Terrible Food Day

I sure hope everyone is enjoying the worst food day of the American year. Let’s review:

1. Turkey is dry meat and the modifications of the animal to create Dolly Partonesque breasts provides Americans their beloved “what if had more meat that tasted like nothing and dried out my mouth like a handful dust” has only made it worse. Meanwhile, the only edible parts, like the skin and the dark meat–itself still a minor meat at best compared to other meats–are usually confined to the margins or not eaten at all. But hey, a package of gravy-like sauce will sure help! But at least there are recipes out there suggesting that if you only start the turkey 96 hours ahead of time with this very specific procedure, it will almost taste like something. Wow, great!
2. A homemade gravy can be good, but most people don’t do that these days. And even so, a turkey gravy is still a lesser gravy compared to all other possibilities.
3. Why is it that all the Thanksgiving sides are creamed and boiled into a soft white oblivion? What about this meal makes everyone want to eat nothing more than the a food with the level of softness that someone without teeth can eat it? I was complaining the other day on social media because the New York Times cooking social media was pushing a recipe for brussels sprouts that creamed them. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO A DELICIOUS VEGETABLE?!?!?!? And yet, you can’t have a vegetable on Thanksgiving that isn’t the worst version of itself.
4. Those candied sweet potatoes. Nasty. Ruining a good vegetable with marshmallows? Why?
5. OK, stuffing can be good. It usually isn’t, but there are some very good stuffing recipes out there.
6. Mashed potatoes are mashed potatoes. Honestly, who cares. Boy do some people get into them though. This reminds of when Conan O’Brien wrote for The Simpsons and he included a number of jokes about various characters getting really excited by corn. Those are great jokes. Someone needs to do this for mashed potatoes.
7. Pumpkin pie is the lowest form of pie except for pecan pie, which is of course the other standard Thanksgiving pie. Did the rest of your meal have too much texture? In that case, let’s just puree some gourds and put some sugar in it. And pecan, OK, you have crunch but each pie also includes half your annual recommended sugar intake. Meanwhile, fruit pies are waving “hello we are awesome.”
8. Some people do mac and cheese at Thanksgiving. That’s fine, though it’s another super soft food usually. At least it’s yellow, providing some unusual color for this meal.
9. Cranberries. OK, look, cranberries are fine. No one really eats them the rest of the year, not in the form they do at Thanksgiving. But in this case, they are necessary to provide actual color and flavor to the rest of this culinary disaster. Anyone who buys it in the jellied canned variety goes to the reeducation camps after the Revolution.
10. If anyone actually liked this food, they would eat it more than once a year.

And I don’t want to hear any of this annual bullshit that people who don’t like this meal don’t know how to cook. Stop. This is the chef’s version of how orchestra conductors and musicians think about the annual Christmas performance. It has to be done because it’s what the dumbass public wants but no one actually wants to play these tunes yet again. I am no chef, but I am a functional cook and I do most of our cooking. I have in fact cooked a turkey on a Covid Thanksgiving when my wife demanded one. It was as good as any other damn turkey I’ve had. The problem with this food is that it’s bad.

Also, tradition is a stupid reason for anything. Especially bad food.

In conclusion, at least you have football today to make up for this trash food, even if the Bengals-Ravens game turned out to not exactly be a first rate prime time matchup. As for me, I’m taking Dad and the wife out for this meal. There are prime rib and steelhead options instead of turkey. Easily worth the money. Of course, my wife will eat turkey, which is a good reason that I pressing my opinions on you all instead. I can alienate you with less cost than alienating my spouse. But she knows how I feel. Oh she knows.

P.S.: Fuck the Puritans. We shouldn’t celebrate anything having to do with those assholes. P.P.S.: I’ve always thought this best song I’ve ever heard about dealing with your family today.