David: I Vant Tur-Duck Your Blood

I’ve been celebrating Thanksgiving with friends for years now, saving Christmas as the holiday to be with family. Through the years, my friends and I had some pretty amazing meals, and 2 years ago we decided we wanted to try the Mount Everest of entrees: the Turducken.

Turducken is a chicken, stuffed inside a duck, stuffed inside a turkey. If it sounds crazy, that’s because it is. As we looked up recipes online, we realized just how ridiculous it was (the first step is to de-bone all three birds), and that we would probably never be able to pull it off. But we didn’t give up that quickly.

We found an easy version – Turducken light, if you will, in which you take only the breast of each bird, flatten and layer them, then roll them up. The result is sort of a bird burrito. Or a fowl loaf.

It started out fine. We bought breast of each bird, and one at a time MartiniFun and I laid them out on the kitchen counter, and then took out all our aggression on them with a meat pounder, to flatten them.

“It’s not Thanksgiving if you don’t beat your meat!” MartiniFun announced joyously, toasting the air with his Manhattan.

All was going well: the chicken flattened easily, the turkey beast without much more difficulty. Then we got to the duck. It came in a sealed plastic bag, which was filled with fluid. Blood, I quickly realized. Undaunted, we opened the bag, drained it, and set the duck on the counter. Then I drew out my trusty pounder and started whacking.

Splat! Splat! Splat!

With each pound of the gamey meat, blood shot outward. In seconds it had splattered all over the floor, the walls, and of course, us. Blood everywhere. Our hands were covered, or faced were speckled, and the walls were dripping. It looked like a scene out of Dexter.

It was at that moment that XJosh, the vegetarian, walked into the kitchen.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

* * *

Things turned out fine, once we calmed XJosh down with a stiff drink and a solemn promise that no duck blood had gotten in the green bean casserole. The turducken turned out pretty well: the combination of the birds was pretty tasty, and the duck certainly kept it moist. Unique anyway. We were quite proud of our accomplishment... but the following year, we went back to traditional turkey.