That Time Martha Stewart Ruined Thanksgiving

In a personal essay for The Daily Mail, domestic icon Martha Stewart revealed a most un-Martha Stewart mess that was her very first Thanksgiving. 

It's hard to imagine that before she was Martha - Snoop Dogg's co-host, head of her own media and product empire, and mother to a host of a-dor-able champion Chow Chows - she was Martha - just a New Jersey girl turned model turned stockbroker turned wife. But alas, we've all got to start somewhere...

As a young newlywed many years ago, I (bravely!) invited our entire family to what I hoped would be an impressive first Thanksgiving. 

The day before, I bought a thirty-pound turkey at a local turkey farm, baked pies, and prepared dressing and the vegetable side dishes. 

Weary and bleary-eyed at 3:00am on Thanksgiving Day, I turned on the oven, stuffed the turkey, and struggled to get the enormous bird into the electric oven by 3:45. 

We had invited everyone for 1:00pm dinner, just like my mother, Big Martha, always did and as tradition demanded. I went back to sleep only to awake to a house full of black smoke — the turkey was burning!

My husband ran downstairs and I followed, thinking of how embarrassed I would be to serve Thanksgiving dinner without turkey. Indeed, the bird was hopelessly charred! (My fateful mistake? I preheated the oven to 500 degrees, then forgot to turn it down to 325.) 

I started to cry while we drove back to the turkey farm, where luckily one lone thirty-pound turkey lay partially frozen in the walk-in freezer, a customer’s forgotten order. I grabbed it, rushed home, and placed it under running water to thaw it. 

I removed the stuffing from the inedible bird, stuffed the new turkey, and tried to withstand my guests’ hungry looks until 7:00pm, when the turkey emerged glistening and golden, cooked to perfection – six hours late.

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