The Turkey King | November 30, 2022

Holy buckets, tomorrow is December. Please say a prayer for Kyle, whose wife wouldn’t let him put up Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving. I know that “Christmas tree timing” is a hot topic and I really have no opinion except that I am in possession of a bunch of Thanksgiving décor and am Toy Story-aware of the feelings of my box of paper mâché turkeys. As always, my sweet husband tries to be mindful of the fact that I, too, have a holiday by suggesting we also display Hanukkah decorations, which…what would that be? A baby pool filled with oil?

Speaking of oil, this American Thanksgiving Kyle deep-fried our turkey. I say “American” because this was our second deep-fried turkey in 2022 (and ever); we also had deep-fried Canadian Thanksgiving turkey, and that’s what I’m going to tell you about today.

As I’ve said in the past, Canadian Thanksgiving is exactly the same as American Thanksgiving, except that it’s on a Monday in October and it’s Canadian. This year, we decided to invite our eleven-year-old’s hockey team to our Canadian Thanksgiving dinner because their fall hockey season had recently ended and, more importantly, they are our friends. They are so much our friends that 1) I didn’t even bother to clean the house before the party (meh, they’ve seen it), and 2) when we sent the invite everyone immediately RSVP’d with the food they were going to bring, even though at no point did I say it was a potluck, because that’s what friends do (and especially what hockey friends do).

Our guests ended up volunteering so much stuff – including their own chairs – that all I needed to provide was the turkey. I did some quick math and figured that adults-plus-players-plus-siblings meant we could have up to fifty people, and so I would need two turkeys. No problem, I said to Kyle, I would make one turkey on Saturday (the day before the dinner) and one on Sunday (the day of).

“We’ll be out of town Friday and Saturday for a wedding,” Kyle reminded me. “Do you want me to see if someone else can do a turkey?”

“No,” I said, mindful of the fact that if I didn’t make the turkeys I would be nothing more than a guest at my own soiree. “I’ll figure something out.”

Here is The Something I figured out: I would get up early and roast one turkey at 8:00am, and the second at noon. I quadruple-checked the turkey weights and cooking times, and was 1000% solid on the fact that I could get two turkeys roasted and carved by the 5:00pm dinner. Plus, I’d have the back-up meatballs (if you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know that I always make back-up beef), which would go in the crockpot and wouldn’t be subject to any oven-related issues, should they appear.

The Thursday before the party, as I was packing up for the wedding, Kyle said to me,

“Oh, I told all the dads about the wedding issue and they said we could deep fry one of the turkeys. It would be much faster, only 45 minutes.”

“But we don’t have a deep fryer,” I said. “And we don’t know how to deep fry a turkey.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Kyle said with a wave of his hand. “The dads and I got this.”

Normally, this would be the kind of last-minute laissez faire that would be ripe for a-fightin’ – but, as noted, these were our friends and I knew they would never leave me uncooked…nor would they care if things didn’t go perfectly. Also, back-up beef.

“Sounds good,” I said.

Sho’nuff, by Sunday morning my patio was graced by one of the dad’s deep frying equipment. Kyle moved it into the garage while I got the first turkey in the oven.

“Do you know how to set up a turkey deep fryer?” I asked him.

“Probably,” he said. “We’ll do it after hockey.” (OH YEAH, I forgot to mention that; the boys had a skate directly before dinner.)

“Is that enough time?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “It only takes 45 minutes. We’ll come here after hockey at 4, set up, and have the turkey ready to eat by 5. We got this.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

Turkey #1 was done right at noon. I pulled it out of the oven as Kyle set down his coffee and started arbitrarily injecting and rubbing Turkey #2 with random objects.

“Are you supposed to do that?” I asked.

“Yes,” Kyle said. He held up the injector. “This was in the box.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to roast it?” I asked.

“Yep,” Kyle said. “We got this.”

“Are you sure…” I said, pointing at the empty oven, and then, “Sounds good.”

Since I had a few extra hours on my hands, I pulled up YouTube because I figured it might be helpful if at least one person in the Kosior household was educated on the turkey frying process. After sorting through a LOT of content about house fires (one of our guests was a firefighter, so that was his problem), I learned that the oil had to be heated before the turkey went in.

“The oil needs to be heated before the turkey goes in,” I said to Kyle as we cleaned up from lunch.

“Oh, okay,” Kyle said.

At 2:30pm, as Kyle was pulling out of the driveway for hockey, I shouted,

“Do you want me to start the oil while you are gone?”

And Kyle shouted back, “Nope, we got this.”

“Are you sure…” I shouted back, but he didn’t hear me.

Or maybe he did – because, twenty minutes later, I heard shuffling out in the garage. Our next-door neighbor (and party guest) was maneuvering the deep fryer onto a makeshift platform out the side door.

“Kyle said you were a little worried about time,” he said, dumping the oil into the pot.

“I’m a little worried about all of it,” I said.

“Not to worry,” he said. “We got this.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said.

Kyle was the fourth dad to arrive at the house after hockey. By that point, the first three dads – including the neighbor – were standing around the deep fryer looking at the temperature gauge.

“’Bout ten more degrees,” one of them said.

Another one tapped his hand on the side of the pot to confirm. “Yep, gettin’ there.”

The third nudged the stand with his toe and said, “Yep.”

Kyle, who had been wandering around the garage, took that “Yep” as his cue to go into the house. He emerged a few minutes later with an apron, gloves, and the turkey on the fryer stick(? Grabber? Unknown). He lowered the turkey into the deep fryer with the confidence of a man who had kerplunked a turkey in oil thousands of times before and was not doing it for the very first time without watching a single YouTube video – and then immediately wandered off again. His spot was replaced by two more dads, who also looked at the temperature gauge.

Those five dads stood around the turkey for forty-five minutes. At the end of the forty-five minutes, Kyle appeared from wherever he was, lifted the turkey out, set it on a cutting board in the kitchen, and, again, disappeared into the night. The five dads, plus two more, came inside as I was taking the turkey’s temperature. It was 15 degrees shy.

“It’ll get there; let it rest,” my neighbor said.

“Put it in the oven,” another dad said.

“Let it rest, then put it in the oven,” another dad said.

They stood around debating it for the next ten minutes – during which the turkey’s temperature got to its appropriate degree. As per his M.O., Kyle came back from the mall or whatever and carved the turkey. It was delicious.

That night, after we hadn’t cleaned up because everyone else had already done it, Kyle said to me,

“Deep-frying that turkey was really easy.”

“Easy for who?” I asked.

“Yep, pretty easy,” he said, ignoring me. “I’m going to do it for American Thanksgiving.”

“Better put the dads on speed-dial,” I said.

The photo above is of Kyle and his dad holding up the walls of the garage while the American Thanksgiving turkey was in the deep fryer. It, too, was delicious.

This week’s news has a Toy Farmer, a real farmer, and a lot of nice people looking to make the holidays bright for seniors and families. Read on.

The Grand Forks Santa Claus Girls are at it for the 106th year, delivering 1,400 gift packages to low-income families around the community with the help of donors such as Deeks Pizza. (Grand Forks Herald)

A management class at Mandan High School cooked up Thanksgiving dinner for five Roosevelt Elementary families. (KFYR TV)

Speaking of Thanksgiving, the Jamestown community put on its 31st free Thanksgiving meal, distributing 1,060 drive-up dinners. (Jamestown Sun)

Live in Fargo? Home Instead is looking for donors to help purchase 500 gifts for isolated seniors this year. (Valley News Live)

Live in Grand Forks? Alexis Kringstad is putting together gift boxes for area elementary school families and is looking for dollars to make it happen. (Grand Forks Herald)

A mobile meats lab is making its way around southwest North Dakota to teach kids about ag careers. (KFYR TV)

Happy 111th birthday to Fargo’s Helene Sandvig! (Fargo Forum)

Kyle sent me this article with the note, “This guy is my hero.” Dickinson’s John Jaeger is 92 years old and still farming…with his vintage equipment. (Dickinson Press)

This is the story of Toy Farmer magazine, which has been publishing from LaMoure since 1978. (Grand Forks Herald)

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A Thanksgiving story | November 23, 2022

By the time you read this it will be Thanksgiving Eve and I will be pretending like I’m so overwhelmed with preparations while my mother “gives me a hand” by doing it all. I am very grateful for my parents (my dad will participate by staying out of the way), and my husband and father-in-law (Kyle decided to deep-fry the turkey, which…has been a whole thing), and my children (who will spend the day fighting, as per Thanksgiving tradition), and all of you. Thank you for being with me these past two years.

Also, thank you for the kind messages related to my grandfather’s passing. My grandpa lived a very long (he would have been 96 in December), happy, love-filled, comfortable life, and died peacefully with all his wits about him – which, as his rabbi said, is something we should all hope to do. Still, losing someone who adores you unconditionally feels pretty lonely, and so I appreciate the attention.

Anyway, I thought I’d share a story about my grandparents because 1) they were awesome, and 2) this particular event coincidentally occurred at Thanksgiving.

Like I said, my Grandpa Mel and Grandma Mar (her name was Marion, but we called her Grandma Mar because grandmother in French is grand-mere, which sort of sounds like Grand Mar; and if my grandmother had to be old enough to be a grandma she would at least be a glamorous French one) were fantastic. They were on a first-name basis with half of the maître d’s in New York and New Jersey. They vacationed with (and had a bonkers story about) Dick Cavett – and since I’m name-dropping, Judy Blume was at my engagement party because she was writer-friends with my grandma. My grandpa performed magic tricks at all of my childhood birthday parties; and for my eighteenth birthday, they took my sister and me to Paris and London. I lived with them for a college summer, during which we’d celebrate the end of each workday with a martini. They were fun, and cool, and had amazing taste, and sought out unique and interesting experiences.

They were also totally normal grandparents, and that’s what I’m going to tell you about today.

It was the year 1999, and I was getting ready to take the Amtrak train from Boston to New Jersey for some quality Thanksgiving/Grandma and Grandpa time. I called my grandparents from our apartment landline (because it was 1999) to let them know I was headed to the station and expected to get on the 2:00 pm (or whatever, it was 22 years ago) train.

“What time will you arrive?” Grandma asked.

“I think around 5,” I told her. “I can call you from a payphone (re: 1999) when I get there to confirm?”

“No need,” Grandma said. “Grandpa’s already at the station.” We both laughed, although I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not because my grandfather was always VERY EARLY to EVERYTHING.

(Here’s a side story to that: The Grand Forks International Airport is actually one of the busiest in the country for take-offs and landings because we have an aviation school in town; however, the city only has 50,000 people so the airport itself is just two gates. Today those two gates are in a fancy airport building; but, in the 1980’s, it was one big room separated by a metal detector with a restaurant tacked onto the end. My grandparents were flying back to New Jersey on the 7:00 am flight, and so my grandfather got to the airport at 3:00 am…and then sat in the car for two hours, because the airport itself didn’t open until 5:00. Finally, a worker arrived; and so my grandparents went in, the worker checked their bags, took them through the metal detector, and then ripped their boarding pass on the other side. When they sat down in the waiting room, my grandma checked her watch: 5:08.)

“I hope you do get in at 5 so we can go to the house before dinner,” Grandma said. “We need you to help us with something very important.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

Earlier that year, my grandparents had bought their first compact disc player; in celebration, my uncle had gifted them several CDs of their favorite jazz musicians.

“The player is broken,” Grandma said. “We need you to fix it.”

“Well, I don’t know much about CD players,” I told her, “But I’ll do what I can.”

“You are a technology wiz,” she said (Note: I was not). “I’ve been telling everyone about that award you won.”

“Which award?” I asked.

“You know, the very prestigious award from BU,” she said.

I thought for a moment. “The Dean’s List? That’s not an award, it’s just a semester grade thing. Lots of people are on it.”

“Maybe,” she said, brushing me off. “But you’re the very best.”

“Obviously,” I said.

I arrived in New Jersey, and, of course, Grandpa was there waiting for me. He gave me a big kiss and a hug and said,

“We are going to the house before dinner because we need you to help us with something very important.”

“Grandma told me,” I said. “I’ll do what I can.”

“You are a champion of academia and science,” he said (Note: Nope). “I have been telling everyone about how you got a job with an international company your first month at school.”

I thought for a moment. “The Gap? I’m not even allowed to use the cash register.”

“You’ll be running the place by the end of the year,” he said, brushing me off. “They are going to make you the CEO.”

“Naturally,” I said.

At the house, they presented me with a little round boombox.

“We put the CD in,” Grandpa said. “And we pressed play, but nothing happens.”

“You have to turn it on first,” I said, flipping the On/Off switch. The CD player fired up, and a trumpet blared.

“Ahhhhh!” Grandma sighed. “You did it! Such a smart girl.”

“Smart and good-looking,” Grandpa said. “She gets both from her grandmother.”

He offered his hand to Grandma, and the two of them danced around the living room for the rest of the song. We left for dinner a few minutes later, where we toasted the coming Thanksgiving, as well as my exceptional genius and beauty.

My parents, while very supportive, are fully aware of my intellectual abilities – and so I don’t think we’ll be celebrating my brilliance this year. I’m sure, however, we’ll raise a glass to my (and my sister’s) children – whom my parents know, without a doubt, to be the brightest stars in the entire universe.

The photo above is of my grandma and grandpa and was taken by my Uncle Dean when they were 45 years old (and he was 19). It was the first photo Dean had taken with an SLR camera – a used Nikkormat for $175. Related/unrelated, my uncle – Dean Landew – is a rock musician with a bunch of songs on the Radio Indie Alliance Top 10. You check out his music here.

This week’s news has makeover artists, football players, and monks. Read on.

Country House and Angel 37 paired up to offer a no-catch free Thanksgiving dinner on Monday. (KX Net)

Patrons of the Heavens Helper’s Soup Café in Bismarck were treated to a limo ride and makeovers, courtesy of Glance Salon. (KFYR TV)

The North Dakota State College of Science football team – including their 49-year-old defensive lineman, Ray Ruschel – are playing for the NJCAA DIII National Championship next week. (Not The Bee)

The entire town of Hankinson is celebrating Cody Mauch as he heads to the NFL. (Fargo Forum)

Elementary, middle, and high school students in Fargo filled the Fargodome with food donations for the Great Plains Food Bank. (Valley News Live)

In “holy crap” news, a Colgate farmhand survived being trapped in a bin for an hour. (Grand Forks Herald)

Did you watch the Artemis One launch last week? If so, you marveled at the efforts of the UND and NDSU students who helped make it happen. (KFYR TV)

El Belfour – a former UND player and one of the five winningest goaltenders in NHL history – suited up for a rec game in Grand Forks last week. (Grand Forks Herald)

Here’s a cool photo of some early ice pillars near Tioga. (Facebook)

The monks of Assumption Abbey in Richardton pulled out the sleds for a little snowy fun. (KFYR TV)

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The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade | November 24, 2021

Happy Thanksgiving! I am very grateful for all of you lovely readers. In appreciation, I am going to share with you a little-known fact about myself: I once danced in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.

To be fair, the only reason more people aren’t aware of this major accomplishment is that I tend to forget about it until I see the parade on TV every year because, apparently, my life is so exciting that I can’t be expected to retain every amazing thing that happens to me on an annual basis. Anyways, here’s the story:

The year was 1997. Harry Potter was published, Dolly was cloned, and Grand Forks was still goopy from The Flood. I, however, could not be bothered with any of those things because I was the newly-named Co-Captain of the Grand Forks Central Censations Dance Team alongside my best friend, Shosti. Shosti and I were basically the best co-captains the Censations had ever and would ever see because I just said so. Also, we were loud.

As the best co-captains the Censations had ever and would ever see, we were invited to try out for Mike Miller’s Universal Cheer Association (UCA) and Universal Dance Association (UDA) Spirit of America Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Dance Stars Performance. I can’t exactly remember what the try-out entailed, but I want to say we videotaped ourselves doing a series of required dance steps and then (loudly) talked about how we were excited to represent Mike Miller and the UDA. Naturally, we were selected.

Shosti and I flew into New York the Sunday before the big day. My parents also flew into New York because that’s where my mom’s entire family lived and we were spending Thanksgiving with them, but Shosti and I were very much on our own adventure and were not associated with them, duh. We were wearing our bright red Mike Miller’s Universal Cheer Association and Universal Dance Association Spirit of America Dance Stars jackets and yellow-strapped carry-alls, which we had received in the mail along with our schedule of events and Thanksgiving Day costume. If you assumed, like we did, that our costumes were the stereotypical dance team uniform with the little skirts and cropped shells, you would be wrong.

The theme of our dance was “Put On a Happy Face,” and our costumes were literal reflections of that theme. The top was a brightly-colored fleece sweater dress – Shosti was hot pink, I was neon green – with a giant yellow smiley face patch in the center. On the bottom, we wore equally-thick nude dance tights (imagine a flesh-colored sausage roll with feet) under black stirrup pants. Our accessories were yellow and gold pom-poms, white dance shoes, and yellow hairbows.

We didn’t need to wear our costumes to our first day of rehearsal, which was good because it was about 2,000 degrees in those fleeces. Shosti and I were both a little salty that the cheerleaders – who had their own routine – got to wear actual cheerleading costumes. At least, I think we were both salty; we showed up to a mile-long ballroom full of 600 hairbow-clad dancers ready to put on some happy faces and were immediately split up by fleece color.

The next three days were a whirlwind of rehearsals, punctuated by a few New York-y activities – trips to the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, and Times Square; a performance of Chicago (which, coincidentally, my family also attended but not with us); hanging out in our hotel room with the other dancers; and shopping. For shopping, we were paired up with a group of girls from Oklahoma who were unimpressed that their retail buddies were the only two participants from North Dakota and not from somewhere exotic, like Oklahoma.

The rest of the time was for dancing and smiling. From 7:30 in the morning to 11:00 at night, we danced and smiled. We danced by color; then we danced with another color; then we mixed in all the colors and danced some more. As this was the ‘90s, our song was a stylized techno-jazzy version of “Put On a Happy Face” with various cartoon voices coming in and out of the melody declaring, “Be Happy! NOW!” The performance ended with all of us shoving our poms under our chins, looking to the sky, and being happy…NOW!

At some point, we were declared perfect and took our show to the streets. Specifically, the grandstand for our TV tech rehearsal. If you’ve never seen the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, here is how it works: while there is an entire parade happening down a circuitous route in front of millions of people, all of the televised performances happen in front of the grandstand. I’m not sure how many floats, balloons, bands, and musical/dance guests go through the parade every year, but it takes roughly three hours to accomplish it all, and it is timed down to the minute.

We waited in the dark for our moment on the grandstand. The wind was howling around us, and I watched smugly in my warm fleece as the cheerleaders shivered nearby. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is best-known for its giant character balloons, and our grandstand time kept getting pushed back because the balloon wranglers were having trouble keeping Sonic the Hedgehog under control. Suddenly, we were given a cue; we ran out on the street, did roughly five seconds (and a million smiles) of our dance, and were quickly shuffled off and sent back to our hotel rooms to prepare for the next day.

The day of the parade was colder and windier than the night before. We walked down the streets, shaking our pom-poms to a set rhythm while a school band played marching songs in front of us. We had been forewarned that we’d be stopping every few minutes for the televised performances, but some of our stops were longer than expected. Later, we’d find out we were walking in what would be called the Great Balloon Massacre of 1997 after a dozen of the balloons were either damaged or purposely punctured (The Cat in the Hat and Barney balloons specifically made a lot of news at the time).

Finally, it was our moment. You can watch the performance below (it should start right up, but if not, it’s at 1:36:00), and if you look closely, Shosti is one of the pink dancers!

And then that was it. Four days of rehearsals for one live performance. It was very fun, and definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience (also it will take a lifetime to get that song out of my head after 20,000 runthroughs).

The photo above was taken on the subway. If you’re wondering how they could let those young North Dakota girls go on the subway by themselves in New York City, the answer is that there were about thirty other girls taking the picture because we went everywhere as a red-jacketed gang.

This week’s news has adoptable grandparents, Bad Pennies, and a Portland recording artist. Read on.

Dickinson’s Shirley Dukart, founder of The Power of 100 Women Who Care, has been honored with an Outstanding Volunteer Award. (Dickinson Press)

Congratulations to Mrs. North Dakota America Alexandra Lunseth, who competed in the Mrs. America Pageant in Las Vegas last weekend. (Grand Forks Herald)

The Good Shepherd Home in Watford City is looking for people to “adopt” some the residents without families in the area. (McKenzie County Farmer)

The Dickinson “Bad Pennies” are putting together boxes of food and essentials to help families have a happy Thanksgiving. (KFYR TV)

Grand Forks’ Andrew Stenehjem (under the name Andrew Stonehome) has released his debut album. (Poprock Record)

Bismarck’s Gabe Brown is the recipient of a $250,000 grant in support of his no-till research and practices. (KX Net)