Thanksgiving
Beware the giblets.
The Thanksgiving holiday tradition dates back to 1621, when the Pilgrims, who left Europe to escape the metric system, held a feast to express their gratitude for the fact that, after a very difficult year in the New World, only about half of them were dead. That first celebration included the wearing of comical hats as well as a friendly sports competition with a local indigenous tribe, the “Wampanoag,” which is the Native American word for “Commanders.”
Today we honor the memory of the Pilgrims by holding football games on Thanksgiving, as well as every weekend and most Monday and Thursday nights from August through February. But our most cherished Thanksgiving tradition is getting together with our loved ones, including the ones we don’t like, and consuming a large meal with many side dishes, including for some reason string bean casserole, a.k.a. “the fruitcake of side dishes.”
Of course the main traditional Thanksgiving dish is turkey, which must be thoroughly cooked before it can be served to humans because, in the words of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “it’s basically a salmonella colony the size of a bowling ball.” Food-safety experts recommend that you cook your turkey in a 350-degree oven for a minimum of 13 minutes per pound, which means that if, for example, your turkey weighs 17.39 pounds, there is no way you have the math skills to figure out how long you’re supposed to leave it in there. A good rule of thumb is two days.
Deep-Frying A Turkey
Deep-frying is an increasingly popular way to cook Thanksgiving turkey because men can do it outdoors while drinking. Before cooking the turkey, make sure it’s completely thawed and patted dry, and that the area around the fryer is cleared of children and pets and any sign of human civilization. Then very slowly lower the turkey into the heated oil, as shown here.
Your turkey is done when it reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees, as shown here.
Enjoy!
A Word About ‘Giblets’
When you buy a turkey, the first thing you should do is reach inside the bodily orifice and grope around to see if there are any “giblets.” These are extraneous turkey parts such as “gizzards” and other random objects that bored employees at the meat-processing plant like to put inside turkeys as a prank. You should throw them away immediately. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO EAT THE GIBLETS. You have no idea what could be in there. Shown below are just some of the items that undercover federal poultry inspectors recently found posing as giblets inside a randomly selected supermarket turkey, whose name (Tom) is being withheld.
How To Carve A Turkey
The best way to carve a turkey is to get an electric knife, a carving fork and a large carving board, then turn these items over, along with the turkey, to Howard Bolner. Howard is the father-in-law of my brother-in-law, Steve, and he has been carving our Thanksgiving turkeys for decades. Here he is at work in 2023, operating under the watchful gaze of our late dog Lucy, who is ready to spring into action in case anything needs to be licked off the floor.
Howard is a turkey surgeon. He gets ALL the meat off the turkey. He gets the meat off the neighbors’ turkeys. I would highly recommend him to you, but we have him permanently reserved. Get your own Howard.
A Word About Putting Raisins In Turkey Stuffing
Don’t.
What About Putting Raisins In Apple Pie?
Absolutely not.
Is There Anything I Can Put Raisins In?
You can dump them in the string bean casserole. Nobody eats that anyway.
An Alternative To Traditional Turkey
If you’d like to avoid the hassle and potential hospitalization involved in cooking a traditional biological turkey, you might consider going with an inflatable turkey, which is a real product that is available from Archie McPhee.
At the suggestion of Sue Eckhardt, a paying subscriber to this Substack, I purchased an inflatable turkey and tried it out in the privacy of my home. I have to admit that when it’s deflated, it doesn’t look very appetizing:
But when it’s fully inflated, it... OK, it looks like this:
On the plus side, the inflatable turkey is 100 percent recyclable; you can serve it year after year. Its biggest drawback, as a Thanksgiving meal, is that it’s inedible. But of course the same can be said for string bean casserole. The difference is, the inflatable turkey can be part of a delicious crowd-pleasing main dish: All you have to do is garnish it with a large delivery pepperoni pizza.
Not only is this dish easy to prepare, but it’s 100 percent vegetarian-friendly if you pick off the pepperoni. Also you know in your heart that pizza tastes way better than turkey.
What To Watch On TV Besides Football
You can watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which consists mainly of B-list celebrities lip-syncing songs while perched on floats promoting products such as Serta mattresses. But the parade also features large helium balloons, and every once in a while these provide genuine holiday excitement.
The most exciting Macy’s parade ever happened in 1997, when winds of over 40 miles per hour caused some of the balloons to wreak havoc on the streets of Manhattan. According to the excellent New York Times account, at one point a police officer had to use a knife to stab the Pink Panther in the tail to get it under control. Elsewhere two spectators were injured by a falling lamppost arm that had been struck by the Cat in the Hat.
But for sheer drama it would be difficult to top what happened in that fateful parade to Barney, the purple dinosaur. Here’s a video of Barney’s last few minutes:
The real drama kicks in at around the 1:38 mark, when Barney, buffeted by the high winds and staggering around like a cruise-ship passenger after eight Bahama Mamas, is gashed by a lamppost and starts to come apart, so you can see his internal organs, including what looks like a spleen the size of a UPS truck. Trooper that he is, Barney keeps right on smiling even as he continues to disintegrate, until finally he collapses face-down on Sixth Avenue like a giant mutant eggplant. I don’t see how anybody who has ever been the parent of a small child can watch this video and not feel a surge of genuinely heartfelt joy. And THAT is what Thanksgiving is all about.
Now let’s hear from you paying subscribers, for whom I am very thankful.
The rest of us are out here carving turkeys like medieval surgeons with dull instruments while you've got Howard Bolner on permanent retainer. This is the kind of privilege the Pilgrims came to America to escape.
The only way to carve a turkey is with a chainsaw. Otherwise, it's like folding a fitted sheet.