This is a turkey baster used to baste turkeys.

I have always had Thanksgiving at either my aunt’s house on Long Island and more recently Florida or at my friend Diane’s house in Richardson. My aunt is now well into her 80s and decided not to cook. Instead, she went to my cousin’s house in California. Diane is having her kitchen redone. She’s going elsewhere.

So this year, I’m making the turkey.

I got the turkey, the ingredients to make stuffing (yes, Tammye, we STUFFED the turkey. No dressing in my New York/Bolivian household). Yams. A variety of fresh vegetables. And that traditional Thanksgiving dessert, cheesecake.

And to cook the bird properly, I realized this morning that I needed one of those things that you soak up the juice from the pan and pour it over the turkey.

So I was at my neighborhood Oak Cliff Fiesta and an assistant manager was in the kitchen utensil aisle. I didn’t see one of those squeegie things so I asked him:

“Do you have one of those things that you get the juice off the bottom of the pan and pour over the turkey?”

He showed me the wrong item.

“No, I can’t think of what it’s called,” I said and did some pantomime about how you squeeze it and shpritz.

“You know, one of those things that lesbians use to get pregnant,” I finally explained in desperation.

“Oh! A turkey baster!” he said.

It was in the next aisle. $1. Marked turkey baster. Not labeled lesbian fertility kit.

Happy Thanksgiving.

— David Taffet

Tags: Thanksgiving

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 10:39 am and is filed under Parenting, People, Relationships, Things that bug me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.