Dina, Daniel and Suzy, this one is for you.

Food memories revolve more around familiar dishes, the ones we anticipate from Seders of years before, the ones importantly carried in from the kitchen and haloed in traditional aromas and savors.

I’d love to serve an entire roast turkey stuffed with potato kugel, a tradition in our house, but my family circle is much smaller now, and we’d be hard put to eat up all the leftovers. Also, Israeli farmers grow monster turkeys, some of them weighing 17 kg.  I’m cooking lamb this year.  But I’ll always remember Dad’s turkey that fell down.

*

Long ago when my younger sister and I were teenagers, my parents invited a handsome young man to our Seder. He was the son of old friends, already a successful businessman, a catch for any Jewish girl. I was the right age for him; Sis was a dark-haired beauty. Our parents’ devout hope was that he would call one of us up and ask her out. Except that Sis and I weren’t at all interested. He was boring. We batted our eyelashes in his presence and called him “Prince Charming” behind his back. Teenage girls are demons.

The folks, the guest, Sis, our younger brother and I all sat down at the table and opened our Haggadot. Dad, as always, led the Seder in his Galitzianer-accented Hebrew, translating energetically into English and Spanish as needed. First cup of wine, second cup of wine… Prince Charming, ever polite and good-humored, was enchanting my parents. Sis and I were getting a little silly, kicking each other under the table. Brother frowned at us discreetly. He had much better manners than we.

One of Dad”s famous Pesach turkeys, stuffed with potato kugel was roasting in the oven. He knew exactly at which point we should take the bird out of the oven; his Hagaddah even had a little asterisk inked in at the spot.  Dad gave us the signal. Relieved to get away for a while, Sis and I slipped away to the kitchen. We opened the oven door. A cloud of steam rushed out, all aromatic roast turkey and kugel.  We gasped. The bird was huge.

“How are we going to manage this?” giggled Sis.

I stooped in front of the oven. “Keep the platter under the roasting pan, then I’ll slide it out.”

Sis squatted next to me, still giggling. “It’s too big, dope, you’ll drop it .”

I gave her the evil eye, which only made her laugh harder. “Just wait there while I – ” puffing slightly as I manipulated the roasting pan out – “slide the stupid thing onto the platter. Geez, it weighs a ton.”

Sis was starting a goofy fit. “You’re all red in the face,” she laughed, “Like Daddy when he gets mad.”

“I am not,” I hissed.  “Just gimme the platter, will you?”  Sis was laughing so hard she almost dropped it.  I couldn’t help it, I started laughing too.The roasting pan rocked perilously in my hands.

“There’s no room to jam it under the pan,” Sis giggled. “Watch out!”

The turkey half-slid out of the pan,  landing on the floor. Some gravy splashed on my holiday dress, and all I could do was hold on to the roasting pan,  lurching from side to side as I shook with laughter. We heard Dad’s chair scrape the floor as he rose in a hurry to see what we were doing. We were sitting on the floor holding on to the turkey and laughing like idiots.

“You morons!” roared Dad.

That got us completely hysterical. We managed to pass Dad the platter and stood holding each other up, laughing our fool heads off while he squatted in front of the oven, shooting poisonous looks at us and occasionally adding “You morons!” to keep us in line.

From the living room, dead silence. I imagine that our brother was rolling his eyes at Mom and that Prince Charming was pretending that all was fine and normal. Sis and I could have told him that this was normal in our house.

“Better he should find out now,” snickered Sis into my ear, just as I was calming down. I snorted, which started Sis off again. Against his will, Dad broke into a laugh himself, then couldn’t stop. He stood there shaking with helpless mirth, red in the face, wiping his eyes and every so often weakly repeating, “You morons!”

Well, Dad eventually hoisted the turkey onto the platter.  Sis and I got ourselves under control and re-entered the dining room sedately, avoiding each others’ eye so as not to lose it again.

Too late.  Prince Charming never did call either of us up.

But the turkey, I recall, was delicious.