Todd Stadler's blog

Turkey Day In Stumptown

I forgot to mention that Thanksgiving was nice. It kind of feels weird not going home for a holiday whose sole purpose seems to be "family time", but it was never a big deal in my home.

Even when I was in college, my parents usually drove down from Dallas and would stay in the Wyndham Warwick. They got a nice break in a hotel, we all got nice food somewhere (sometimes in the hotel restaurant, sometimes at a Japanese restaurant ... never let it be said that the Stadlers are slaves to tradition), and no one had to do dishes or eat leftovers.

Still, this Thanksgiving was a nice one. All the "orphan" kids - and there were many, comprising most of my friends, really - brought a nice dish and we sat eating in every possible chair at Morgan and Aaron's house. There was some choice food there, let me tell you. Dr. Todd brought some authentic (as far as southern poser me could tell) chicken 'n' dumplings, Doug brought his famous green beans 'n' bacon (equal portions of each... mmm), and I brought basil/feta phyllo triangles. What the heck, right, I'll work with phyllo once a year if it's for friends.

The main attraction this year, of course, was the Turducken. It's the second time our group has consumed one, and I must say they're quite popular, at least for the carnivores. I actually wasn't as up on this one for some reason...maybe the sheer amount of meat just didn't call to me. In fact, I was curiously driven to devour Jerry's Tofurkey instead. I'm not a vegetarian, but fake meat just calls to me. If nothing else, the Tofurkey is a masterpiece of really weird marketing. The box advertises the fact that the Tofurkey has four "drumettes" (analagous to drumsticks, I suppose, but tempeh isn't really going to fool anyone), compared to a turkey's lame old two, and that the Tofurkey has two Wishstix(tm) (again, analagous to the wishbone, although these are nothing but pieces of "tofurkey jerky" that you can pull apart and claim, "I won!") to the turkey's one. And let us not even mention the lame "Tofurkey-drawing contest". As if all this wasn't enough to drive me into a soy-crazed fit of gastrointestinal delight, Jerry, inspired by the Turducken, had placed the Tofurkey on a bed of other soy-based meatesque products, including braised tofu and Gimme Lean sausage. His name for this concoction was a combination of the words Turducken and Tofurkey that I won't say here because it's not a polite Thanksgiving word. But even though I still enjoy my bacon, it was tasty, I tell you.