If you give a housewife a gallon of cider, and she finds it in the back of her refrigerator, going fizzy, she will google “how to use fizzy cider.” She will find an idea that makes her mind sizzle, and she will latch onto it because it’s called Apple Cider Brined Turkey.
When she thinks about turkey, she suddenly feels hungry. She went to her mother’s house for Thanksgiving and consequently she does not have leftover turkey in her own freezer. She decides that she did not have enough turkey in her life recently, and she should purchase one for a second feast after the feast. Alas, the housewife can find none anywhere in this year of turkey shortage, but she figures that one fowl in brine is pretty much the same as another fowl in brine. She goes to her freezer and pulls out chicken quarters. When she sees how icy the freezer has become, she knows that she will have to defrost it before her family butchers the deer her men have brought home. She fixes the brine and drops the chicken quarters into it, then she tackles the freezer. It looks very nice when it is done, and she finds a loaf of stale bread to make stuffing. It only tastes a little bit freezer-burned and the butter will mask that, she decides. She even has a bit of limp celery in the produce drawer to give it flavor.
If she makes faux turkey and dressing, there will need to be mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. She has seven potatoes in her pantry, and that is considered a good sign. She has a large sweet potato that she needs to use, so she cooks it to make sweet potato pie, AKA “almost pumpkin pie.” While the sweet potato is cooling, she makes a quick grocery run for cranberries and pie crusts and chicken stock for gravy.
She drains the brine off the chicken, and she bakes her first ever sweet potato pies at the same time as it is roasting. When the chicken starts to go golden brown like the recipe promises, she slides the stuffing into the oven and cooks the seven peeled potatoes. She turns the chicken stock into gravy and she mashes the potatoes.
If you give a housewife the ingredients for a Thanksgiving feast, she will cook and mash and add more butter, and then she will call her people to partake of it. She will boast unwisely to them that the pie is sweet potatoes. Because she has funny children, she now has sweet potato pie leftovers in her fridge. She does not have stale bread or limp celery or any more fizzy cider though.
(And her freezer is very clean.)
wocket in my pocket 
And the housewives reading this will click their tongues and with a Rachel Lynde air say “oh I would never tell my children what’s in the pie.” But we would and we do. And so the world keeps turning.
I admire your creativity and it inspires me. 🙌 Delicious food story!
After the funny children went to bed, the housewife crept into the kitchen and opened the fridge, “Now I will eat the pie myself!” said the housewife. And she did! 😋
We think the same way, you and I. 😂