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Giving thanks (again) for Thanksgiving
Oddly enough, here in the UK there isn’t much interest in celebrating the American Pilgrims’ survival of religious persecution and New England winters. So as I travel back to Scotland (where I’ll soon be making the traditional American dry turkey shreds), I’m making a list of the things I have to be thankful for this year:
- You’d better believe I’m giving thanks that we’re not sitting on that band of snow blanketing parts of the US!
- As we recover from this month’s unthinkable horror in Paris, Mali, and across the globe, I’m thankful for those such as Washington State’s Governor Jay Inslee, who refuses to join the majority of his fellow governors in further punishing refugees for the very actions they are fleeing
- I’m grateful for the grace and humor of Belgians who responded to their government’s nationwide lockdown during the hunt for terrorists by tweeting pictures of their cats
- I’m grateful for the funny, charming, articulate, and all-round lovely readers who’ve stopped by this blog during the past year. I wish I could give you each some of our candied sweet potatoes. (No, seriously. I can’t stand that stuff. It’s all got to go…)
Meanwhile, here’s my annual Thanksgiving repeat, a blast-from-the-past from my column-writing days. (Published: Champaign Urbana News-Gazette, November, 1991)
The Middle East? The economy? National health coverage? Anti-or pro-choice? How to cook the perfect turkey?
Guess which question is on the minds of the 248,709,873 Americans preparing to shred 535 million pounds of turkey this Thanksgiving Day. (Actually, 248,709,872 Americans — my 7-year-old prefers peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.)
My 7-year-old: Q. Which side of a turkey has the most feathers? A. The outside.
It’s no surprise that modern cooks are confused about turkeys. In 1621 our pilgrim forefathers, after surviving starvation and disease, not to mention fear of witches, Native Americans, and our pilgrim foremothers, crawled out of their pilgrim forehuts and stood around making gobbling noises.
To local turkeys, these irresistible noises said, “Hey, sailor, new in town?”
Our pilgrim forefathers promptly invented Thanksgiving. Every year after that, Americans would go outside, make gobbling noises, and bring home a turkey. But there have been changes since those pilgrim forebirds. Modern turkeys are naked, frozen, keep their bodily organs in plastic baggies, and are (after years of scientific breeding at the Dolly Parton Research Institute) 95% breast meat.
They are also so much larger that Americans who make the traditional gobbling noises are actually trying to say, “I have just suffered serious physical damage from lifting that sucker and I don’t think I’ll be able to have children.”
My 9-year-old: Q. How do you tell a turkey from an elephant? A. If you don’t know, I’m not eating Thanksgiving dinner at your house.
HOW TO FIX THE PERFECT TURKEY
Americans attach too much importance to Thanksgiving turkey. After all, even if you do blow the main dish of the single, most important meal of the year and are branded a pathetic, incompetent failure in front of your in-laws, family, and friends, the dog will still love you. Probably. If she gets the scraps.
“But Barb,” you protest, “surely there is A Better Way.” To you Norman Rockwell wannabes I say, “Marge Klindera.” Marge is a supervisor for the 45 turkey mavens at the Butterball Turkey Talk Line. They ministered to over 220,000 cases of turkey-trauma last year, 6600 on T-Day alone, from desperate chefs who wanted to know:
- What if you live in Seattle and on Thanksgiving day yours is one of 20,000 homes where the power goes out during peak roasting hours? (And what if someone –we’re not naming names, but he’ll be on sofa sentry until next Thanksgiving — forgot to turn off the grill last time and the propane is all gone? Time for the traditional Thanksgiving bonfire. All those booklets from the power company pointing out that your neighbors are much better at saving energy than you will make excellent fuel. For that festive yet personalized touch, I hear Martha Stewart Online has instructions for making a homemade burnable effigy of power company executives.)
- What if you forget you’ve put Tom in the bathtub to defrost and all of a sudden you notice you’re showering with the main course? (This little secret is between you and Tom, and I don’t think he’s going to talk.)
- What if you’ve cooked the turkey in its plastic wrapper and you wonder if those blue and yellow markings on its skin are edible? (Marge seems like a very nice person. I really don’t think she makes this stuff up…)
- What if you can’t find the neck cavity for stuffing because you’ve never had a relationship with a turkey who wasn’t past tense, so you’re not sure exactly which opening represented his neck when he was present tense?
- (My personal favorite) What if your kitten crawls into the turkey and falls asleep and as you’re about to pop it in the oven you notice a long furry tail hanging out which you’re pretty sure is not standard-issue turkey equipment?
Marge was also happy to tell me the easiest way to fix turkey:
- Make stuffing. There are only two ways to make stuffing; your mother’s way and the wrong way.
- If you don’t remove the little plastic bag of giblets before cooking, your turkey will not be ruined. Your family, however, will be physically incapable of saying the word ‘Thanksgiving’ without mentioning this incident. (“Remember the time back in ’91 when Great-Great-Grandma cooked the plastic bag inside the turkey?” “Yeah, that was pretty funny. Um… what’s a turkey?” “I dunno… what’s a Grandma?”)
- Rub skin with vegetable oil and place turkey on a flat rack. Cook at 325 degrees until golden brown, tenting the breast area with foil to keep it from drying out. Turkey is done when a meat thermometer says 180-185 degrees, NOT when your husband says the guests are going to start eating the piano if they don’t get some dinner soon.
“But you don’t want to overcook it as it could become dry, tough, and shredded when carved,” advises Marge. (Come on, Marge — how could it be Thanksgiving without the traditional turkey shreds?)
MORE HOMEMADE TURKEY JOKES
My 7-year-old: Q. What do you get when you cross a turkey with an octopus? A. Finally, enough drumsticks to go around.
My 5-year-old: Q. Why did the turkey cross the road? A. It was the chicken’s day off.
Sue Vincent said:
Areat start to the day, Barb 🙂
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barbtaub said:
Thanks Sue. So…are you all set for Thanksgiving?
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Sue Vincent said:
As a Yorkshire lass I don’t do Thanksgiving, but gave my thanks at equinox. Anyway.. my boss wouldn’t give me the day off 😉
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barbtaub said:
What is it with British holidays? I guess I can see why Thanksgiving isn’t a big deal here. After all you’ll get the day off when you celebrate those most deeply, spiritually meaningful of national holidays–Early May, Spring, and Summer Bank Holidays.
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Sue Vincent said:
Er no, actually… I don’t get those either… or Christmas day…or weekends or in fact days off at all unless pre-booked as holiday… the joys of being a carer…but the alternative would have been worse 🙂
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Ellen Hawley said:
That’s true about stuffing. My mother made it from a mix that came in a cellophane bag. It’s the only right way. As a result, no one likes my stuffing and there are now no ways of making stuffing in my kitchen. The turkey cooks faster as a result.
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barbtaub said:
Of course, the deep dark Thing They Never Tell You is that actually, nobody likes Thanksgiving dinner. By the time the cook(s) have spent so much personal time with Turkey Tom and his assorted trimmings, the very last thing on the planet they want to eat is turkey. And after the obligatory Ignoring of the Macy’s Parade on TV, everyone spends the day couch potatoing in front of the football games, then stuffs themselves fuller than TurkeyTom, followed by the traditional wallowing around in various stages of triptophan-induced coma. So that’s fun. Can’t wait until next year!
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Ellen Hawley said:
The way you describe it, it does sound irresistible. My family was non-traditional in many (many, many) ways, including not sitting around a table for holiday dinners (not enough room in those New York apartments–everyone parked themselves on whatever furniture they could find and if they couldn’t, on the floor. That left my mother free not to bother eating Thanksgiving dinner without much of anyone noticing. She said that after cooking it she didn’t feel like eating.
And we never, ever watched football. We’re lucky we weren’t run out of the country.
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barbtaub said:
My taxi driver here in Washington D.C. told me that all any American needs for a great Thanksgiving is a drumstick and a TV. I told him I don’t own a TV. I could tell he felt bad about taking my money…
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Ellen Hawley said:
I’ve been a cab driver. We never felt bad about taking someone’s money.
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Mary Smith said:
Brilliant, Barb. Thank you.
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barbtaub said:
Thanks so much Mary!
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Jadi Campbell said:
Great post, Barb Has me smiling even now. I just cooked an early holiday dinner for visitors from the States. My husband tracked down a French turkey at our German grocery store… 5 pounds. The smallest turkey I’ve ever roasted (I referred to it all night as ‘the turklet’). But tradition reigns, even in smaller portions, on this day of celebrating family and friends. Sigh. I wish you a wonderful, happy Thanksgiving!
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barbtaub said:
It’s the same problem in the UK. People absolutely do NOT eat turkey until Christmas dinner. So my hat’s off to your resourceful hub for coming up with the turklet. Well done!
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Jadi Campbell said:
PS: And I loved the jokes! Every one of those kids deserves an extra piece of pumpkin or apple pie, probably one of each!
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quiall said:
ooh that was great fun! Your son is a comic in training!
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barbtaub said:
Ha! (We all tell him to stick with his day job.)
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sknicholls said:
My diet has me on the simplest of spreads for Thanksgiving dinner. No white potatoes, no stuffing, no cranberry sauce. Plain old turkey, green beans and yes, I can eat sweet potatoes…and since they are the closet thing to sweets that I am allowed, I will relish every bite.
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barbtaub said:
I weep for you. Hopefully, your diet allows copious alcohol?
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sknicholls said:
One glass of dry red wine after dinner…always. 😉 Sometimes two.
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Georgia Rose said:
Candied sweet potato?? Is this a thing? As if it’s not already sweet/disgusting enough already. Brilliant Barb, I loved this little insight into this ritual 🙂
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barbtaub said:
If you are in the American heartland, sooner or later you will be confronted with some form of candied sweet potatoes. Be warned: many innocent marshmallows were sacrificed to make this dish. The name alone is possibly the biggest food lie ever, as it involves neither candy nor potatoes.
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Georgia Rose said:
I have nothing against a marshmallow, innocent or otherwise, and would put my hand up to have a bowl of these unsullied by sweet potato instead. 🙂
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judithbarrow1 said:
Reblogged this on Barrow Blogs: .
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barbtaub said:
Thanks so much for the reblog!
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crystinlgoodwin said:
Haha, I love this! I had a great chuckle – thanks, Barb!
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