Good Morning and Happy Thanksgiving!

We at Dragon Laffs Enterprises wish to express to you, our loyal and most wonderful readers, how thankful we are that we have you all in our lives.  As we’ve mentioned before, this is a project that is a work of love.  Our goal, is to defeat the B.S. in the world with laughter.  And we can’t do that without you…each and everyone of you.  Thank you all for being a member of our family.

Have a wonderful day.

The Old Country Boy’s:

Sometimes, these little warnings just aren’t strong enough!

Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines upon us to let us know they are happy.
~old Eskimo saying

A tramp who had hiked many miles along a rough outback track came to a small pub named ‘George and the Dragon’ and made his way around the back in search of a handout. Before he had time to ask, the publican’s wife came on the scene and gave the tramp the greatest verbal thrashing of his life.  She called him a lazy good for nothing loafer and
added if he was hoping to get even a crust of bread he could forget it.

The tramp heard her out in silence, then just stood there.

“Well,” she snapped, “now what is it you want?”

“I was wondering,” said the man, “if I could have a word with George?”

When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, ‘Did you sleep good?’ I said ‘No, I made a few mistakes.’  ~Steven Wright

And the fact that we have the best parties!

A woman touring Ecuador was shown a bullfight. The guide told her, “Señorita, this is our number one sport.”
    The horrified woman said, “Isn’t that revolting!”
    “No, Señorita,” the guide replied, “that’s our number two sport.”

Aging rock music…painfully true

rock-on.htm 

Many of you know of and use Snopes.com as a resource in your internet surfing and as a verifier of facts.  But, did you also know that the Mikkelsons also have several essays on subjects ranging from A to Z?  Today, very appropriately I might add, we are highlighting a terrifically funny one on the Turkey Cooking Hotlines entitled:

Let’s Talk Turkey

Origins: Key to the celebration of Thanksgiving is gathering with family and friends to partake of a sumptuous feast prepared in honor of the day.  Central to that feast(or at least to our common mental image of it) is a roasted turkey laid on a platter before the hungry guests, the bird presented in all it’s mouthwatering crispy-skinned perfection.

Yet, not every aspiring Thanksgiving-maker knows how to properly roast a turkey.  The bird proves an utter mystery to some, resulting in many a holiday mishap of a culinary nature.

Luckily, those confounded by the fowl can access a great deal of help by calling a number of turkey preparation hotlines.  While some offer only recorded tips on how to prepare and roast the bird, others provide live assistance from trained experts well experienced not only with poultry but with nervous and overwhelmed cooks.  Over the years, these talk line mavens have fielded all manner of queries from those bewildered by the fickle bird.

One of the more unusual questions handled by Butterball’s Turkey Talk-Line (which the company has operated since 1981) comes from those who have mistaken a well-traveled joke for an actual recipe:  They call to ask if they can pop popcorn in the turkey’s cavity during the roasting process.  (The joke’s punch lines is: “You know the turkey is done when the popcorn pops and blows the rear off the bird.”) And no, you can’t.

The hotline has heard from a  gal who couldn’t find the turkey she buried in a snow bank, a guy who wanted to know how to carve his bird with a chain saw, and a mechanic who worried about using motor oil as a baste.

Then there was the young mother who failed to notice her children playing near the oven-ready bird.  The kids decided the turkey’s cavity was a good place to park toy cars.  Their mom didn’t discover Ol’ Tom was doubling as a garage until after the turkey had been roasted.

Another confused cook called the Butterball line after cleaning her turkey because she wanted to know how to get the metal pieces out.  “Apparently,” said one of the Butterball economists, “she had scrubbed her bird with a steel scouring pad.” A West Coast woman who had taken anti-bacterial precautions too far called Butterball to find out how to get the bleach she’d used off her bird.

Butterball turkey experts still talk about the Kentucky woman who called in 1993 to ask how to get her dog out of her turkey.  It seems the woman’s Chihuahua had dived into the bird’s cavity and become trapped there.  The woman tried pulling the pooch and shaking the bird, all to no avail.  A Butterball economist finally suggested the woman carefully cut the opening in the turkey wider to release the captive canine.

The Reynolds Wrap Turkey Tips Line (800-745-4000) took a query from a woman who wanted to know if she could cook her turkey by placing it in a Reynolds Oven Bag, putting it in the window in the back of her car, and letting the heat from the sun bake the turkey.  (She was told that would be an uncontrolled heat source and was instructed to use an oven instead.)

The folks at Butterball have also dealt with cooks determined to roast turkeys on the back ledges of their cars.  And they’ve had people call to ask if they could cook their holiday birds on radiators.  Then there was the bride who had a small, apartment-size range and was worried the turkey would get larger as it cooked (similar to a loaf of bread rising) – she was fretting she wouldn’t be able to get it out of the oven after it was done.  Some other howlers include the woman who cleaned out her turkey with a scrub brush, people who thawed their turkeys in the bathtub while washing their kids, and a man looking for a quick way to cook his turkey who put it in the oven on the cleaning cycle.

There are those whose problems are not how to get the turkey out of the oven, but when.  Said Nancy Rodriguez, coordinator of the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line in 1985, “One lady in Arkansas had her five-pound turkey in the oven 24 hours – did we think it was done?  Another caller wanted to know the best method for reattaching the thighs and drumsticks when they fall off.  His 12-pound turkey had been in the oven since 8 a.m. the day before.”

The self-cleaning option offered on a number of ranges has caused its share of Thanksgiving troubles when confused cooks have inadvertently started its cycle while their birds were in the oven.  Others have different range-related questions, such as: “Your directions say to roast the turkey, but my oven says only bake or broil; how do I set it?”

We’ll leave it to others to provide the more mundane advice regarding thawing and cooking times, how to prepare the bird for roasting and how to prepare stuffing, and instead offer these useful tips, as gleaned from the experiences of turkey hot line counselors:

• Do not leave your turkey on your back porch, either to slow thaw it or to keep it chilled until the big day.  Those who have failed to heed this advice have discovered themselves birdless on Thanksgiving morning.  Their loss was the local raccoons’ gain – those masked marauders celebrated the day in fine style.
• If you choose to bring home your frozen bird within the car proper rather than in the trunk, do take care to seatbelt the fowlsicle lest a sudden stop transform the star of the upcoming dinner into a weighty frozen projectile.  One woman who failed to belt down her bird was rewarded for her lack of foresight with a broken toe when a sharp tap of the brakes caused the iced fowl to slide off the seat and onto her foot.

Barbara “she fell victim to fowl play” Mikkelson