long walk on the grounds of Blenheim Castle.  I remember an imposing stone palace with a stiff upper pediment, clenching its pillared teeth at the intruding Yanks.  We wandered through a green park with a frozen pond and stopped to admire a towering oak.

“Edmund Burke saw the oak as the symbol of a stable society that had grown organically, its roots reaching deep into the earth,” I said, showing off my Ivy League education.  “Actually, I prefer the French Revolution, where they chopped off the royals’ heads.”

“Sheesh, what crap do they teach at Columbia?” Dan muttered.

We’d been friends and rivals since grade school. Dan went to the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he edited the literary magazine, skied and mountain climbed.  I went back East, where I read the classics and escaped the blues, by wandering the trash-laden streets of Spanish Harlem.  Who got the better deal?

Sometimes the rivalry got the best of us.  Now was one of those times.  We walked on in silence, casting angry looks: ‘Why did I come all the way to England?’ I thought, self-pitying. He scowled, ‘Why did I invite this arrogant asshole?’

We returned, cold and famished.  The turkey was ready. We sat down.  Dan carved.

I took a bite. It tasted a bit gamey. But I wasn’t going to complain about Dan’s cooking… even though his mother was one of the best cooks in Denver.

I dug into the stuffing. Tender brown and moist. It slid off my fork like greased lightning, plopped on my tongue, and kept sliding.  It stuck in my gullet like a slippery bar of soap in a clogged drain.

I opened my mouth to speak. Glub, glub, glub. Bubbles floated out.

Dan looked at me. “Are you okay?”

I gulped water, hoping to wash it down my throat.  But this only produced more bubbles.

Now Dan was foaming at the mouth.  He ran to the kitchen sink, and spat it out. I rushed to the WC…

Cleansed, so to speak, I joined him meekly in the kitchen.  He skewered me with a piercingly ironic smile.  “What did you season the stuffing with?”

“I just used salt,” I said, defensively.

“Show me.”

I picked up the green box.

“That’s dish washing powder!” he cried.

“I’m sorry.”  I searched his face for a sign of anger.  But I only found a grin, and his blue eyes twinkled. Dan laughed so hard he almost fell over.

“Idiot!” I slapped my forehead with my palm. I laughed until my glasses fogged up, and the kitchen lights glowed like Christmas bulbs.

The laughter was cathartic.  No longer did we feel estranged and lonely.  The soap opera washed away hard feelings and cemented our friendship.  We bear-hugged like brothers.

“Now what?” I asked, sheepishly.

“We’re going to Wales!” Dan cried.

We abandoned the turkey, piled into his Morris Minor, and drove all night until we reached the coast at dawn.  Along the way, we tried to crash a Christmas banquet, but the restaurant manager shoed the bedraggled ruffians away.  In revenge, we purloined a bottle of sherry.

Dan’s friends owned a vacation cottage, and he knew where the key was hidden.  We found two tins of prawns in the cupboard.  We washed them down with sherry, watched Boxing Day bouts on TV. Every half hour, my stomach rumbled, and I made a mad dash to the W.C.

“Dear Mom and Dad,” I wrote on a postcard.  “I’m having a really great time!”  Then I wrote a P.S. to my father, the gastroenterologist.  “Dad, I made an amazing discovery you may use in your practice.  English dish soap is a powerful laxative!”

When we returned, we threw the rotten turkey in the dishwasher, plate and all.

Or so I remember it, fondly.

Mercifully, I didn’t attempt to cook a turkey again for 37 years.

***

Perky as a Turkey Part II

Flash forward to February of this year. I no longer have a beard, and my wooly head has been permanently shorn. Now I wear wire-rimmed glasses that magnify thewrinkles smile lines around my bloodshot lively eyes.  My intense gaze has dissolved to a bleary and often-confused look, as I search for my sunglasses in the wintry darkness, hoping the sun will come out. Wishful thinking.

The revolution came all right, but not from the left.  It was called “The Reagan Revolution.”  And we’re still recovering from twenty-odd years of conservative rule.  I admire the stability and rootedness of the old oak tree.  I’ve moved to the center, politically.  Which hate-radio broadcasters call the radical liberal fringe.

Dan lives in a small mountain town in Western Colorado, where he is something of a folk hero.  The founder of the Ah Haa School of the Arts in Telluride.  He is also the co-leader of the American branch of the União do Vegetal, a religion founded in Brazil that uses an Amazon hallucinogen called ayajuasca, “in a program of spiritual evolution for self knowledge,” according to Wikipedia.  Dan’s eyes are as bright and clear as the blue sky over the Rockies, and he’s helped raise a dozen “adopted” teenagers from Brazil, which keeps him on his toes.

I’m no longer lonely, at least not in the same lovelorn way.  I’m a husband and father for the second time around — and a first-ever hausmann.  Pushing 60, I’m kept young by my kids’ shenanigans.

We crash-landed in Switzerland in the middle of January.  In February, when this turkey tale takes place, we’re living in a company flat in a bleak exurb of Basel.

I’m freaked out by my job, which requires me to cook for my poor family.  So far, I’ve mastered two dishes: heating up frozen pizzas, and roasting chicken nuggets.  Oh, and cereal.  I’m great at pouring it out of the box.  By popular demand, Lincoln eats cereal for breakfast, lunch, and when I run out of chicken nuggets, dinner.

Late one afternoon, in a frantic rush to pull the nuggets out of the oven, I press my thumb against the red-hot oven rod. I hear a sizzle and smell burning flesh.

Voila, Braised Thumb.  A premium recipe for Hausmann’s Cookbook.

After awhile, even kids get tired of their once-favorite foods.

“Daddy, please no more pizzas and chicken nuggets,” they beg me.  My eyes light up.  Here’s my chance to wean them from that starchy, greasy diet.  Give them something healthy and nutritious.

Be creative. Show some flair.

We’re on a tight budget, so I can’t afford steak or seafood.  What? What?

Turkey breasts on sale! I can’t actually read the German label, but I recognize the picture of a turkey, for dummies and illiterates.

On the way home, I envision an exotic turkey dish, something savory and sweet, like my little darlings.  I vividly remember a Moroccan feast, with roast lamb, figs, and saffron-flavored rice.

I’ll just substitute turkey for lamb, mock orange drink for saffron, and nobody will notice.

What will I season it with?  Searching the cupboards, I carefully avoid the bag of coarse salt utilized, for some unfathomable reason, in our dishwasher. I pounce on the little saltcellar with the Swiss flag, labeled Kochsalz, table salt.

Happens that Basel owes its origins as a chemical and pharmaceutical capital to nearby salt deposits.  In the middle ages, vegetable dyes were dull and quickly faded.  Salt was an ingredient in making royal purple and red dyes.  Basel thrived as a center of brilliantly colored silk ribbons, and evolved into a center of chemical and pharmaceutical industries.  My wife was recruited by a Swiss pharmaceutical company, which brought us to Basel.

So, I can blame salt!

I ransack our cupboards and find a bag of dried figs. In the refrigerator, I spy Lincoln’s favorite fruit drink. The opened bottle has been sitting there for an indeterminate period. I taste it.  Disgusting, but not rotten.

I splash semi-virgin olive oil into a roasting pan. Then I lay down eight turkey breasts side by side. They look pale and naked.  Regrettably, I have no fig leaves to hide their nudity, so I toss chopped figs on top.

Should I cook the rice separately? Don’t waste time, boiling water! I dump in two cups of Uncle Ben’s rice, and pour the noxious orange liquid up to the rim. Let the rice simmer in the juice.

What temperature setting?  I rush to the computer and Google “turkey.” Ten million recipes.  Which one?  I add, “breast.” Porn boob sites pop up. Finally, I find what I’m looking for. But the recipe is in Fahrenheit. I use a National Weather Service site to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius. 325 ℉ = 163.777 ℃. To my shock, the oven doesn’t do decimal points. Primitive German engineering. Experiencing a moment of aphasia, I preheat the oven to 325 ℃. (617 ℉) Then, donning protective mittens, I shove the pan into the blast furnace.

I think you can see where this is heading…

Isabelle comes home exhausted and exclaims,” What’s that extravagant smell coming from the oven?”

“Turkey with figs and saffron rice,” I say, hiding my face, shyly.

The kids dip their forks gingerly into the tangy rice, and bring tender morsels to their lips.  Expressions of surprise and joy break forth on their faces.  I hover over them, in my flowered apron, beholding the miracle of a happy family dinner.  The sounds of busy jaws munching in harmony starts me humming, “Home, home on the electric range…” Outside, the snows melt in the reflected warmth of our love.

Wrong.

“Ugh!”

“Barf!”

The charred turkey breast bends the tines of Isabelle’s fork.  I attempt to saw through the tough hide, stripping the serrations off our carving knife.

Inevitably, the uneaten portions are passed to me, the human garbage can.

Lincoln winds up with cereal, and Genevieve limps to bed with a sore tummy.  Isabelle stomps off in a huff.

I am left with the gelatinous mess. It takes a heap of hard scrubbing with industrial strength cleansers to remove the gook baked onto the roasting pan.

Still, there’s a silver lining to this cloud. A brake lining. Vulcanized turkey-breast brake pads are tougher than asbestos, and slightly less toxic. Guaranteed for 120,000 miles. We’ve applied for a patent & trademark: Turkey wings on smoking wheels, with Hausmann drifting behind in fuliginous letters.

***

So now you know the sad tale. I feel really, really anxious, as they raise the axe above my coxcomb. Why did I volunteer to cook turkey again?  Our unsuspecting friends haven’t a clue what they’re in for.

Frantically, I email “SOT” — Save Our Turkey – to Maggie, rated “best turkey chef” byGobbler Gourmet. She sends me a recipe even a hausmann can’t mess up.* (See below)

Will my third try be the charm?

I toss and turn in bed, worrying about T-Day, and fall asleep before dawn, gripped by a nightmare.

Help! I’m being tied up, blindfolded, and hustled into a taxi.

I awaken in our friends’ cozy, wood-beamed penthouse in Binnigen. Their kids, our kids; Swiss, American, and Scottish; Catholic and Jewish.  A multicultural Thanksgiving. I smell the intoxicating odors of vegetarian dishes.  Acorn squash.  Sweet potato pie.

We sit down and bow our heads in thanks.

Silently, I give thanks. Our sojourn in Switzerland has given unexpected blessings. “Thanks for adversity bringing us closer together…”

Then I hear my children giggle, wickedly.

“We have a lot to be grateful for this Thanksgiving,” they burst out, casting a spiteful glance in my direction.

Our hosts look at me, questioningly, as if I know the answer.

“Okay, what?”

“Mommy cooked the turkey!”

***************************************************

Maggie’s Roast Turkey Recipe

Take everything out from inside turkey.  I don’t know about Swiss turkeys, but here they have giblets etc. stuck inside at both ends.

Wash and dry. Smear with olive oil by hand, and rub on whatever seasoning you want.  I use plain powdered garlic, sometimes tarragon too.

Preheat oven at 325 for 15 minutes. Butter well two pieces of bread and put on bottom of pan.

Put turkey upside down so breasts lay on buttered bread (so skin won’t come off).  Cook 1 and 1/2 hours.

Take it out and turn over.  If bread stuck to bird remove with a wet cloth or sponge.

Now stuff bird…   You would have started cooking your stuffing in tinfoil or something.  You can mix in some turkey drippings with stuffing at this point.

Replace turkey in oven and roast for one hour, or until breast turns a nice shade of brown.

This is failsafe and much faster if your bird is between 12 and 17 pounds, and not semi frozen.  If bird is larger, add 30 minutes to cooking time on breast.

Good luck and Happy Thanksgiving,

Maggie

“Thanks… What about stuffing?” I replied.

“Yipes, there are a zillion different kinds of stuffing. I was never crazy about mine. Basically you take breadcrumbs or croutons that you can get at the market and mix with whatever you want. I sauté onions and garlic in olive oil/butter and mix bread in with that, flavored with whatever herbs I like, salt and pepper, pretty simple.  Lots of people put in sausage, or oysters, chestnuts, nuts, whatever.