I am a kitchen kibitzer, a dinner dabbler, a side dish sideshow. Great at making desserts (natch, given my sweet tooth), but too often my cooking adventures end with the food in flames and me in a panic.

The Husband, however, is a great cook, and Thanksgiving is the highlight of his year. You’ll never have a moister, more tender turkey, I promise. We always have a lot of friends and family over; that’s been our Thanksgiving tradition for about 20 years.

Except in 1991, when my sister was very, very pregnant and asked if we would come to her home in New Jersey. Her husband had just bought a meat smoker and was anxious to smoke a turkey. Okay, I told her, thinking, this will be interesting.

We were just packing up the car to head down to her home when she called with bad news.

The turkey was ruined. My brother-in-law had left it in the smoker far too long (like, 8 hours too long, I think). Be prepared for Thanskgiving without a turkey, she warned ruefully. But there would be plenty of vegetables, she said, so we wouldn’t go hungry. Because she was nine months pregnant, and because I could only imagine how much drama had already taken place in her house, I told her it would all be fine, not to worry, even though I was certain it would most definitely not be fine with a certain Husband. And that it was going to be a long drive to New Jersey.

As I anticipated, the bad news did not sit well with The Husband. He’s a Never Say Die kind of guy, and also a Never Say Vegetarian kind of guy. And Thanksgiving is no time to go cold turkey on turkey. Luckily, earlier in the day he noticed the corner green grocer had a whole roasted turkey out on the steam table. Maybe we could get some of that, he suggested.

This is why I love New York.

While he finished packing the car, I ran to the deli. There was the turkey, golden and beautiful. True, it was missing a drumstick and a chunk of breast, but hey, it was a turkey.

How much, I asked the cashier. It was five dollars a pound, he said. It looked like a 15 to 20 pound turkey to me, give or take a drumstick.

“I want it,” I told him. “All of it. So, since it is Thanksgiving—why don’t you let me have the whole bird for 25 bucks?”

He shrugged and said, “Ok.” We got it all wrapped up in aluminum foil and took it to New Jersey.

It was a good thing we did. The smoked turkey was the texture of a wallet. You would have needed a chainsaw to carve that bad boy. Worst turkey ever.

That Thanksgiving, my sister was thankful we came to her home, my brother-in- law was thankful that my husband only teased him about the turkey/wallet until dessert was served, and I was thankful that an enterprising new kind of Pilgrim, one who came to our shores from Korea, had had the Yankee ingenuity to roast a whole turkey.

Here’s something you might be thankful for. Howdini has some gorgeous new pie videos and lots of other Thanksgiving recipes, including how to roast a turkey, HERE, under What’s Hot: Thanksgiving Ideas.

Happy, and delicious, holidays, everybody.