Friday, November 23, 2012

Don't even talk about turkey!


Feeling the Pain

I hate turkeys. If you stand in the meat section long enough, you start to get mad at turkeys. There's turkey ham, turkey bologna, turkey pastrami. Someone needs to tell the turkey, 'man, just be yourself!'”
                                       Mitch Hedberg

Here we go. For the foreseeable future, we will be eating turkey sandwiches, turkey pot pies, turkey salad. I usually use the leftover turkey to make soup stock. Let's face it, even ten people have a hard time consuming a sixteen pound bird. Someone said the thing we are most thankful for at Thanksgiving is that it only comes once a year. So true. But it was good, wasn't it?

Today, all across America harried women have raked the last of the pumpkin pie crumbs into the trash and headed off to the mall. Or in the case of this year, they may just be heading home from the mall as the sun is rising. Consumerism at its ugliest. I know...I know...it's the economy, stupid. I keep thinking some genius needs to suggest that perhaps we might want to consider a new basis for our economy; one not so dependent on consumer spending. That would cure a multitude of woes. I'm not smart enough to say what that would be, but I have Utopian dreams. Just about the time the holiday shopping season kicks in, I go all Tolstoy—share the land, share the wealth, give my turkey to the poor man in the street, and such. It's a sad thing. Probably the product of too much turkey gravy.

I spoke with a cashier at Wal Mart Tuesday and asked, “So, are YOU working on Thanksgiving?” She gave me a look of pure disdain and said, “NOT ME, honey!” I have a feeling even the mighty Wal Mart would have a hard time making some of these bad-*#@ southern women work ANYTIME they don't want to! That's like pushing a dam uphill.

My friend, Martha Lee, makes a dynamite turkey pie after the dust settles. Turkey, carrots, potato, celery, onion, green beans or peas (whatever green thing is left over from yesterday) mixed into a thickened turkey-stock (or left-over gravy), plopped into a big pie tin, covered with a crumbly crust and baked until it's all golden and bubbly. It's pretty good, y'all. Especially in January when Thanksgiving is a distant memory.

Happy day after! If you're feeling guilty and in need of some physical exercise to sooth your gorged-again belly, you can come over and rake leaves in my yard! It's covered! And that would be so Tolstoy, don't you think? Share the yard—share the rakes—share the labor. Wow! I can dig it!

                                                 In the spirit,
                                                     Jane


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