For the second time in my adult life I will not be at home having Thanksgiving. The holiday gods have smiled on me once again and I will be in Key West, where it will be sunny and in the mid to upper 70s.
But don’t think for a moment that I will be missing out on traditional holiday fare. For I will be participating in the first annual Thankstaken Party down there, replete with turkey, green bean casserole, cranberries and pumpkin pie.
The best part of Thankstaken (pirates don’t give, the take, get it?) is that I don’t have to lift a finger this year. There’s no getting up at the crack of early to start cooking for all the guests who will be soon arriving to stuff themselves stupid and then pass out during the football game by four in the afternoon.
Instead, I will be running around Key West having a great time partying up and down Duval. At 2 p.m., all I have to do is show up at the Truman Waterfront to enjoy dinner. The wonderful people at Faustos will be doing all the getting up early work this year. And now, I don’t have to even do the dishes.
To some, the whole cooking thing is what makes Thanksgiving worth living. I have seen people literally have orgasms once the scent of roast turkey has started to waft from the oven.
Me, I can take it or leave it. I don’t really like turkey on Thanksgiving. It’s not entirely my fault. It’s my mother’s. Growing up she would bake the turkey like all the other meats we had in the house – to the point of submission. There was no such thing as a rare piece of steak in my house, or even medium or medium well. You could have your meat anyway you liked, as long as it was well done.
I know now that turkey doesn’t need to be cooked to the state of well done. But I don’t think my mother really understood that point. She would cook it and cook it for hours on end.
When it finally came time to carve it, the meat crumbled instead of sliced. It was as dry as the Sahara and tasted about as good. The only way any of us boys would muscle down some turkey is if it were between two pieces of Wonder bread slathered with tons of Miracle Whip.
These were always staples of our family’s Thanksgiving table. There would be the jellied cranberries, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, yams, Miracle Whip, Wonder bread and Kraft Singles. Happy Thanksgiving at the Zerr household.
Since then, every person I have known has tried to convince me that I will love their roasted turkey. It has yet to happen. That’s not to say I don’t like turkey. I love a good turkey sub or turkey and havarti sandwich. Yum!
But at Thanksgiving, when it comes time to pass everything around the table, I will let the turkey pass me by.
This has caused tension in the past, so I have learned to take a polite, non-committal small sliver of dark meat so that I don’t insult the cook. I don’t want them to think I don’t like their turkey.
In pursuit of the perfect bite, as I have already written about, the turkey will be the first thing to be consumed on the plate so that I can focus on my favorites, which consist of green bean casserole, yams (sans marshmallows), jellied cranberries and the real reason for the season, stuffing.
It is about the only meal of the year where I could go full-on vegetarian and not feel the least bit bad about it. I will heap my plate with all these goodies and go back for seconds, not being the least apologetic to the poor bird who was sacrificed just so I could leave it unappreciated and uneaten.
I guess it’s part of the general angst I have about Thanksgiving. I don’t really get the purpose of the holiday in the first place, albeit to gather together for one day, stop all the family infighting and consume thousands of calories of food, only to regret it for the next several days.
And you inevitably will. Because for the next week you find yourself caught up in the “I can’t stand another bite of turkey” circle of doom that happens when you bought a bird that was too big. You end up bagging up the turkey and for days on end, that’s all you eat.
This is when Wonder bread and Miracle Whip come in particularly handy, though I eschew them in favor of my personal favorite – turkey, stuffing, cranberry and cream cheese. This is one sandwich I can really get my arms around and I only wish I had known about it years ago. Yum! I won’t even give the Miracle Whip a second glance if these ingredients are available. And yes, I know that stuffing (bread) between two slices of bread seems ludicrous to some.
I’ve also learned to take the inevitable turkey leftovers and crank out a decent turkey enchilada – low fat, no less. You can get rid of an awful lot of turkey this way and by the time you add in some enchilada sauce, cheese and chilis, you could be eating a goat from your neighbor’s backyard and not even know the difference.
I know that I am in the minority in this world of ours and that most people live for turkey day. That’s fine with me. In fact, I think I should be on the invite list of all my turkey loving friends. By inviting me, they could know that there will be plenty more turkey for them, as long as they can sacrifice that token piece of dark meat that never came near my mother’s kitchen.
Given the holiday, I won’t even start in on Thanksgiving dessert. I have probably made enough enemies already.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Do you need anything from Wendy’s while I’m there?
Out on the Treasure Coast, trying to see if it’s too late to ask for ham instead,
– Robb