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by Lore Sjöberg
Turkey
When you get right down to it, turkey is not a bad choice for a feast
holiday. Turkeys are low fat, reasonably gigantic, and they make good
cartoon characters for holiday specials. What cracks me up is the
supposed scientific finding that gets bandied about this time of year
that says that turkey contains a chemical that makes you sleepy, as if
the people who had ham instead are out roller blading after dinner.
When you consume your weight in buttered foodstuffs, you're going to
feel a bit nappish, turkey or no turkey. B+
Canned Cranberry Sauce
There are many excellent uses for cranberries and cranberry juice, many
of them involving vodka. However, the canned tribute to the Gods of
Pectin that gets served at many Thanksgiving tables pretty much
leeches the appeal right out of the suckers. Look at it this way: when
was the last time you heard anyone say "Boy, we should have bought
more canned cranberry sauce," or "Yay! There's leftover canned
cranberry sauce!" Now, I'm sure there are many people out there who
are saying to themselves "Ay! The canned cranberry sauce is my
favorite part of Thanksgiving!" These people are perverts.
D
Candied Yams
Interestingly enough, studies I just made up show that your average
person does not, except on Thanksgiving, eat (a) anything candied, or
(b) anything made of yams. I imagine the Yam Council and the
Candification Board are working hard to change this, but I have a better
idea for increasing candied yam awareness: make the phrase a slang
term for the gonad portion of the male anatomy. Think about it. The
increase in groin humor in the movies and television has created an
ever-increasing need for euphemisms for same, and if I can contribute
even a single line to a Mighty Ducks sequel, I can die a happy man.
B-
Pumpkin Pie
This is, without question, the most noble thing you can do with a
gourd, and it's among the most pleasurable. I have childhood memories
of my mother transforming our Halloween pumpkin into our
Thanksgiving pumpkin pies, which is heartwarming and all until you
realize that carved pumpkins start to look pretty grotesque by Veteran's
Day, so I'm hoping this is just part of the same false memory syndrome
that lead me to believe that my father invented the cheeseburger in 1975.
Anyhow, pumpkin pie. Good stuff. A
Mashed Potatoes
This is one of the two essential Thanksgiving items that actually gets
eaten throughout the year, the other being "bread." I really dig on
mashed potatoes. I would love to travel back in time and shake the hand
of the man or woman who invented mashed potatoes, in spite of the
very real risk that I'd end up shattering the flow of time, making it so that
my parents never met, invalidating my own existence, and creating a
temporal rift that would result in a world where ficus trees rule the earth.
And then I'd do the same thing with the person who invented
garlic mashed potatoes. A+
Stuffing
Another sign of the holidays are the cheery warnings in the Food
section of your local newspaper
which tell you that if you cook your stuffing inside the
turkey, you may as well put a sign in your upper intestine saying "Evil
Bacteria Wanted. Toxic Biological By-Products a Plus." Apparently, in
spite of the fact that turkeys need to be cooked in a hot oven for hours,
this isn't enough to stop stuffing
bacteria, which kill three billion people every year. So if you live in one
of the states that still allows internally cooked stuffing, you can add a
certain adventurous quality to your holiday meal by defying the odds
and blazing your own flavored bread trail. B
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