A Thanksgiving Turkey to Forget

Georgia Garvey
Fri, 21 Nov 2025 23:00:00 -0800
Opinion

I'll start by making a few things clear:

I love my father, I love cooking and I love Thanksgiving.

And now that the throat-clearing is done, I can move on to the complaining.
Updated: Sat Nov 22, 2025

I'll start by making a few things clear:

I love my father, I love cooking and I love Thanksgiving.

And now that the throat-clearing is done, I can move on to the complaining.

Because of all dishes in all the holidays on the calendar, there's nothing like the Thanksgiving turkey for getting under your skin. And last year, it got under mine like the butter rub for a gourmet gobbler.

My dad lives in Florida, where global warming has gone to retire, and he keeps the thermostat set to an Amazonian 85 degrees to boot.

As an immigrant, he fears drafts more than his parents feared the invading Italian army (which was, admittedly, not much), so every window was closed and every shade drawn. If I moved to turn on a fan — or, heaven forbid, the air conditioner — my father repaired to his room to put on every sweater he owned, layered like the Michelin Man climbing Mount Everest.

For the weeklong trip, sometimes it felt like we were vacationing and other times like we were being questioned by the CIA under suspicion of terrorism.

So, already cooking ourselves, my father and I were ready to talk turkey.

My dad was once a wonderful cook, and I have memories of smoked turkeys and Cajun spice-brined birds decorating dinner tables of yore. Lately, though, due to a combination of age and ill health, he hasn't been able to handle the turkey anymore. Thus, I have inherited the job. Kind of.

In the run-up to Thanksgiving, we had conversation after conversation in which I assured him that I'd handle everything.

Imagine my surprise, then, to hear activity in the kitchen at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving day, pots and pans being slung around with suspicious abandon, almost as if — almost, I say — he had wanted to wake me up. I emerged, as summoned, to ask my dad just what the everloving heckfire he was doing.

"I'm getting the turkey started," he said, not having progressed to actually starting the turkey as much as he had started me to start the turkey.

"It's too early to start the turkey," I said, futilely.

"I don't want to eat at 9 p.m.," he said, sitting down victoriously in the living room to watch a Greek soap opera where the women fight with their husbands about whether the men should eat their breakfast.

Pressed into service, I took the turkey out of the refrigerator and set it down with a metallic clang, the thwack of a block of ice smacking into the counter.

"When did you take the turkey out of the freezer?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

Of course, he had moved it to the fridge two days ago. The answer is always two days ago. No one in the history of the world has ever properly defrosted a turkey before Thanksgiving.

"Just leave it on the counter," he said, and I wished for the thousandth time that immigrants older than 65 feared food-borne illnesses as much as they did drafty air.

I put the turkey in the sink to run some cold water over it, going into the other room while it defrosted, and that's about the exact moment my dad decided to set the oven to a cleaning cycle. I didn't know that because he told me. I knew because five inches of thick black smoke covered the ceiling like we were in the opening scenes of the movie "Backdraft."

"Is someone burning plastic?" I choked out, tears streaming down my face.

"No," my dad said, tucked behind the sports section of the newspaper. "I'm cleaning the oven."

I opened the doors to let out some of the smoke, and I suppose you can just about guess how that went.

I also noticed that he had turned off the water.

Whether all that smoke would help cook the bird faster, or even if it wouldn't, I had to put it into the oven anyway or fight with him for every additional drop of water to defrost it in the sink.

The turkey cooked and cooked, for hours and hours, and despite its initial frozen state, eventually the temperature was about right. I took it out and put it on the stove.

"It's raw," my dad insisted, putting the turkey directly back in and cranking up the heat.

I protested, faintly, knowing it was the culinary equivalent of Napoleon's butler questioning the emperor's battle plan.

"I know what I'm doing," my dad said.

After half an hour, when the turkey had been cremated to my dad's taste, I wrestled control of the oven mitts from his hands and removed it.

The family was already assembled at the table, the kids drooling with hunger, waiting with the side dishes rapidly cooling around them.

As I cut the meat, I shook my head.

"It's dry," I said, "I can just tell."

My dad took a bite and pulled a face.

"Well, of course it's dry," he said triumphantly. "You overcooked it."