Turkey's revenge.

My wife made the best turkey ever this year. She's always had a knack, and her reliance on oven bags usually ensures a moist bird. Still, this year she outdid herself. We had a wonderful meal on the big day, and looked forward to leftovers.

Enter me.

Our refrigerator, which is on the small side due to the knuckleheads who placed the cabinets where they did, was already jammed with leftover sides when I decided the turkey was cool enough to join them. (The pearl onions were awesome, BTW.) It was past ten p.m.; the dogs had settled down for the night, and no one wanted a turkey sandwich. 

I had wrapped the bird in the roasting pan under layers of Glad Press 'n Seal, then covered the whole thing with heavy duty foil. There was a lot of moisture still in the pan, and you want to keep that in to make sure the meat stays moist. Also, you certainly wouldn't want to do anything that would allow the pan to leak, would you?

Ha, he laughed hollowly, ha.

I had cleared a shelf for the turkey, except for the pot of creamed onions. I figured they would both fit. I figured wrong. As I realized that the pot, jammed now in the corner, would not allow the roasting pan to fully slide in, I decided I had to take the turkey back out and find another spot for the onions. But by that point I had pushed in the fridge just a hair backward, and the door would only open to a 90-degree angle because now it was flush with the wall on the right side. Because of that the pan would not come back out, nor was I sure would it stay on the shelf if I let go. 

At this point I had two choices:

1) Call for help

2) Use the same instinct that makes a man want to carry 11 shopping bags into the house by himself to try to pull the roasting pan against the door to bring the fridge out far enough to open the same door to say a 120-degree angle and return the pan to the stovetop

Naturally I chose option 2, which is when the roasting pan slipped out of my grasp and landed on the floor upside-down, shooting turkey juice on the floor in a huge puddle and on the floor of the refrigerator in a small puddle.

The turkey itself stayed in place; the wrappers held pretty well. The leakage was understandable after half a gallon of liquid was violently tossed about. 

So, despite the fact that I wanted to go to sleep myself, and the inner three-year-old just wanted to walk away and leave it, I spent quite some times cleaning up everything. The turkey was fine, but what a mess. 

Needless to say, I learned some Key Lessons for next Thanksgiving:

Men, don't be stubborn when rassling a turkey into the refrigerator. Call for help if you need it. Don't try to use ten pounds of meat, two pounds of liquid, and a five-pound roasting pan as a tool for moving a refrigerator, even one on glide wheels. It's just not worth it. 

And finally, store the onions in a bowl. It takes up less space.