Godless Mom in the Bible Belt

Hey Everyone, I'd like to introduce you to my hubby Scott! He has generously agreed to be my guest blogger today!


Happy Thanksgiving!!
By Scott (GodlessDad)

Today is the one day of the year that I get to do a lot of cooking. I'm a big fan of cooking, I just don't have much time these days to spend hours in the kitchen. This morning I'm making three pies (mince meat, pumpkin and apple). This afternoon is the rest of the Thanksgiving dinner for the family including deep fried turkey. If you've never had a fried turkey for Thanksgiving, I highly suggest you don't unless you're ready to switch permanently. The difference is that big. You will never again want to eat baked turkey on Thanksgiving, or any other time for that matter.

This is in sharp contrast to a totally different taste experience I tried five years ago. It was the first Thanksgiving GodlessMom and I spent living in Houston. Not being a Southerner by birth, I have to admit I've developed quite a taste for much of the cuisine. I love cajun food. I love grits. I even like okra, be it in gumbo, batter fried, or with tomatoes. I'm a huge BBQ fan and I love Pecan Pie. So when a friend at work suggested I prepare another Southern taste sensation for my family's Thanksgiving dinner, I was intrigued.

Enter: The Turducken.

Now, if you live on either coast or up in the Midwest, land of beige food, you've probably never heard of a Turducken. I never had. Basically, it's a chicken in a duck in a turkey. I'll let that sink in and repeat it for dramtic effect:

A chicken.
Stuffed into a duck.
Stuffed into a turkey.

It's a simple concept really, although you have to wonder about the sanity of the person who first came up with it, let alone the circumstances surrounding its invention.

"Well here it is Thanksgiving. Ma likes duck. The kids like chicken. But I sure can't pass up on the traditional turkey for this special day. Dern, I'm plum short on cookin' space. If only there was a way to cook all them birds at once...."

A lightbulb moment that would have been best had it never occured.

GodlessMom was skeptical from the beginning but I was undeterred. I found a local butcher who prepared this bizarre contruction and pre-ordered one for about $80.

I started to get worried when I picked it up. It wasn't shaped like a turkey at all, it was in a plastic sleeve that looked like a sandbag - only it was heavier. The instructions said to bake it for 11 hours. Damn. Dinner was scheduled for 5:00, so you can do the math on that one. Upon inspecting the ingredients, I noticed that not only were there three birds crammed inside one another, but two different types of stuffing. One of them was cornbread, no problem there. The other was andouille sausage, a delicious cajun creation (pronounced An-Dew-Eee) but not exactly something I was expecting to find inside my frankenbird. I quickly scanned the rest of the ingredients, having decided to draw the line at four different animals in my Thanksgiving meal. Fortunately they had the sense to leave out the rack of lamb.

I dutifully woke up at 5:00 AM to load the birdcube into the oven. Further alarm bells began to ring as the aroma was not exactly what we were accustomed to. Gone was the comforting, traditional smell of roasting fowl. It was replaced with the not-quite-so soothing cocktail of boiling duck oil and fried sausage. It came out of the oven golden brown, but when it was time to carve it I didn't wind up with the perfect little three-layer slices of poulty promised by the packaging. It really just sort of fell apart as if the three birds had finally had enough of this horrific abomination.

Suffice to say it was a total disaster. The in-laws were very polite and nodded their heads before sneaking off to the other room to see if Domino's was still open. Everyone went after the turkey, looking for the pieces that hadn't been contaminated with duck oil. It was the first Thanksgiving on record with no leftover stuffing, potatoes or veggies. At least the pie was good.

So, yeah, go with the fried turkey.