Use COVID Thanksgiving for change: Turkey is bad. Sweet potato pie isn’t dessert
For our first COVID Thanksgiving we can drop the charade that says some of these traditional holiday foods are worth eating, the calories, or belong on the table.
Just because the settlers ate a turkey with their Native Americans “friends,” before stealing their land, does not mean the dish is worth celebrating.
Turkey is terrible. Green bean casserole is a punishment. Sweet potato pie is not a dessert.
If the Puritans could see our modern day Thanksgiving Day feasts, the first thing they’d say is, “What are you people doing? We hated turkey.”
COVID has given us all the opportunity to reset, and acknowledge that some of our accepted practices and traditions are needless. Like wearing pants to work.
COVID has allowed us to try out some new routines, dump old ones, and expand our horizons. For instance, a bowl of Apple Jacks doesn’t need milk when beer works just as well. A good lager makes the 9-essential vitamin fortified flavor pop in your mouth.
On this Thanksgiving let us all give thanks for the four pre-screened members of our family we are allowed to socially distance with on this holiday, and to eat what we want rather than what a bunch of over-bearing Puritans thought was a good cuisine 400 years ago.
COVID is all about consolidation, and editing, so we’ll start with the bird.
Other than Thanksgiving, there is no sadder day in America’s schools than when the cafeteria menu’s featured dish is, “Turkey meat.” Other than a turkey sandwich, no American eats turkey any other day of the year.
For centuries Americans have tried to make turkey something more exciting jury duty. Nothing so simple should be this hard.
We cover it in oil, and butter, salt, pepper, pears and thyme. We brine it.
We deep fry it, even if it means nearly burning down the entire house down.
The truly desperate combine a duck, turkey with a chicken, for the turducken. This isn’t food; it’s a science experiment.
Then there is the matter of cutting the bird. The process is so difficult Ivy League schools will soon offer an online 30-hour postgraduate degree in “Turkey Sculpting.”
After it’s cooked and cut, we then drown it in it gravy. We throw everything but a $20 bill on it to make it attractive, but turkey meat is a plate of “It is what it is.”
No food that demands as much gravy as a piece of white turkey meat can stand alone.
When done right, gravy is the standalone dish.
Which brings us to the sides, many of which would serve better as an entree but too many need to go.
Those who host pot luck Thanksgiving dinners are familiar with the insincere torture of saying, “Oh, you brought a salad!” only to later notice it has collected more dust than the picture of grandma that was last cleaned in 1983.
And who brought the Brussels sprouts?
The only Brussels sprouts that belong at a Thanksgiving table are the ones with bacon. And don’t include any Brussels sprouts.
Cranberry sauce is a Thanksgiving Day staple, and yet it never finds its way on any dinner table in America but one day of the year. Your uncle who brings a can of Ocean Spray and a can opener does not get credit for “cooking.”
And whoever brought the green bean casserole, just show yourself out the door and take that prison yard food with you.
All of these sides, and the actual turkey, are a distraction from the real star of the day: Stuffing.
Don’t know what’s in it. Don’t wanna’ know what’s in it. Just want more of it.
What scientists need to do is to find a way to form stuffing into the shape of a turkey, and stuff that with stuffing.
Don’t get cute by adding fruit in stuffing; the settlers didn’t throw in orange pieces or cranberries into their stuffing, and we should not, either.
And since we’re on the subjects of sides, sweet potato pie is not a dessert. No dish that features a potato is a dessert.
When the waiter brings over the dessert tray, there are samplings of cake, ice cream, brownies and an assortment of sugar goods. Not whipped mash potatoes.
Sweet potato casserole isn’t a dessert, but sweet potato pie is? And you know no one bothered to ask how mashed potatoes feel about being excluded from the dessert tray.
Just because you can add the word “dessert” or a “pie” to something does not make it so.
You would not call a pork chop a dessert, nor would you offer “sweet pork chop pie” to your guests after an entree with a cup of coffee.
Sweet potatoes may be great, but they are not a dessert.
The time of COVID has given us all a chance to examine our lives, routines, and traditions, up to and including what we offer as a Thanksgiving Day meal.
Be honest with yourselves and edit: Turkey is overrated, green bean dishes exist only as a means of revenge, and potatoes aren’t desserts.
