Thanksgiving 2020 sounds like an oxymoron

Thanksgiving 2020… not a lot to be thankful for, but when you think about it, folks during the very fi rst Thanksgiving so long ago, had it pretty rough too, but they found something to say thanks about.

With any luck at all, you’ve got a turkey to prepare and odds are it will be delicious — if it’s not, you’ll at least have a good story to tell next year.

Are you going traditional, or slightly off the beaten path in your big bird preparation plans this year?

We all know there are a hundred and one ways to cook it.

You can bake it in mom’s conventional oven, every cavity and orifi ce stuffed with um… stuffi ng with stuffi ng. This tried and true method, perfected by moms and grandmas everywhere is practically infallible, as long as you paid attention to what yer mom (or dad — we’re not going to be accused of being politically incorrect over this, although I do tend to lean that direction) was doing in the kitchen all day on Thanksgiving while everyone else was watching that weird parade of balloon creatures on the TV.

My dad one year coated a bird with baking clay and baked it. It was one of the juiciest turkeys ever and the clay formed a terra cotta shell around the bird, but it did taste a little like dirt and I wondered if the people who provided the clay had a cat.

Deep frying your bird is a risk vs reward thing. When done successfully, it produces a turkey literally dripping with fl avor in about a quarter of the time it takes to bake one. Done unsuccessfully and you can burn down your house in less time than it takes to bake a turkey conventionally.

Oil-less frying is new on the list and frankly I don’t even really know what the heck that means. They call it oil-less frying, but I am under the impression that frying is defi ned as coming into direct contact with hot oil, so oil is as vital a component to frying as heat, so oil-less, or air frying should not even be allowed to be called frying and the manufacturers of these “air fryers” need to call them what they are, hot moving air baking thingies, but if they did that no one would buy them because who wants to spend three to four weeks pay on a big high-speed toaster oven?

Don’t let the marketing companies fool you. It’s just an infrared oven and the only thing fried are the people who decided to call it an air-fryer.

My personal favorite means of cooking the big bird is to slow cook it inside a 230-degree smoke fi lled chamber for at least fi ve hours.

Last year was a crazy success. I stuffed that bird underneath a 14-pound ham so that the ham drippings basted the turkey for a solid fi ve hours.

The turkey’s orifi ces were stuffed with, drum roll… fi ve thinly sliced Granny Smith apples some green onion and a little butter.

I also used apple wood to make smoke.

I’m not going to lie. It was a pretty righteous Thanksgiving feast, which reminds me that I should share with you, a few things I am thankful for this year.

I’m eternally thankful for my wife, MaryLee.

Then, I am thankful to all of you… the faithful and not so faithful readers of this column, who wade through this thighdeep cesspool of verbiage, hoping to get something out of it even if it’s just an occasional chuckle, or something that made you go, “Hmmm.”

I’m thankful for turkey day feast leftovers (all but the sweet taters – there’s a reason those are left over); I’m thankful for the fact that MaryLee was raised Greek and knows how to throw down an epic feast on short notice.

I am thankful that this country has not yet imploded in on itself because of politics, COVID-19, and any number of other 2020 crisis-worthy crap.

I’m thankful I don’t always get what I deserve, because sometimes what I deserve could be far worse than what I actually get.

I’m thankful that God made not only Turkeys, but chickens as well — they could quite possibly the perfect domestic animal in the history of domestic animals because they eat ticks and snakes and spiders, like there’s no tomorrow, lay eggs, and provide us with delicious morsels of meat to fry.

I am thankful for my Colt .22 caliber revolver, which quietly, but decisively, dispatches the assortment of vermin that constantly threaten the aforementioned yard birds.

I am thankful that, on rare occasions, Wife allows me to drive her snazzy sports car (as long as I don’t press the throttle too close to the fl oor).

I am thankful for the entirety of my family — from the crazed lunatics, to the goofy nerds, to the way-too-serious — both near and far in bloodline and travel distance.

But this year, I am most thankful to all the heroes working the front lines of this COVID-19 pandemic — the doctors nurses, fi rst responders, hospital workers, police offi cers and everyone else working in the face of this crazy, deadly virus, in order to keep us safe.