For Your Christmas Enjoyment...

From our house to yours, a tradition: Dave Cooks The Turkey. (audio file: runs 21:50 or so). 

The Vinyl Cafe and its host Stuart McLean are Canadian treasures. Over six hundred thousand people tune in each weekend, and countless more download the podcast. McLean hosts his program from a new location every week, and by now has hit practically every community in the country. He makes everywhere he goes seem like somewhere you might want to move to, giving loving descriptions that focus on the human element. He also showcases up-and-coming Canadian musical talent: several of the people featured on the Cafe have gone on to win awards and achieve that kind of obscure fame that is, like the Vinyl Cafe itself, uniquely Canadian.

For most of us, though, the highlight of the show is a new Dave and Morley story almost every week. Dave runs a little record store, the eponymous Vinyl Cafe, whose motto is "we may not be big, but we're small." He and his wife Morley have two children--pretty much grown up, now--Stephanie and Sam. This family and their whole neighbourhood is so realistically portrayed that several times I've caught myself wondering if it really is fictional. 

In fact, as far as I'm concerned, Dave is actually me, in some other universe. The both of us are living proof that Murphy was an optimist: sometimes, even stuff that can't go wrong somehow does. We muddle through, spreading chaos with the warmest of intentions, supported by a loving (if exasperated) wife (and in his case, kids, who have their own charms, believe me)...just trying to get by.

Every year, McLean pens a new Christmas tale featuring Dave and his family. I love them all...but this one is iconic. This is the one McLean is all but forced to repeat every year as people call and write in and say "when is Dave going to cook the turkey?"

Eva's at her folks this Christmas morning. (I had to stay home and take care of the dogs). Yesterday she emailed me an extremely detailed missive entitled 'Ken Cooks The Turkey'. Extremely detailed, because she knows me. She knows that if she skips a single step, I'm going to skip it too, and that would be bad...very bad. Excerpt:

The other thing that may be in there is the giblets (fancy word for guts).  it will be in a little bag.  Transfer it directly to the garbage, it is gross beyond gross, unless you want to eat the heart and liver of the Turkey.  If so, please find another house to cook it in.

Do you think I could find that little bag? I could not. She said there was about a one-in-a-million chance it wouldn't be there..."do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?"

Do I ever? I don't believe in luck, unless it's bad.

I'd just about concluded I'd have to go and find another turkey, one with its giblet-bag intact (just so I could prove to her I'd removed the damned thing), when the rinse-water washed out an itsy-bitsy-spidery giblet bag. Yay, grossness removed. I wouldn't have to search all over for a Grade B turkey and...well, you know the rest, or will know once that audio clip's done.

The other point of contention in her letter was how to fit Travis the turkey into the slow-cooker. We all know I'm not so good at fitting things into other things, after all. "Try breast side down", she suggests, not realizing I'm entirely ignorant of turkey anatomy--wings are easy to spot, but it's not like Travis has a winking nipple, or anything.

"If you have to, hack it to pieces." Oh, sure, I thought. Slow-cook your thumb inside the turkey, why don't you? I resolved not to go anywhere near a knife...if it came to that, I'd...I'd...I'd go get a bigger slow-cooker. No, wait a second, it's too late for that...I'd put it in the oven. And burn down the house. I'd call Eva at her parents' place and admit defeat. No, that I would never do.

Lo and behold, the very first configuration I tried worked. The slow-cooker is positively bulging, but the lid is on and the countdown's ticking.

And so I have saved Christmas for this year....

Merry Christmas, one and all.