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Registered: ‎05-11-2013

A Turkey, My Mom, Matches & Tweezers, Oh My

My sister and I were talking about Thanksgiving as a kid. We both said, "omg, remember Mom cleaning the turkey".  

 

Mom was a great cook and her Thanksgiving dinners were great. However, that woman was a maniac when it came to prepping her bird.

 

Remember, this was 53/54 years ago.  It was a store bought turkey, not one my Dad killed in the wilds of PA.

 

She went over that poor dead gobbler with a fine tooth comb, taking matches to burn off any "hair" she saw, she had special tweezers to pluck pin feathers. It drove my Dad crazy.

 

One Wednesday night she was at the kitchen sink, bird in cold water giving it her lazer focused inspection.  Old Tom had to be ready so she could him in the oven at the butt crack of dawn. Dad was at the table reading the paper. After years of going thru this ritual Dad finally yelled, "for God's sake Helen, it's clean, you're gonna scrub all the flavor out."

 

My sister and I were both laughing so hard we couldn't talk. Finally, I said one thing for sure, we never had to worry about getting sick from Mom's cooking.  No bacteria could survive her prep.

 

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Re: A Turkey, My Mom, Matches & Tweezers, Oh My

@CrazyKittyLvr2     I can sympathize.   My ma cooked everything until she was sure it was REALLY DEAD...............

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Re: A Turkey, My Mom, Matches & Tweezers, Oh My

Your story awoke long forgotten memories.  My mom did the same thing with turkey and chicken, only she held the wing (or other part) in the gas flame of the stove top to burn off the hairs.  Pinfeathers were pulled out with a thin sharp knife.  I guess that's how it was done back then.

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Re: A Turkey, My Mom, Matches & Tweezers, Oh My

@Desertdi   Oh, she didn't over cook it. It always was wonderful, she just wanted to make sure it was sterile....er, clean.

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Re: A Turkey, My Mom, Matches & Tweezers, Oh My

@PinkyPetunia   I forgot, she also had a special stiff bristled brush that she scrubbed it with.

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Re: A Turkey, My Mom, Matches & Tweezers, Oh My

Are we sisters?

~The only difference between this place and the Titanic is that the Titanic had a band.~
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Re: A Turkey, My Mom, Matches & Tweezers, Oh My


@CrazyKittyLvr2 wrote:

My sister and I were talking about Thanksgiving as a kid. We both said, "omg, remember Mom cleaning the turkey".  

 

Mom was a great cook and her Thanksgiving dinners were great. However, that woman was a maniac when it came to prepping her bird.

 

Remember, this was 53/54 years ago.  It was a store bought turkey, not one my Dad killed in the wilds of PA.

 

She went over that poor dead gobbler with a fine tooth comb, taking matches to burn off any "hair" she saw, she had special tweezers to pluck pin feathers. It drove my Dad crazy.

 

One Wednesday night she was at the kitchen sink, bird in cold water giving it her lazer focused inspection.  Old Tom had to be ready so she could him in the oven at the butt crack of dawn. Dad was at the table reading the paper. After years of going thru this ritual Dad finally yelled, "for God's sake Helen, it's clean, you're gonna scrub all the flavor out."

 

My sister and I were both laughing so hard we couldn't talk. Finally, I said one thing for sure, we never had to worry about getting sick from Mom's cooking.  No bacteria could survive her prep.

 


@CrazyKittyLvr2    Your post really made me laugh.  Thanksgiving went well at our house....but preparing for Christmas was another story...My brother and I just talked about our funny memory of my dad when we were little...back in the 50's... He was always looking for a way to save money.  Things were always tight in those days.  
   One year he decided to change the lights on the tree from multi colors to all white.  Rather than waste money by buying new strings of lights..he decided to remove the paint on each and every bulb with paint remover and a razor blade.  It took him the whole day.  It made my mom furious because the whole house smelled like paint remover for Christmas.   To this day....when I smell paint remover I am reminded of those 

lights on the tree.  And if I ever buy new ones...I always get white.  

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Re: A Turkey, My Mom, Matches & Tweezers, Oh My

 


@Mombo1 wrote:

@CrazyKittyLvr2 wrote:

My sister and I were talking about Thanksgiving as a kid. We both said, "omg, remember Mom cleaning the turkey".  

 

Mom was a great cook and her Thanksgiving dinners were great. However, that woman was a maniac when it came to prepping her bird.

 

Remember, this was 53/54 years ago.  It was a store bought turkey, not one my Dad killed in the wilds of PA.

 

She went over that poor dead gobbler with a fine tooth comb, taking matches to burn off any "hair" she saw, she had special tweezers to pluck pin feathers. It drove my Dad crazy.

 

One Wednesday night she was at the kitchen sink, bird in cold water giving it her lazer focused inspection.  Old Tom had to be ready so she could him in the oven at the butt crack of dawn. Dad was at the table reading the paper. After years of going thru this ritual Dad finally yelled, "for God's sake Helen, it's clean, you're gonna scrub all the flavor out."

 

My sister and I were both laughing so hard we couldn't talk. Finally, I said one thing for sure, we never had to worry about getting sick from Mom's cooking.  No bacteria could survive her prep.

 


@CrazyKittyLvr2    Your post really made me laugh.  Thanksgiving went well at our house....but preparing for Christmas was another story...My brother and I just talked about our funny memory of my dad when we were little...back in the 50's... He was always looking for a way to save money.  Things were always tight in those days.  
   One year he decided to change the lights on the tree from multi colors to all white.  Rather than waste money by buying new strings of lights..he decided to remove the paint on each and every bulb with paint remover and a razor blade.  It took him the whole day.  It made my mom furious because the whole house smelled like paint remover for Christmas.   To this day....when I smell paint remover I am reminded of those 

lights on the tree.  And if I ever buy new ones...I always get white.  


@Mombo1 @CrazyKittyLvr2 -

These are both so funny!😂

They should be published in a book titled the best of Thanksgiving stories!

I love your Dad's comment @CrazyKittyLvr2,

and the thought of your Dad unpeeling the colored Christmas lights!  @Mombo1 

This is like something out of The Christmas story lol!

"If you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you'll learn things you never knew. Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains? can you paint with all the colors of the wind?"
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Re: A Turkey, My Mom, Matches & Tweezers, Oh My

@Mombo1   Christmas always went pretty smooth except for the year, I was a Jr. in HS.  

 

We always had a real tree.  Mom loved a real tree. Well, my Dad got a wild hair about our tree that year and came home with one of those new fangled aluminum tree with a color wheel no less.

 

My 6 ft. ex-Marine Dad was lucky my 5ft. 3in. Mother didn't jingle his bells.

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Re: A Turkey, My Mom, Matches & Tweezers, Oh My


@CrazyKittyLvr2 wrote:

@Mombo1   Christmas always went pretty smooth except for the year, I was a Jr. in HS.  

 

We always had a real tree.  Mom loved a real tree. Well, my Dad got a wild hair about our tree that year and came home with one of those new fangled aluminum tree with a color wheel no less.

 

My 6 ft. ex-Marine Dad was lucky my 5ft. 3in. Mother didn't jingle his bells.


@CrazyKittyLvr2   OMG... so funny.  Not sure which is worse...the aluminum tree or the paint remover fumes!