I’ve bitched written about all of our family being 16 hours away and how Christmas just didn’t feel right. But, despite my Grinchesqe feelings, I still planned a kick ass dinner and wrapped Cara’s presents.
Yesterday started just like any other day. Cara got up early, we all snuggled in bed for a few minutes and then Tucker and I accepted the fact that we couldn’t put off the paper strewing any longer.
Tucker spread all of Cara’s presents around her and she tore into the paper like it was her job; she knew exactly what she was supposed to do.
Anyway, after the brief period of mayhem, Tucker and Cara settled down for some TV watching and I started getting things together for dinner.
My plan was to bake my world famous brined turkey, make garlic smashed potatoes and giblet gravy, corn, wheat rolls, rum pecan pie and chocolate pie.
No big deal.
Right…it was hell.
First things first.
I was mixing up the filling for the pecan pie and needed cornstarch. As I was digging around in my pantry, my brand new container of dark chocolate cocoa fell off of its shelf and spilled half of its contents on my carpet.
Have you ever tried to get cocoa powder out of the carpet? Yeah, it’s a bitch. Tucker vacuumed it up while I cussed and for the most part, you can’t tell that anything happened.
I recovered from that and then cooked the filling for the chocolate pie. The chocolate pie is supposed to have a meringue. I rock at making meringues. Really, I’m awesome. Until yesterday.
Everything was going my way and I had beautiful stiff peaks of white goodness and then the damn thing broke. If you’ve made a meringue before then you know what I’m talking about. I bit the bullet and wasted four egg yolks to make another batch of meringue. I topped the chocolate pie [it was gorgeous!] and popped it in the oven.
And then proceeded to forget about it. 
When I finally remembered the stupid pie, the very tips of the meringue were black.
In my addled state, I decided that it would be a great idea to put the piping hot pie outside to cool. Of course, the meringue fell and my pie resembled an old woman’s dimpled ass.
By now, I had decided that my kitchen was conspiring against me.
I made myself a drink and sat it on the kitchen counter. I was doing dishes as I cooked [Are you proud, Mom?] and my sink of dishes shifted…and the cutting board fell on top of my drink. The drink spilled all over the counter and then all over the floor.
More cussing ensued and again Tucker came to my rescue again. [Love you!]
I made another drink and took a nice deep breath. As long as the turkey didn’t spontaneously combust, things would be fine and all would not be lost.
I had the bird rinsed and stuffed the thing with the apples, onions and herbs. That baby was ready to get to cooking. I opened the oven door and then saw my cast iron skillet in the oven. See, the oven’s where I store my skillet. It helps dissipate the heat in my very uneven oven and since the skillet is pretty large, the oven provides a nice big space for the skillet’s home.
Anyway, the skillet had been in the oven the entire time that I had been baking the pies. Over two hours at 350.
I pulled the heavy ass skillet out and put it on a trivet on the counter. I hefted the turkey into the oven and 
was looking forward to sitting on my butt for a few minutes. As I spun around to turn off the kitchen light, I hit the skillet handle with my arm. [Ignore the furry arm, m’kay?]
FINALLY, everything was finished and we sat down for dinner.
The turkey was juicy and tender, the gravy was some of the best gravy that I’ve ever made and the corn was just the right amount of buttery.
I guess that the painful and annoying means justified the tasty ends this time.
But I would be lying if I said that I’m not looking forward to someone else cooking Christmas dinner next year.
