It’s 10am on a Saturday morning and I’m staring down the wrong end of a turkey. For clarity: that wrong end is the gaping hole I’m about to shove my arm into. Why am I considering molesting dead poultry far too early on a weekend?
Because it’s Thanksgiving and that’s just what you do.
The second Monday of every October is Canadian Thanksgiving, the only time of year I can regularly be found frying onions before I have my morning coffee and preparing to do unspeakable things to a turkey. I’m from a long line of unspeakable-things-doers, starting with my grandmother whose best advice was to ‘just get my hands in there and stop poking it with a spoon’. For years I watched my mother wage war with the dead bird, particularly funny as she’s a vegetarian and my dad can always be relied upon to point this out as she’s elbow deep in the cavity.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not commiserating with turkeys. They are one ugly, vindictive animal, who like to claw and peck (possibly because they’re aware how very very delicious they are, and want to make us earn it). But there’s still something slightly pathetic about a plucked bird, defrosting on the counter. Back when I was a kid, we got our turkeys from one of my aunt’s friends—you’d book your bird a few months before the holiday, and the day Tom Turkey had an intimate encounter with an axe, you’d get the call to come collect him. There they’d be, lined up on a table in the garage, some still warm, wrapped in plastic bags and within sight of the live turkeys still in their pen: for the edification of the others. Somehow, a frozen Butterball schlepped from the freezer case is lacking something in dignity.
I try my best to make up for it. Since I was 20, and decided to host my first Orphan Thanksgiving when I found myself at university and alone for the holiday, my turkeys get a bit of a day out before they meet the potluck fork. My job at Time Out, with our spa reviews, has made me uniquely qualified to pamper my poultry. First, he gets a soak in the Jacuzzi (i.e. my sink filled with hot water) to make sure he’s properly defrosted. When he’s relaxed, I rub him with moisturizing butter before his salt and pepper scrub. And finally, before he’s stuffed, he gets one last lap around the kitchen, in the yearly Turkey Dance (which is basically when I grab him by the legs and make him do the cha cha for the amusement of my flatmate).
But then, it’s time for the best and yet most disgusting, part of Thanksgiving: the stuffing. The recipe I use has been passed around my family since some distant relative went to Betty Crocker Cooking School in the 50’s. It involves copious amounts of bread, butter, onions, celery, butter, an egg, and yet more butter, and the secret ingredient: a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup. This has to be mixed with your hands.
Because my grandmother apparently knew not of this cutlery we speak of. And then shoved into the turkey, once again, with your hands. All of this must be accomplished first thing in the morning, in order to have it all golden brown by dinner time. And in proper Davey family tradition, not only are you doing this in your rattiest pajamas (as it’s early and why mess up your actual clothes), but nothing is measured. Nothing is written down. That’s become part of the yearly tradition as well: my panicked call to my mom or one of my various aunts to make sure I didn’t forget something, how long the bird should be in the oven, and exactly how much poultry seasoning needs to go in (answer: to taste. My answer? No way am I putting raw stuffing in my mouth to see if I spiced it correctly).
In retrospect, there may be a reason I’m the only one of my cousins, let alone the only one of my friends, willing to do this every year. Maybe this year I’ll just make pie.
