GIVING THEM THE BIRD

Most folks are eagerly anticipating Thanksgiving, talking nostalgically about family recipes and pumpkin pie. But I just can’t get excited about the turkey.  This is not simply because I have to prepare it.  It’s because I hate turkey.   Frankly, there must be a bunch of us, secret turkey subversives, who just nod and keep our faces even when folks salivate about the big bird on its sacred day.

If Ben Franklin had gotten his way, and the turkey had been selected as our national symbol, gracing coins and crests, maybe it would have been off limits as a food group.  No one I’m aware of eats American eagle. But somehow the turkey has become the edible symbol of our most fundamental American holiday. 

I’m daydreaming of assembling a holiday dinner this week that would be an all-inclusive, anti-turkey Thanksgiving.  What could be more America in the 2000’s than a melting pot meal?  A little sushi appetizer, some Chicken Tiki Masala (now practically the national dish of Great Britain), rice and beans… you get the picture.  Shouldn’t we create something that better reflects the cuisine of our country’s present demographics rather than retreading what some starving immigrants trash picked one late November in Massachusetts?

Sure, go ahead and toss your recipes at me, your turkey deep fryer, your perfectly browned breast draped with bacon, your whole garlic clove in the cavity.  You won’t convince me.   These Band-Aids are the equivalent of throwing a little KY jelly (or better yet Zestra) at the real problem; beneath that sultry skin, turkey is a mostly dry bird.  Even the alleged juicy brown drumstick mostly disappoints.

 

Maybe I dislike turkey because it’s the kissing cousin to chicken, which was forever ruined for me by my mother’s weekly skinless boneless breast dinners, incinerated and dehydrated under the broiler with a dab of margarine.   And then, if I had any hope of reconciliation with chicken as an adult, it has been beaten out of me by the countless frozen breasts with fake tattooed BBQ stripes that rest on lumps of rice or lettuce at every ballroom event lunch, banquet or conference meal.  Chicken is the go-to entre, the little black dress of mass meals.  

But, look, you say, look at all the fab accompaniments there are for turkey!  There are sauces and gravies, herbs and cranberry goop and citrus reductions.  Save your breath.  These only mask the issue, like feminine deodorant spray.  Be honest, a basic slice off the breast is like chewing through gypsum board.  The only possible way I enjoy turkey is a Thanksgiving leftover dark meat sandwich with fresh bread and lots of mayo (my husband would argue here for Miracle Whip.)

I don’t like picturing the farm to table journey of my bird.  We Americans don’t fancy the idea of getting a gander at where our food really comes from.  We’re more comfortable with the concept of shrink-wrap, dry aged, butchered cuts or ground meat.  But with a turkey, you can’t avoid imagining the living animal, even though by the time it gets to you, it more resembles an open casket viewing.  There it is, nude and embarrassed, hunched in forgiveness on your platter, minus a few extremities.  A turkey on the table is so… whole…. so intact. 

We all grew up with illustrations of hatchet-wielding pilgrims clomping around in those buckled shoes after the turkey.  As a child I was scarred by the tale of my mother’s family cook in Arkansas who wrung the chicken’s neck bare handed or chopped it off on a block while the rest of it flopped around a few seconds longer before collapsing.   I think of this image when I pull that old candy-cane neck out of the bird’s body cavity, where its been stuffed like some mafia message from “The Godfather.” And where do the feet go? What the hell happens to the feet?  Do they get shipped to China where they are considered a delicacy? Forget I asked, I don’t want to know.   And I don’t want to contemplate the image of mechanized plucking. Turkey feathers must be the poultry equivalent of a woman’s unwanted facial hair. 

 

Rolling my cart down the grocery aisle during the holidays, I am both repelled and drawn to the jumbled cases of plastic wrapped white skinned turkeys of varying weights, their knees drawn up in a yoga child’s pose. They look like a horror version of those Anne Geddes photographs and greeting cards, the ones with the naked babies in groups or dressed as single flowers and ladybugs.  Unlike the babies, the turkey skin has a mottled, bluish cast, all pimpled and dimpled.  It’s when I reach into the case and see the tiny pool of blood in the packaging that I ask myself what’s wrong with stuffed shells for a change of pace?  Why not honor the contribution of Italian Americans this Thanksgiving season?  Anyone?

By most accounts, the turkey is a mean, ugly bird.  And dumb as a stone.  Maybe anything that dumb deserves to die.  Evolution and natural selection haven’t helped it out any.  We have a pack of wild turkeys in my suburban NY town that claimed the median of a highway strip as their “hang turf” last year.  A hundred yards further and they could have had a nice little stretch of woodland to themselves. But no, these dimwits spent months playing chicken (pardon the pun) with the cars as they exited the interstate.   About every other week there would be a mound of feathery road kill on the off-ramp.   Honestly, any animal whose cry is “gobble gobble” is asking for trouble.

But like the turkey, I’m a big talker.  I dream about a turkey-free Thanksgiving, but I’ll never really take action.  My family wouldn’t allow it.  If it were my call, I’d eliminate the other colorless foods that have become a tradition in our family, my mother-in-law’s corn and oysters casserole, the stuffing and mashed potatoes, which will sit like wallpaper paste in our stomachs, the rutabaga, the white rolls and then the gravy made with parts that have been sitting inside the turkey’s ass in a bag (don’t get me started about the word “gizzards.”)  Once it’s been cooked to perfection it all looks like nursing home steam table food.  No teeth required. 

 

In the end it’s the ritual.  It’s about all of us coming together.  It’s about tradition, no matter how much I might daydream about a more sumptuous menu.  And regardless of the time invested to plan, shop and prep, my loved ones will clean their plates in roughly 20 minutes following the word “Amen.”

They will stand up, groan and stretch and return to their touch football game, their headphones and texting, their X-box war game or their custom couch indentation in front of the flat screen TV.  We sisters will clear and soak, load and dry, and lay out dessert, as unquestioning of the routine as the wives in the Bin Laden complex.

 

 

But none of us complain.  We love one another’s company, the addition of a displaced person at the table, the stray college buddy, the big city boyfriend, the sense of completion that all of our chickees are back in the nest for this long weekend and we get to mother the whole lot.  And for one day, at least, turkey and all, the world feels in its place.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

 

 

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It’s All In The Knife

Our new contributor for Thanksgiving, my sis Nancy!

My brother in law Bob likes to take a perfectly good piece of meat and transform it into something other than what it was meant to be. He hacks it into unappetizing “cave man-esque” slabs. Bob averages about four servings per thirteen pound roast. I watched him deface my main course in this way. It was a weekend fall family dinner and I had driven twenty miles to pick it up.

Forlorn faces fell as the first few members of the buffet line made short work of the platter. They left very little beef behind. The remaining  guests went hungry or turned toward the salad and rolls with a mutinous eye.

The next night, my brother in law Mark, was assigned the carving of the twenty five pound turkey. We needed to feed a substantial number of houseguests, and the pressure was on after the hunger pangs of the evening before. Mark was given strict instructions to “slice thinly” and “make sure of enough turkey to stretch among the assembled family.”

The carving audience had grown larger after the indignity of the roast experience. Unwilling to miss out on another night without protein, they pushed into a tight mob. The body language left no room for error.

It wasn’t long before the pressure of the assignment began to unhinge Mark. His end result was more of a dissection than a culinary presentation. Rather than take responsibility for the unhappy state of the turkey, he began blaming others.

He groused about how he didn’t have a sharp enough knife and how the turkey wasn’t cooked correctly. Despite Marks protestations, there was an improvement in the number of folks that unwillingly went without a main course. It was down to three.

My husband took his turn to carve a honey baked ham on the third night. Many of the guests were driving back to their homes after dinner. It was imperative that no one fainted at the wheel from hunger. Correct ham carving would dictate the success of the final meal.

 A burley homicide cops son, my husband had been raised with a deep reverence for both religion and food. There were consequences for missing either one. The family would go to Catholic mass weekly and all attend the family meal that followed. Growing up in his big Irish family, it was considered a special occasion to be eating anything that wasn’t a casserole.

The men of his clan were judged by their ability to make the meat stretch to all the hungry mouths that were waiting. There was very little in the family that went to waste, like hand me down clothes, cars and toys. Carving was serious business and reputations were gained and lost on it.

Our holiday ham came out of the oven perfectly shaped like a football. It was glazed and smoked in Cajun spices. The elegant wrapper gave specifics about how to slice it. “Someone in your office sent this to us,” I told him as he was rooting around for the super duper electric carving knife he had bought a year ago on e-bay.

“It is all in the knife,” my husband announced to the two other brother in laws, who were perched on stools nearby, ready to leap in and heckle him at the slightest sign of incorrect form. He took an open legged stance much like a golfer getting ready to address the ball.

The nine year old twin nieces were silent with rapt attention. “ Its a pre-cut spiral ham,” said Bob, “this isn’t really a fair comparison to a roast.” Mark chimed in “How was anyone supposed to know you had that hedge trimmer knife?” He added, “No one offered it to us and I don’t really call that carving. It probably takes something out of the flavor and dries it out to have all that rapid back and forth motion.”

My husband mumbled something about “nonsense” and “tools of the trade” and then gave a fond family reference to an Indiana Jones movie about “bringing a gun to a knife fight.” He was an expert at making the slices look mouthwatering and pristine. I’d been treated to a few family meals at his house. I knew he could use the traditional carving utensils with ease as well as the Indiana Jones version.

Often during my husband’s childhood, and especially during holidays (statistics show a spike in crime during holidays), the phone would ring just as the family was sitting down for a meal. Criminals didn’t take time off for Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter, or apparently for dinner either.

“Sarge” would listen carefully to the details of each phone interruption, kiss the top of his wife’s head, and head out into the night, his lips clamped around a cigar. His six children knew he would be eating cold leftovers when he returned hours later. Sometimes their mother would let them stay up to see the late news and catch a glimpse of their dad if it was a high profile or gruesome case.

On nights when he was called out, the job of carving the meat would  fall to one of the boys, or to my mother in law, who became something of an expert in the void.

A particularly sharp butcher knife was her favorite utensil for the task at hand. Family lore (which has never been confirmed) has it that the knife actually had a tag swinging back and forth from its handle and was once used in a crime. It had come from the attic, where it had been “housed” and forgotten. The kids were sure it was evidence from an old murder trial of Sarges. Margie liked to “borrow” it for particularly tough carving jobs, sending one of the kids up to retrieve it. The knife was likely washed and dried, maybe taking a turn in the family dish drain before it was returned back to the attic. The kids invented scenarios over the years about what criminal history the cutlery had been a part of. It is likely that my father in law placed it in the attic as a prop, to spin a story that would humble the six rambunctious children and help them mind their table manners when he was out.

The true success of a roast, turkey or ham is a combination of cooking skill, artful slicing and the ultimate placement on a welcoming table filled with family, friends and lots of wine.

Cookbooks emphasize the importance of letting the meat “stand” after it is removed from the oven. The timeframe recommended seems to vary from ten to twenty minutes before carving. Slicing is made easier when the turkey or roast is cooked at medium temp. Meat should be carved across the grain for increased tenderness and sliced thinly at a forty five degree angle.

There are a multitude of electric carving knife options on the internet ranging in price from $8.00 to $88.00. The sure way to a “successful carve” is to have the proper tools are at hand for any culinary challenge, and that also means a long pronged fork to help get a good grip on what can be a slippery job. There are so many places to track down a great knife, but if the knife hasn’t been sharpened (Charles Department Store in Katonah does my knives each fall), there is no guarantee of the outcome. Never underestimate the importance of having a good knife lying around, or even in the attic.

by Nancy McLoughlin

 

Thanksgiving Gratitude

Thanksgiving always seems to sneak up on us, sandwiched in between Halloween and Christmas it sometimes gets short shrift.  But there was a time, when I was a kid, that holiday songs weren’t background music for trick or treating.  Thanksgiving was a stand-alone holiday, a truly secular day to reflect on our country’s origins and the peaceful joining of two disparate tribes.  It was also an occasion for the senses.

There were the smells of wonderfully rich things cooking; the pervasive scent of the sizzling turkey, and then the touch of the linen napkins at the table, the cool smoothness of the “twice a year China” and heavy silver settings.  Sounds were of disparate family coming together, laughter spiking in the kitchen, grandparents fussing, cousins roughhousing and aunts catching up and gossiping.  Those sounds would later be dominated by groans of overstretched stomachs and the agony of defeat noises men make around a TV football game.

 

I loved the sight of the Thanksgiving table as we children pushed in the swinging doors to the dining room.  Only a few times each year, every leaf was in place, the white tablecloth demurely covering its curved legs.  Long tapered candles flickered in candlesticks.  The anticipation of the meal was everything.  Thanksgiving was all about patience and the build up.  Until I hosted my own first Thanksgiving dinner as a young wife, I wouldn’t understand the hours of shopping, labor and preparation that were consumed in roughly 40 minutes.

But the food.  Oh the food.   Thanksgiving was the one holiday all year that was about taste.   Gravy and rolls, carrots and brussel sprouts with garlic, mashed potatoes dotted with butter, the dark meat of the turkey and the dribbled pie filling squeezing through the lattice crust. 

And there was always a moment, just before we ate, where we all held hands around the table for prayer. There were always the reluctant “touchers,” the self- conscious boys and Uncles who finally relaxed into the act, stilled by the feeling of family communing in one unbroken circle.  “Bless this food to our use and us to they service,” an economy of words from my grandfather.  My Dad would sometimes add an extra thought, some words and a moment of silence to take stock of our own blessings, the tender mercies in our short lives, and I’d bow my head, squinting my eyes in concentration.  I’d conjure up images of family, pilgrims and Indians, about living in a land where I experienced only plenty of love and food and goodness.  And then my sister would pinch my thigh to break the spell and we’d dig in.  

Back then, as child in the 60s and 70s, the world was much more black and white.  In the Thanksgiving of my youth, the bad guys lived behind walls, the Berlin Wall and the Great Wall, and there were cold wars.   Americans had defined enemies and larger than life heroes.   But none of them were in uniform. Boys in my neighborhood were slinking back from Vietnam sick in heart and spirit.  And some didn’t come home at all.  There were no parades in my town, no flags in front yards in that time.  We were ambivalent, opinionated and judgmental; we had watched some of the horrors on TV and in Life magazine.  

 

I didn’t think at all about the homecomings of those boys, about what kind of Thanksgiving they were experiencing, transported out of the jungle and jolted back to the low resolution of the suburbs.   My prayers at night included thanks to God that I was not a boy, so that I wouldn’t have to be drafted.  I remember that clear as a bell.

Fast forward to this Thanksgiving, to these wars.   Years and experience lend a fuller perspective.  As someone who has survived some of the dings and dents that life can throw—gratitude and service have a whole different meaning around my table now.  This holiday I think about the families of our injured service members gathered in their homes for the holiday meal.  Without a draft , they have self-selected to sign up.  They have raised their hands to go when their country asked.  Having met so many of these families over the years, I can say they are a self-effacing group, humble and inspiring.  They were “just doing their jobs,” they’ll tell you. 

But while we celebrate the holiday that symbolizes that first harvest season of bounty and gratitude for life in a free land, these families have loved ones halfway around the world who have stood up to protect those freedoms.  And you have to respect that, no matter what your politics or individual views. Someone you’ve never met is crouched in a tank overseas, or on foot patrol, or skyping home to their wife and baby.  And for that we need to be grateful. 

 

So this Thanksgiving, lets ask ourselves as we gather - Have we reached out in our communities and towns to help the service members and their families reintegrate and recover?  Have we gone beyond merely waving flags at airports and including them in our prayers to really helping and assisting in meaningful ways?  Have we put our thanks-giving into action as a country and as individuals? 

Before we lift our forks this Thursday, we’ll all grasp hands and say a prayer around my table.  And we’ll remind our children that despite the uncertainty of the world, the wars, the economy, the job market, there is a cornucopia of things to be thankful for.  We are lucky, lucky people.  We are blessed.  And in the moment that our heads collectively lower, my eyes will flick around the table.  I’ll experience that silent recognition, no matter how tenuous and short-lived it may be, that the most important things in the world to me are gathered in one place, connected in an unbroken circle.