Thanksgiving in Panama

turkey-meme

 

NaNoWriMo update

This shares an interesting Thanksgiving story. But first, an NaNoWriMo challenge update. Every day I am writing something towards the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words in the month of November. I have completed fourteen days and I am ahead of schedule. I hope to finish by day 22 so I have Thanksgiving free. Today I passed 29k.

Smoked Turkey

Thanksgiving is next week. My wife and I were talking about the dinner this weekend. She asked to smoke a turkey which is something new for us. We have smoked chicken parts and found them delicious. A smoked turkey should be just as delicious. When we learned that a niece and family are coming to visit, we added an oven cooked turkey to the food list.

This started me thinking about past Thanksgivings we have shared. There have been 43 of them since we met. Our first Thanksgiving together was in Iceland. She had joined me in October and we lived in a Quonset hut outside the base. I don’t remember what we for dinner had but I know it was good. My wife is an exceptional cook.

gatun_227_bolivar_st_jan_2005
Similar to our place

Thanksgiving in Panama

We spent many Thanksgivings overseas in places like Iceland, Italy and Panama. The Thanksgiving that I will never forget occurred in Panama. Let me set the stage if you will. We lived in Pan Canal housing. The tropical housing routinely shown where you park cars under the house. ( Pictured above.) The command recreation center and mess hall (restaurant) was in a similar building near us. The wife was the command ombudsman.  She had many duties but one was to represent the command at commissary, exchange and public works meetings.

We bought our first Weber dome grill that summer. My wife found instructions for cooking a turkey on the grill. I don’t remember if I was happy or not with the prospect of keeping the grill fed with charcoal for the hours needed to grill a turkey. She prevailed. We would cook the turkey on the Weber. I fired up the grill and we put on the bird. Everyone else, including the mess hall, were cooking their birds in their electric ovens.

Dinner must wait? NO!!

It was about 2 pm when the power went out for the entire neighborhood. Turkeys sat in ovens partly cooked. My wife got frantic calls asking her to do something. Since she attended the public works meetings, they thought she might be able to get something done. They were right. She called the proper persons and soon trucks showed to work the problem. Hours later, power was restored. While others were cooking again, our grilled turkey was cooked and we had dined.  Some called it good luck, I called it good planning by my wife.

We have many interesting Thanksgiving but this is one that we relate when asked.  I would enjoy hearing about your favorite Thanksgiving memory. Use the comment form to tell me about it.

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