Friday, November 26, 2010

Turkey Chaos...A Metaphor For Life

Upsidedown Turkey

The Moment

Moist Chaos Turkey


While humans have had to deal with chaos since ancient times, only recently has science recognized it as a fundamental force in the universe.
Chaos theory, originally used to understand the movements that create thunderstorms, raging rivers, and hurricanes, is now being applied to everything from medicine to warfare to social dynamics; and now Turkeys!
My first true experience with Chaos in the kitchen reared its head at a party I was doing. After creating a huge pizza with a world of wonderful ingredients, I had forgotton to bring my pizza paddle. There was no way to lift this full size pie...thus what to do next?
After some careful thought, the only thing I could think of was to roll it up like a jelly roll. Because of it's length, the only way to fit it in the oven was to bend it into a half moon shape. Onto the pizza stone it went and born was "Serendipity Pizza"... now one of BetsaPastas more successful menu items.
Getting back to the Turkey.
Although I do most of the daily cooking in the house, Sandy prepares the Holiday meals. Since the beginning, the Turkey gets prepared only one way along with her 6 generation stuffing, Bobo's Sweet Potatoes and many other standards. Recipes not to be sabotaged! My contributions are preparing the vegetables and carving the turkey.
I guess it finally got to a point where Sandy trusted my ability to replicate her process and after a few quick tips on the procedure, I was left to dress the bird and put it in the oven.
Everything went smooooooth until...
Can you imagine the look on my face when I went to carve the turkey and the knife wouldn't go in? I'm looking at the bird and said out loud to Sandy & Alison "what in the wide wide world o sports is a goin' on here"?.
Sandy comes running over to the table, looks at me and the turkey and proceeds to start laughing hysterically.
"It's Upside Down"! We were all laughing, but only because Sandy was hanging on to the chair for support bowled over in laughter. I thought dinner was ruined and Sandy (as I found out) was thinking boiled turkey...arrggghhh.
Alison is right there with the camera to bear witness to this disaster (see pix).
In hindsight, we are still laughing...but only because the turkey turned out better than it had ever been made in all the years before.
It could not have been more moist or tasty as the compliments tableside  attested.
The moral of the story is "Don't mistake predictability for peace: Some of life's most important moments are born of Chaos"
Don't misunderstand me. This is among life's lightest most important moments, however the same thought processes apply.
You've heard this before... "Go with the flow".




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