You learn something new everyday...

Baked Alaskan...and all this time I thought it was a phyllo-like fish recipe! Seriously. In all my years on this Earth, I thought it was some sort of creepy creamed trout recipe and lo and behold, its a dessert?? What planet am I from??

Speaking of learning something new...recently I learned:

* if you order a turkey in advance, BE SURE your person who is doing the ordering understands that the people eating the turkey are NOT vegetarians, but are in fact carnivores who LOVE them some turkey. My case in point, I'd thought I'd hit the jackpot ordering from the local yokel grocery store, three weeks in advance. The day before Thanksgiving, I went to go pick up my gobbly-gob fare that was in a large cardboard box. As I started walking away from the deli, I could not help but think I'd either ordered an anorexic bird or something was NOT right. When I opened the box, I gasped. Gobble bird was the size of a Nerf Football. Not big enough for 2-3 people, certainly not big enough for 11 people. Luckily, my nice bag lady (the bagger, NOT a real bag lady) noted my crinkled face as I paid for my eeny bird. When I explained the problem, she immediately pointed to the deli and said, "RETURN THAT BIRD." Whew. I did. And ended up with a massive 20.85 pounder.

* Call one of your best friends for turkey help. I did. And Becky's husband Brian calmly told me exactly what to do in the simple way that man does, not in the over-talky way a girl would.

* Investigate your roasting pan before putting the bird in. When my father put the roaster out, I kept cocking my head quizzically, wondering why it just didn't look right to me. It seemed, off. But who was I to judge. I don't own a roasting pan, especially the one the size of a small child.

We (Buddy and I) decided to take care of the bird THEN to relax with a cup o' joe and discuss our prior evening out. I used about 5 sticks of butter and a phat amount of olive oil. We put said bird into the pan. I set the timer and off we went with our coffee cups.

About 10 minutes later, I noticed Buddy sniffing in the air. I'd been trying to ignore my eyes burning, but truthfully, there was smoke…lots of it. And then the damned fire alarm started "reeeeeing" at us. We opened up the oven door to note a little piddle coming out of our pan. Shit. It's cracked. Where will we find a roasting pan THIS big...

And then, the sun shined…

It was upside down. I knew it had looked odd. There is a little hole in the top and everything liquid manage to slowly leak out. We carefully took apart the roaster, flipped the bird and managed to cover the range with globs of buttery olive oil.

* Always have Aunt M at dinners, especially when my father is present. Let's face it. The man has seen his share of Thanksgiving's and dinner's in general. Only, when I am cooking, having anyone telling me what to do or not to do is a no-no. Having someone looking over my shoulder and saying, "That's not how your do it," or "that's not the pan we'd use," or "what is that," "what are you making" is about as hellish as it gets. My personal bodyguard, Aunt M, saved my sanity. Every time I heard my father say, "L - why …" Aunt M would flail in between us and say, "…she bought it, she's cooking it…let's go watch football." Class dismissed.

…

But everything was easy. Dinner turned out to be absolutely perfect. I had been "worst-case scenario"-ing for weeks on end and here it was, the perfect, no chaos, no drama, yummy, fat-full Thanksgiving dinner.

I am thankful.