Who To Call When Your Turkey Is a Flop

You're just hours away before family and friends arrive for your Thanksgiving dinner. Your pumpkin pie is cracked. Your turkey is cooking unevenly. You knew it wasn't completely defrosted when you started cooking it, but figured getting it in the oven would speed up the defrosting process. And you've lost the recipe for the traditional string bean casserole. What are you going to do?

Here's some helpful hotline numbers to keep posted when November 27 rolls around:
Crisco Pie Hotline: 877-367-7438
Butterball Turkey Talk-Line: 1-800-BUTTERBALL (288-8372) or http://www.butterball.com/
Empire Kosher poultry customer hot line: 717-436-7055 or http://www.blogger.com/www.empirekosher.com Fleischmann's Yeast Baker's Help Line: 1-800-777-4959 or http://www.breadworld.com/
Foster Farms Turkey Helpline: 1-800-255-7227 or http://www.fosterfarms.com/
General Mills: 1-800-248-7310
King Arthur Flour Co.'s Bakers Hotline: 802-649-3717 or e-mail questions to bakers@kingarthurflour.com
Nestle Toll House Baking Information Line: 1-800-637-8537
Ocean Spray consumer help line: 1-800-662-3263 or http://www.oceanspray.com/
Reynolds Turkey Tips Hotline: 1-800-745-4000 or http://www.blogger.com/www.reynoldskitchens.com
U.S. Department of Agriculture Meat and Poultry Hotline: 888-MPHotline (674-6854)

Stay calm. Everything will work itself out.

Let me share with you one of our most memorable Thanksgiving dinners, which looked like it wouldn't happen. It was many years ago we had a power outage on Thanksgiving at 10:30 in the morning. I had just gotten my turkey in the oven. Calling the electric company, we got the bad news that this was going to be a long day for them and us. They had no idea when they'd be able to get the power back on. As it turns out, it didn't come back on until 10:30 that night.

At first, I panicked. Then we did the next best thing - started thinking of options to get the meal made. At the time this didn't look like an opportunity but a disaster. But it was a marvelous opportunity to show to ourselves we were clever and resourceful. A neighbor up the street had a huge barbecue, so we took our turkey up there to be cooked. We had a little mini-motorhome with 2 small propane burners. That's where I cooked the vegetables. Our little barbecue worked nicely for the yams. And fortunately our friends, who brought the pies, never lost their power and so had pumpkin pie ready for our feast.

We set a beautiful table in the dining room (which actually is really the living room with a fireplace). So we lit a fire, had candles lighting our table and had the greatest dinner we've ever had. And, by the way, the most memorable.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

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