Twinkle: Party Crashers

I accepted a long time ago that I will never host a large Thanksgiving meal--even though I would actually like to. The thought of staying home all day on Thanksgiving, baking pies and basting a turkey, sounds so appealing to be...but alas, our Thanksgiving lot is to rush around from family to family, trying to make everyone in all families understand that it's kind of a full day for us so we're super-sorry about being there at 1:15 instead of 1. (When we were 15 minutes late to Mr. Twinkle's family yesterday, two different people called him to find out where we were and demand that we get there stat. I'm sorry, in my family, the arrival time is a suggestion, and you get there any time you can within the 2-hour cocktail hour window. My parents, who want to see their grandchild for the maximum amount of time, remedy this laissez-faire situation by assigning me to bring an appetizer, ensuring that I have to get there right at the beginning).

This year I decided that I would cook a Thanksgiving dinner for just us on Friday night--"just us" referring to the three members of the immediate Twinkle family. I really want to know how to cook a turkey, and I thought it would be fun to find and make my own Thanksgiving recipes--you can be a lot more creative when the expectations of 30 people aren't riding on your mashed potato recipe. Basically, it was about creating our own tradition, for once, instead of letting every holiday be dictated by everyone else's designs for us.

Y'all can probably guess how this ends.

So, I bought a 15-pound turkey--the smallest one at Whole Foods--and yes it's for 3 people but no I did not care. I purchased all the fixins and planned my menu. I informed Mr. Twinkle about my intentions, and he informed me that he would "feel bad" cooking Thanksgiving dinner and not inviting his parents. We discussed it for a couple of days, I caved, and now instead of a leisurely day of cooking for us--with the knowledge that it'll actually be OK if this turkey venture is an epic fail--it has turned into a formal dinner party for 6 people. It won't be OK if the turkey or anything else doesn't turn out, my MIL will be silently criticizing the way I did everything even if it does turn out, and my FIL will be sitting there thinking how much better my MIL could have done it all. Plus, I have to clean the whole house now. Not what I was planning.

So, this morning I broke out the gigantic turkey and performed that ancient rite of passage for Thanksgiving hosts: removing the gizzard. Which was actually not as bad as I expected. Mr. Twinkle came in to see what was going on, and had the audacity to inform me that I was supposed to sprinkle the turkey with paprika. You can guess who does this...but I'm not doing it. This is about us learning how to do it ourselves, not me mimicking every tiny detail that my MIL does. (And the instructions I was using made no mention of paprika). He also asked what I planned to do with the gizzard, and balked when he discovered I was going to throw it in the Crock pot with the green beans for flavor. And then, after he thought about it, his indignation faded and he thought it might actually be a good idea. Progress?

Obviously, real progress will only be made when we can actually do something for ourselves, our way, with or without unwanted guests. It's one thing for me to be forced to invite my in-laws to something that was supposed to be just for us, but I'm not changing the menu to make them judge us less. They can come crash the party, but they will have to suck it up and eat everything the way I fix it. I should have known how this would end, and not wasted my time in the first place.