Triscadecaphobia & Turkey

The fear of the number thirteen. Who knew? And no connection to the turkey! LOL

I was listening to a story on NPR (National Public Radio) just now and heard about this author name Nathaniel Lachenmeyer, who wrote a book called Curiously Enough, which attempts to uncover the history, psychology and evolution of the unlucky number 13.

He said it began in the 1700's and started with not having thirteen at dinner, because one of them would die within a year. A club sprang up in 1892, called the Thirteen Club. They set out to dispel the superstitions of the number thirteen. The author got hooked when he researched who the Thirteen Club were and what they did. He loved their macabre senses of humor. And I thought they were pretty funny too. LOL The club lasted until 1920.

He said the Thirteen Club planned a dinner with thirteen people to prove that none of them would die within a year. Then had the dinner in 1886 and they pulled out all the superstitions. People had to walk under ladders and past silhouettes of black cats. They had grave stones around and broken mirrors. They did prove that after a year nobody died. The only thing that died was the superstition of thirteen at the dinner table. The other superstitions seemed to have remained. I just thought this was interesting and wanted to share. Ther was more to it, but that was all I could remember to write here. You may read or even hear the story at npr.org . Under Weekend Edition Sunday.

Now, onto more important things, like my turkey dinner last night! Wow. It was fabulous. I used a cooking bag for the turkey. I put slits in the turkey and added some melted butter as well. It was the best turkey I have ever made. Right down to the moist white meat and the perfect color. It could have been a cover of a Thanksgiving Magazine edition. I am normally the worst with making turkey gravy. But the cooking bag enabled me to get all the juice and make a perfect gravy right in the disposable foil roasting pan on the stove. I even bought turkey gravy at Costco, because I know how my gravy turned out in previous years. I will forever use the oven bag! I use them occasionally for chicken, I don't know why I never tried one for the bigger bird. Anyhow, thought I would share that too.

Costco was fun. They had 50 sq. yards of wired ribbon for $7.95 a roll. Got some of those. Got everything on my list and didn't stray very much. They had beautiful, huge poinsettias, and I didn't buy even one. I figured that with a dog now, I would avoid poising him and they were too big to put on the rails of the decks. They would not have done well in the house either. Oh well. I did get one of my favorite things there, a Caesar salad with a turkey croissant for about $6. A great deal and yummy too. Funny that I had a turkey sandwich for lunch and then turkey for dinner. Oh well.

I will not have to go back for a very long time though. Which will be good on the wallet!