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The Real Thanksgiving Turkeys

by Sherry Antonetti in Food on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 6:00 AM

Family lore across the country, across tax brackets, across religion and region, color and creed, includes several eternal debates on the food to be served on the fourth Thursday of November. 

Magazines this month offer helpful solutions and recipes for the big family meal, but none of them addresses the very real problems that surface in the potent cocktail of family, excessive food, and four days off.

Here’s the real deal—the meat of what makes Thanksgiving such an anchor of oral history and family lore.

Issue #1: To Cook or Kill the Turkey

Thanksgiving seems to beckon those who seldom prepare food to issue health inspector warnings about the need to cook a Turkey for at least a solar year to avoid any chance of turkey borne illness. Somehow, the fact that fowl, possibly including turkey has graced the table during the calendar on some days other than Thanksgiving never mitigates the need to obsess about how long to cook the bird.

Solution: To keep the family peace, the Butterball is cooked until the meat resembles petrified wood.  Cook can either have a second bird or also buy a ham. Thanksgiving is about many things. Frugality isn’t one of them.

Issue #2: Stuffing

The debate about what type of stuffing to be served can take on religious significance. Family fealty to a particular type of stuffing can make deviations of any kind—whether by a newbie or by an established pro looking to experiment—the target of additional intentional sacks in the traditional turkey bowl outside.

Solution: To prevent unnecessary roughness, make the stuffing however you want. Just don’t tell anyone what you are doing. Since most stuffing has a bulk of base ingredients, if people see you chopping onions and adding parsley and chicken broth to a mess of bread, they aren’t going to be too worried. Once it’s on the table, hunger and the subsequent food coma will protect the cook from any unnecessary roughness from a stuffing zealot.

Issue #3 Are Those the Vegetables?

In my childhood, the vegetables were almost an afterthought. What with the pear salad, the mashed potatoes, stuffing and turkey and gravy, there wasn’t much room on the plate for something green. Now a days, there’s almost a guilt induced obligation to have vegetables on the plate.

Once green things make it to the menu, there is the debate between the gilded and the unvarnished, followed by the crisp versus the wilted.

Solution: Serve apple, pecan and pumpkin pie. Place them next to the vegetables.  No one will remember the greens.

Issue #4: Dieters Versus Everyone Else

For some reason, some people think the Wednesday before our national holiday is the right time to start a new health regimen. Pre-turkey trash talk bragging allows a self-proclaimed “healthy eater” to feel virtuous before the table’s even set.

Most of these holiday puritans weaken before the table of plenty.  Serving themselves skinless dry turkey and a touch of the light mashed potatoes with a spoonful of cranberries, they’ll pause to mention excess calories and sugar.  Then they see the rest of us pouring gravy on top of the stuffing and the potatoes and the meat. Taking an extra roll, they’ll still feel virtuous. 

The smells work their magic such that the dieter goes back for seconds, this time with gravy. (It’s only once a year they’ll explain). Thirds will include stuffing and potatoes with a roll to sop up anything left. The dieter will clear the table. It’s a ploy to snitch extra stuffing from the kitchen.  No one says anything when said dieter has a large slice of pumpkin pie with whipped cream with a cup of coffee later. (Except maybe the dieter who points out pumpkin is a really healthy and underutilized vegetable in the modern world).

Solution: If this is you, don’t step on the scale tomorrow or the rest of us will be tempted to experience pleasure from your suffering.

Issue #5: Who gets to nap

By family fiat, the one who cooked the most gets the couch. Small children should be given unlimited television during this regenerative cycle for adults who consumed too many calories. Any people still awake get dish detail. Memo to the successful dieter at the table: This means you.

Happy Thanksgiving!

—Sherry Antonetti is a fortunate spouse, freelance writer, and a full-time mother to nine sources of inspiration, laughs, and a lot of laundry. 

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