We were pretty dubious about the method, so we kept a very close eye on the proceedings. As I think about it more (this was more than 40 years ago), we placed a large pan of water underneath the turkey to keep the bag moist-ish. I agree, the disaster could have been much, much worse!
Moderating:
No politicking in MPSIMS, please.
Not really a disaster, or even a disaster averted, but more like a reminder of things that can go wrong which should make us all very grateful when they don’t.
At some point during the holidays I was reheating a turkey dinner. As usual I was upstairs clicking away on the computer when I smelled the distinct odour of something burning. As I made my way downstairs it became more intense and smelled a little like burning rubber or – and this is the main point – like maybe burning insulation on electrical wires. And I had an uncomfortable recollection of having replaced the oven element a few years prior, and I’m no handyman and definitely no electrician, so who knew what I might have jiggled the wrong way in there. Apparently wiring going bad inside stoves and ovens is a thing, and obviously dangerous in multiple ways.
The next day I decided to take the risk and turn on the oven again to a high temperature. If I was facing the major tragedy of a defective stove in the middle of the holiday season at least I needed to confirm it and deal with it. Oven turned on, got hot, stayed hot, no smell. I eventually concluded it must simply have been the scorched spot under the mashed potatoes of the aforementioned turkey dinner. Burned potatoes are actually remarkably stinky, though I wouldn’t have credited them with quite that much odiferous power!
Not yet. Gee, thanks Dad! 
Many, many years ago, we assembled at my brother’s in-laws home for Thanksgiving dinner. My sis-in-law had decided to make apple pie for dessert in an effort to prove to my brother that she could make apple pie just as well as his sister (me). Well, partway through dinner she put the two pies in the oven to warm them up and came back to the table.
About 10-15 minutes later, we heard an almighty, but slightly muffled crash. It turned out that a glass pie pan had shattered spreading pie everywhere. Naturally, it was the top pie pan that shattered so it sent glass down into the lower pie. Dessert was clearly ruined and the oven was a mess. She was frustrated, teary, and angry about what happened, but quickly cheered up when she realized that she would finally be allowed to clean her parent’s filthy oven (and kitchen while she and her sister were at it).
She’s a good egg and knows how to laugh at herself. Still, when I presented her with new glass pie pans and my apple pie recipe at Christmas, all she could say was “Eff you, Carnut!” while we all laughed. I told her there was nothing wrong with her pies, just a defective pan and she should try again.
She has become a very good cook.
Same sister as above, when she was living alone during her medical school years, had something similar happen to a glass dish. Most of the family was visiting her townhouse during Christmas and she set some glass thing – don’t remember if it was for baking or serving – atop a hot stove.
Fortunately, the only thing in it was air when it shattered.
This reminds me irresistibly of this video of a fledgling expecting food will just jump into its mouth.
My brother-in-law was something like this. He and my older daughter (the one who retained almost nothing I tried to teach her about cooking or housework) had Thanksgiving together her first year in college. Between their general obliviousness and mutual undiagnosed ADHD, they had each dish separately, finishing up with the turkey at midnight.
Not a holiday, but my late first wife and I often went to visit a friend who’d cook dinner for the three of us. We (really me) often did the same in return for her. To a much greater degree than I, she loved elaborate cooking, made complex 8-ingredient cocktails, etc. Plus scratch-made complex appetizers, salads, desserts, etc. She also liked using elaborate serving ware even for humble meals. She was justifiably proud of her ability to be the hostess with the mostest even for a very short guest list. And we were always happy to oblige by being an appreciative audience.
Today the main dish was to be scratch made pasta with a scratch-made marinara sauce that had started yesterday. She had a large heatproof glass serving platter she’d used successfully for years. It was sitting on the counter near the stove ready to hold the pasta for serving.
Time came for the grand unveiling so the lovingly hand-crafted beautiful perfectly al dente pasta is scooped out onto the platter. Followed by the most of the sauce. And with the last scoop the platter shatters with a loud bang, flinging a few small shards across the room. As the pasta, its attached water, most of the sauce, and a bunch of glass chunks start running across the counter and onto the floor. Oh well.
Fortunately she did have a backup box of ordinary spaghetti and it only needed a few minutes to cook since the pot of boiling water was still available. And an emergency bottle of Ragu she could doctor up with some herbs & spices.
The rest of the meal was wonderful. The boxed spaghetti & Ragu was plenty good enough of course, but she was quite disappointed.
When I lived in L.A., I made spaghetti for my girlfriend at the time. I’d bought the plates from Pic ‘N’ Save for $1 each (I’d bought four) and had used them all the time. I served my GF her plate of spaghetti and sauce, then went to get mine. Carrying it with one hand, the plate snapped in half; splattering my hand and arm with the molten sauce. I still have – and we still use – three of those plates, over 30 years on.
Per usual, Ron Swanson has a solution:
Stranger
I’m knocking on wood as I type this, but this year - so far - no disaster.
To understand the following, you need to know that it’s pretty common in the UK for young couples to visit separately at Xmas. So in our case, Trep jr comes to us, and Trep jr GF goes to her parents. Don’t ask me why it’s like this - it wasn’t when we were young.
Anyway, this year it worked fine. Unlike 2021, when, having already travelled, just before midnight on Xmas eve, Trep jr GF tested positive for COVID. She drove home early on Xmas day, but as it turned out her entire family also came down with COVID. Trep jr drove off first thing on Xmas day morning to be with her. Merry Xmas!
Oh, and unlike 2022, when they both tested positive early on Xmas eve. At least they hadn’t travelled. They got a lot of decorating done those holidays. We eventually caught up with them early in the new year - went up to London for the day, and we both got COVID.
Fortunately, through all of this nobody was seriously ill.
j
COVID added a lot of holiday disasters to a lot of folks even just amongst the many who didn’t become seriously ill. Sorry you had those troubles but glad it wasn’t worse. Good luck over the next week or so.
What is it about spaghetti & GFs that invites disaster?
Way back in Ye Olde Darke ages when I was a young USAF 2LT I invited my then GF (also a USAF officer) over to my quarters for a meal I’d cook. We’d been out to eat lunch or dinner together a few times but this was her first evening at my place. Being a callow youth of 24 I chose spaghetti & red sauce as a low effort foolproof (hah!) meal. Plus salad, whomp biscuits, cheap red wine from the package store, etc.
Our quarters were individual 1-bedroom, 1-bathroom apartments with a tiny kitchenette with a small single sink, a 2 burner stove / mini oven range and about 2 square feet of counterspace. The apartment itself was decently spacious but the kitchen was … not. Back in the day I also had a habit of leaving the whopping two kitchen drawers open a couple inches. Made it easier to get in there versus the half-assed finger dents that served as drawer pulls.
Set my colander in the sink and drain the pasta from the pot into the colander. Empty pot back on the stove. Set the first plate on the tiny counterspace behind the half-open silverware & knife drawer. Pick up the colander with two hands and attempt to pour half the pasta onto her plate. I didn’t yet own a pasta serving scooper. I’ve done this successfully umpteen times before, but always with one serving of pasta, not two. And not trying to pour just half, not all of it.
Of course the pasta sticks to the colander until most of it suddenly breaks loose as a unit, slides quickly onto the back of the plate then equally quickly ski-jumps off the front of the plate and mostly into the drawer, with the rest overshooting the drawer and landing on my front and on the floor. Which landslide triggers me letting go of one side of the colander to try to catch the mass of spaghetti with my now-free hand before it gets into the drawer.
As befits a fearless young jet aviator in his prime, I’m plenty fast enough to get my hand into the middle of the wet pasta mass as it’s entering the drawer. Which mass is not as hot as lava, but is lots hotter than hands can withstand. Cue dropping the unbalanced colander with the other hand on top of the mess, and quite the stream of colorful invective. I ran cold sink water over the pasta hand for awhile until I could talk in a normal voice.
Cleanup was … tiresome.
We eventually had the salad, biscuits, wine, and PB&Js for dinner. After she’d washed some flatware to make the PB&J with and made the PB&Js. I was one-handed the rest of the night. Visited the doc the next day and came away with some bright red burns, but no lasting damage.
Five years later she married me anyway.
I don’t still have those plates or that colander but I did for probably 10 years after that memorable event.
And a shout-out for Pic’N’Save. That’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time … a long time.
For those not from LA it was sort of a predecessor to Dollar Stores. But all the stuff was random closeouts and odd lots, not crap made cheap to sell for nothing from the git-go. You’d never know what you’d find in the store from week to week. A whole lotta college dorms and starter apartments got fitted out at PicNSave back in the '70s and '80s. It seems they’re gone now but the name lives on in unrelated businesses in other parts of the country.
Pulling the Christmas roast beast out of the oven, I knocked the oven thermometer off its perch…
… the vintage thermometer, filled with mercury. It shattered inside the oven, where Science dictated that the toxic liquid metal be vaporized (so as to be easily inhaled…)
So we bundled the relatives (and the neighbors’ very confused Black Lab we were dogsitting) into the car and called poison control. A shocked woman said “You did WHAT?!? Get out of the house IMMEDIATELY!”
That was twenty years ago. But every year my mom has to bring up the Christmas afternoon we spent driving around (with the windows open just in case).
They became Big Lots! in 2002. I still sometimes call Big Lots! ‘Pic’N’Save’. (And sometimes I still call Rite-Aid ‘Thrifty’.)
@digs’ tale reminded me of another holiday disaster. This one occurred at my parents’ home.
My stepmom, dear lady whom I love very much, is about half-good at cookery. Her failures are invariably due to a lack of practice combined with overconfidence in her abilities. She likes to go all-out for Christmas.
One year, she decided to make Beef Wellington. It’s a little tricky, but it wasn’t beyond her abilities… until she decided to make her own puff paste.
I’m a pretty experienced home cook. I use commercial puff paste.
Puff paste is a deceptively simple but devilish thing to make. In fact, it requires quite a lot of skill and practice to make it right. It also takes a lot of time – including an overnight in the fridge to allow the gluten to develop so it will relax. She missed this step, making her puff paste on the same morning she intended to use it.
The time arrived for my stepmom to assemble her Wellington. Roast, then the layer of mushroom paste, a layer of prosciutto, then all wrapped up in the puff paste. It went reasonably well until we got to the pastry layer.
The pastry fought like an Irish playwright in an arm-wrestling contest. It would not yield. It would not stretch. Soon there were the three of us, my stepmom, my dad and me, all fighting together in a vain effort against the pastry to get it to surround the roast. The prosciutto layer wrinkled like forgotten laundry. Mushroom paste oozed from every hole – of which there were many, due to the uncooperative pastry. Instead of stretching, it just tore.
The pastry won the battle, and we settled for it sort of surrounding the roast with a massive gap underneath and bunged it into the oven.
Of course the pastry was too thick to bake as it should. Inexperience in assembly of the pastry also meant that massive amounts of butter ran from the pastry into the pan and scorched.
God, it looked disgusting. At least the meat was salvageable.