It’s a beautiful Thanksgiving morning here in Glassland: The sky is blue blue blue, cloud wisps streaking past like they have someplace to be. The air is cold and clear and the turkey went in at 8:30. As planned.

Mom’s doing stuffing and pies, Suzi’s family is making rolls and sides, Becky, who already sent her Thanksgiving good wishes, will be sorely missed. Me, I’m in charge of The Bird, a 13.6-pound ladybird, all goosebumps and loose skin. As I prepped for her big debut I thought of Dad, and my favorite Thanksgiving memory.

Dad’s been gone for eight years but he loved Thanksgiving. Grandma would send a big box of pine nuts that he’d brine and roast, filling the air with their resiny scent. His pine nuts were a much-loved kickoff to the winter holidays, but that was Dad’s sole seasonal culinary contribution… until The Year of the Bath Towels.

I was 15, and Dad came home the day before Thanksgiving wearing a giant grin, carrying a bag of groceries.

“This year I’m doing the turkey!” he said enthusiastically, “I heard this turkey recipe on the radio and I’m going to try it!”

We gave him The Look. My mom was (is) one of the best Thanksgiving cooks on the planet, and her girls weren’t far behind. Dad, on the other hand, had cooked only two dishes in our memory. Most often, he’d made his own version of oyster stew, a concoction of milk, cream, butter and a can of oysters, and the only thing worse than its taste was its smell.*

“Why don’t you try your turkey some other time?” Mom suggested, looking nervous, “So we’ll have our regular turkey for Thanksgiving, and then I’ll buy you another turkey later…”

Nope. Dad was adamant. “I am doing the turkey. You girls just watch!”

We resigned ourselves to a Thanksgiving dinner filled with side dishes and pumpkin pie, while Dad reached into his grocery bag and pulled out POUNDS of butter. Pounds. He unwrapped four boxes-worth of butter sticks, and dumped them into a large pot to melt.

“All we need now,” he said with satisfaction, “Are some bath towels.”

It was official: Dad had lost his mind. “Bath towels?” I said, cautiously, wondering if we should trank him.

“Yes, bath towels. Two or three,” he confirmed, “Don’t use your mother’s good towels. White would be best.”

I returned with the towels to find Dad holding our precious Thanksgiving bird, over Mom’s strenuous protests. “Dix!” she said, “Thanksgiving isn’t until TOMORROW…”

“You have to start this turkey the night before,” he explained, “Just trust me. It’ll be great.”

He laid a bath towel inside the turkey roasting pan and poured half the melted butter on the towel. He set the bird on top, and pulled the towel up around it.

Yup. The old man had gone around the bend. We were doomed.

He covered that assembly with a second towel, and poured the rest of the butter on top. Then he popped it into the oven and set it for 225 degrees.

Fahrenheit, not Centigrade.

“DIX!!!! You can’t cook a turkey at 225,” Mom said urgently, playing her trump card, “We’ll get…SALMONELLA!”

My mother has a horror of raw meat (she can’t watch me eat a rare steak), but my father, being a doctor and all, was on a whole ‘nother planet concerning food-borne illness. He drilled us endlessly in food safety; just touching a raw egg to the counter still gives my sisters hives.

Mom’s salmonella comment was a stroke of sure-fire genius that should have worked…but Dad just brushed it off.

“It’ll be FINE,” he growled, “I’m going to baste it with a pound of butter every hour. It will be delicious. You’ll see.”

What I’m seeing is Dad, clutching a greasy, desiccated turkey corpse as he’s carted off to the asylum. No college for me; I’ll be working the streets like my friend Georgie (a story for another time).

Every hour until morning, Dad melted another pound of butter, opened the oven door, and poured it over that turkey. I made a note to ask Georgie what she charged.

We awoke to the delicious smell of turkey roasted in butter…with an odd note of scorched fiber. The whole fandamily trooped into the kitchen, but Dad forbade peeking. “It still has another three hours to cook,” he said sternly, ladling on the butter. We sighed and got busy with stuffing, potatoes white and orange, gravy, cranberry sauce, the works.

I didn’t see how we were going to get out of tasting Dad’s turkey, so mostly I hoped that we didn’t die.

Finally, around noon, Dad pronounced his bird done. He pulled it out of the oven and set it on the counter. The towels had hardened into a kind of dark brown helmet, slicked down with a dozen pounds of butter.

He carefully pulled back the towel, exposing…a naked bird. Literally. The bath towels had fully integrated the turkey skin, and it pulled completely off. The turkey meat slicked off the bones, leaving a perfectly clean skeleton.

Dad popped a morsel of breast in his mouth and his eyes widened. “MMMMmmmm,” he said, reaching for another piece.

He was right: That was the best turkey I’ve ever eaten. It was moist and delicious, tasting of butter, smoke, and concentrated turkey love. Dad had, unknowingly, recreated the French confit, only with butter and a bath towel.

Most Thanksgiving dinners are, let’s face it, about the sides. The turkey is merely a Norman Rockwell centerpiece giving structural support to the gravy.

Not that year. Dad’s turkey was the highlight of the meal. We, er, gobbled it down and looked for more. There was no possibility of gravy unless we could figure out how to extract the drippings from a towel (we were lucky that prescient Mom had already made gravy from the giblets), and we sorely missed that crispy turkey skin…but the meat more than made up for it.

We barely heard Dad’s triumphant, “told you so.” We were too busy chewing.

That year, we happily settled into a new routine: We make the sides, Dad makes the turkey.

Well, we did for awhile, anyway. Dad made turkey en serviette the next year. After that, “Turkey is too much trouble,” he grumbled, “And all that butter isn’t good for you anyway.”

That was the end of our towel-based turkey. I’ve always thought that, one day, I’d get me a couple of bath towels and a LOT of butter, then the night before Thanksgiving…

Naaah. Best leave that one as a memory.

Have a great Thanksgiving, folks.

  • Dad did, however, make about the best-tasting strawberry ice cream I’ve ever eaten. It was pure whipping cream, fresh strawberries and sugar (what’s not to like?), so while it tasted great, it also coated the roof of your mouth with butter.