Turkey Gravy Mishap

Last weekend one of my high school friends and I decided to have a big Pre-Thanksgiving dinner and invite all our close friends from high school. Yes, I am one of those rare breeds who still talk to and even keep in close contact with many of my high school friends. It helps that I'm living in the same town, but I have kept in touch with many of them since graduation.

Anyway, neither of us had ever cooked a Turkey, and we wanted to try it. We were worried that prepping the bird was going to be a long process, but we were pleasantly surprised when it didn't take very long. That turkey neck is one ugly piece of giblet! Because we thought it would take a while we had opted out of stuffing the bird with bread stuffing. Instead, we just put in cut up carrots, celery, and green onions for flavor.

Fast Forward three hours.

After we took the bird out, I was going to make the gravy. My friend had bought a new baster and for some reason it was not working very well. Once I took the cleaning brush out it worked much, much better. I put all these turkey "juices" into a pot, along with the veggies that had been cooked inside the bird. After boiling this my next job was to strain the vegetables out of the gravy.

Disclaimer: When I think of straining something, I picture straining macaroni or spaghetti, where the object is to get rid of the liquid and keep the solids.

So, I got the strainer set in the sink, (with two of my friends standing there watching), and proceeded to dump the pot into the strainer. Suddenly, I heard the sound of a liquid going down the garbage disposal, and I screamed, "NO!!!" OOPS! I forgot to put something to catch the gravy and instead dumped it down the drain.

Fortunately, Michael was already at the store buying milk for the mashed potatoes, so I called him (trying to decide if I should laugh or cry) and asked him to pick up some gravy packets.

For the rest of the night everyone gave me a hard time, such as, "hey Melissa, can you get me some pumpkin pie, as long as you don't strain it!"