Turkey Dog

So, the turkey was carved and we all were seated at the dining room table to feast on Thanksgiving dinner. And feast we did, over-indulging the way one can on a national holiday when gluttony and subsequent self-loathing are strongly encouraged. 

You tell yourself you're going to take only a small portion of this and a taste of that, saving plenty of room for dessert, during which you intend to take only a sliver of that and maybe a modest spoonful of this. When all is done you might as well have been competitive eating. What started out as manners ("Please pass the potatoes!") has devolved into greasy-fingered gestures and grunts ("Ugh... Give... More..."). You really don't even want dessert, but you cram it down regardless because you feel morally obligated. After all, everyone went to the trouble of baking. 

Somewhere during the early stages of dinner: phase one, I heard a strange noise coming from the kitchen. It might have been the dishwasher running, only we hadn't yet loaded the first dish. It might have been the kitchen faucet running, only it wasn't. Instead, it turned out to be the frantic lapping of our six-pound Havanese, Lola. 

The problem wasn't really Lola. Lola was simply doing what any dog would do if turkey juices were flowing freely from the carved carcass on the countertop. The problem also wasn't the cracked cutting board that allowed the turkey juices to escape and flow to the floor. No, the problem was the fact of turkey juices hitting Lola square on the head as she stood there in her own little tryptophan-laced Thanksgiving celebration.

In case you've never soaked you hair with seasoned turkey grease, let me assure you it has some staying power. Three baths later the savory aroma of thyme, rosemary and tarragon continued to waft from Lola's head and her usually toussled top lay heavy between her ears. Try as we did over the next few days, it wasn't until the professional groomers got hold of her several weeks later that all was set right.

Death By Turkey

My Lovely Wife and I had a conversation about a turkey sandwich the other day.

Our Daughter had to stay after school for marching band practice and we were debating whether to pack her a turkey sandwich for lunch and a peanut butter sandwich for dinner, or peanut butter for lunch and turkey for dinner. Our daughter wanted the latter, but it caused My Lovely Wife some concern.

She was afraid, you see, of what might happen to that turkey sandwich as it sat all day in Senor Awesome's car in the 85-degree North Carolina sunshine. The fact it would be stored in a cooler with an ice pack didn't make her any happier.

By My Lovely Wife's way of thinking, somewhere between noon and 6:00pm, that innocent turkey and cheese sandwich could transform into a ZipLock bag full of raging salmonella capable of causing explosive diarhea, projectile vomiting, internal bleeding, collapsed lung, shingles, and twelve other symptoms never before documented by the Center for Disease Control.

I foolishly thought it would be okay. After all, when I was her age we didn't worry so much about these things.

I can't begin to count the times my tuna fish sandwich -- wrapped in wax paper and placed lovingly in a brown paper bag by my Mother -- would sit in my non-temperature-controlled high school locker until lunch time rolled around. By then, you could smell the mayonnaise halfway down the hallway and it had soaked through both layers of paper and greased up the cover of my social studies textbook. I could have sworn off tuna fish for the rest of my life, but my textbooks, notebooks, jackets and gym clothes would continue to carry that lingering Chicken of the Sea odor for the rest of the school year.

That's just the way it was. If you brought your lunch to school you ended up eating a room temperature sandwich, regardless of how much dairy product or meat or seafood went into the making of it. Tuna, bologna, peanut butter, cheese -- we didn't worry about food poisoning. We simply unwrapped it and ate it. Had we known to be more worried about contaminated food, it's very likely I would have tried faking a bout of E. Coli or campylobacter to go home early on days when there was a math test scheduled.

So, it isn't that I don't love Our Daughter. It isn't that I don't want to keep her protected from random food borne illnesses. It's just that I have a difficult time believing two slices of Boars Head smoked turkey breast and one slice of picante provolone sitting for a day in an insulated cooler with an ice pack the size of a brick could pose her any danger.

Under those conditions, my tuna fish sandwich could have lasted for days...



© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Turd-ucken

There are some things humans might never have eaten if not for lack of money or resources.

Take vegetable stew, for example. Back in the Middle Ages, root vegetables were seen as being unfit for the English upper classes – food from the dirt fit only for commoners – so the poor found ways to use these relatively accessible items. What better way than to mix and match them in a big pot of contaminated water from the nearby stream and blend their flavors together over a low simmer?

The rich also harbored a distrust of certain raw foods like nuts and fruits. They ate cheese but avoided milk. These were also times when most people (including children) drank mead because it was safer to risk alcoholism than to trust the quality of the local water supply.

Anyway, you get the idea. Long story short, the poor ate meager yet relatively healthy meals while the upper class died of scurvy, gout and rickets from seasoning, salting, drying and boiling the beneficial nutrients and vitamins out of everything they put in their mouths. The whole raw food diet craze never would have caught on 1,000 years ago.

These days, food snobbery is more about trying everything than about avoiding any particular ingredient.

There are dozens of shows on television in which people wander the world to find the most bizarre food customs, and the more disgusting the main ingredient the better. I’ll bet if I really pushed hard enough I could get Travel Channel or Food Network to fund a one-hour special about the best recipes for hamster testicles from around the globe. Just to tie it in with their other programming, it could air right after a new Iron Chef America featuring Rocky Mountain oysters as the secret ingredient.

Now, I don’t want to rag on my brother, because he really was acting out of a sincere desire to give us all a memorable food experience. After all, who doesn’t like to try new things?

Our palates don’t stop developing when we reach a certain age. If so, I never would have learned to love shrimp, or Mexican food, or oatmeal. Okay, so maybe I can't say I like oatmeal. For me it’s more like a bowl of heated brown sugar, honey and cinnamon with a few soggy oats thrown in for fiber.

But back to my brother and that turducken. Whoever dreamed up the idea of stuffing a deboned turkey with a deboned duck stuffed with a deboned chicken clearly had too much time on his or her hands. Maybe this is the kind of meal that results from bored culinary students getting high before their finals.

That said, I was willing to approach the meal with an open mind. I like turkey. I like chicken. I think I ate duck once and liked it. There was no reason to suspect this meal should be any less than the sum of its parts.

The first red flag popped up when I was advised to try a spoonful of the drippings to taste for myself how spicy it was. Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve never been much of a five-alarm turkey kind of guy. Sure, Buffalo chicken is one of the greatest inventions known to man, but a kick ass hot turkey really doesn’t lure me to the table, let alone a spoonful of hot and spicy turkey grease.

I initially believed the excessive heat came solely from the liberal seasoning of the turkey skin. That was a false assumption.

The real fire didn’t break out until we reached the spicy sausage dressing. Yes, you didn’t misread that or suffer a sudden astigmatism. Spicy sausage dressing. I can just imagine someone sitting around thinking: “You know what this chicken inside a duck inside a turkey needs? Pork and cumin.”

By the time the meal was finished, I was cured of any curiosity I might have had about turducken. A few of us tried politely to find nice things to say about it, but even my brother was beginning to offer qualifying statements about the meal before the table was cleared. I felt bad for him, but I have to admit he did give us an unforgettable experience.

In the end, the best single word I can think of to relay the lingering impression of turducken can be found by shortening the name of the meal to its first four letters.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Prettiest Puke Ever

Fourteen years ago, during the first thirty days of her pregnancy, my Lovely Wife had reason to believe she might be in for a smooth ride. She woke in the morning feeling well and maintained a normal appetite throughout each day.

It would seem Our Daughter's prenatal interests did not include instilling the kind of nausea, hunger, hot sweats, chills, mood swings and homicidal tendencies we'd been warned were the potential side effects of the typical, healthy pregnancy.

Then, at the end of that first month, the turkey incident unfolded.

The turkey breast, rubbed down liberally with our signature combination of herbs and spices, went into the oven while my Lovely Wife rested in the bedroom. Our house at the time being relatively small, it wasn't long before the gamey aroma of roasting fowl hung heavy in every room. I opened the oven door to baste the half-baked bird when I heard a weak voice calling me.

The overwhelming smell of the turkey had somehow jump-started the morning sickness my Lovely Wife had so far been able to avoid. With a skin tone matching that of the uncooked bird, she informed me of the need to remove both the turkey and its scent from the house with an urgent alacrity. I must confess, I momentarily struggled with the idea of chucking a perfectly good meal in the trash, but I quickly came to my senses.

Within minutes, the roasting pan was sitting out on the back porch and every window in the house was opened, ceiling fans drawing in the fresh, frigid winter air. I tried spraying Lysol to help cover the offending odor, but it only added to the nauseating mixture. The upchuck bucket -- a small, spare plastic trash can -- made it's debut that evening. It didn't leave our presence for four solid months.

It took us a few weeks to settle into a mealtime routine. Dinner options were limitless, providing dinner had no detectable aroma. All meals were eaten at home, since eating out would mean being within unreasonable proximity of a functioning kitchen in which heat was being applied to one ingredient or another.

We eventually found the one meal her stomach and nasal passages could handle: chicken tenders and French fries from Golden Corral, both smothered in the melted cheese from the potato bar. The checkout girl at our local Golden Corral could spot me from a mile away. Before I could open my mouth, she had my take-out order rung up. As a show of moral support, my staple meal became steak & fried shrimp with French fries. I even applied a generous covering of the melted cheese sauce to prove how much I loved her.

Just because we'd discovered an acceptable staple meal, however, did not mean my Lovely Wife's stomach suddenly stabilized. If Tums antacid tablets were habit forming, then my Lovely Wife would have been a hardcore addict. Deposits in the upchuck bucket were as prolific as they were predictable. I consider my time spent cleaning that bucket amazingly appropriate preparation for the diaper changing that would come.

But one day -- when the 24-hour, 7-day-a-week morning sickness had an exceptionally tight grip on her -- my Lovely Wife handed over the upchuck bucket and I recoiled in shock. There, in the bucket, was an assortment of pastel colors, each color separated from the others like some delicate frothy pousse cafe. In retrospect, it really was exceptionally pretty, as upchuck goes.

Unnerved and confused, I searched for just the right words to express my loving concern.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

After a few minutes, we realized the picturesque layers in the bucket were caused by the various colors of the Tums tablets she had taken leading up to her latest deposit. We laughed until it was time for her to throw up yet again.

I've cleaned up my share of bodily fluids since then, but never anything quite so artistically expressive.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler