Ahhh, that poor, maligned bird. Oh, we love to eat it, but the abuse it has to take in our every-day jargon.

What worse insult than to be called a turkey; a flop; a loser. What did the turkey ever do to deserve this bad rap? The next worse thing is to be accused of having a turkey neck; a boon to plastic surgeons but not very complimentary to the bird.

We all know what it means to “talk turkey” or “go cold turkey” but there is no agreement in the literature as to the origin of these expressions, found in literature from the early 1900s. The sense of these expressions is always to speak bluntly or plainly or, when in terms of withdrawal from some addiction, to stop abruptly.  It’s all just a bunch of gobbledygook!

And then to add further insult, we somewhere along the line decided that the turkey was going to be our celebratory repast for all major holidays. Look out Tom, Thanksgiving is on its way again.

I don’t mind cooking a turkey; it pretty well takes care of itself and leaves most of the day free for walks or reading. The turkey is very accommodating that way.

But if we were to follow to the letter all the Canada Food safety guidelines for cooking, serving, and storing the bird,  we might never even have a chance to sit down to dinner before it was time to get it all packed away. These regulations would have us gobble down this large feast in less time than it takes to eat a hamburger and fries at McDonalds.

I do follow some of the more common sense rules, and certainly I am more conscious of raw poultry than my mother ever was. I now have a separate cutting board that I use only for poultry that can be bleached after each use, and I never use it for foods to be eaten raw.

I am careful about dripping poultry juices, from the shopping cart to the fridge, and store refrigerated foods accordingly. By now, we all know that we should only stuff the bird just before it goes into the oven and many prefer to cook it outside entirely. I still use the “loose leg” method to test for doneness, a method my mother must have used because she never had a meat thermometer, but I also take the temperature of the thigh (185ºF) and the stuffing (165 ºF).

That’s about as far as I go strictly by the rules. There are a few that I just can’t get a handle on. 

“Remember the ‘2-hour rule’ when entertaining with a large meal or buffet. Don’t let perishable foods linger for longer than two hours in the danger zone.” or “Serve turkey and stuffing immediately. Keep the rest of the turkey and stuffing hot at a minimum 140ºF in the oven,” and “Replace empty platters with hot food (on fresh platters) from the oven.”

When do you get to eat? What if you take the bird out at four but the cocktail hour stretches on ‘til six; it’s already time to put it away and you haven’t even eaten yet. I can’t imagine leaving the roast in a hot oven: it would be dried out, and can you imagine all the dirty dishes if you had to serve the meal on a series of serving dishes; one for each hour at the table.

I shudder when I recall past turkey transgressions I have witnessed. I have seen cooked turkeys put into a cool garage for storage. I have seen turkeys left over-night in a cold oven with the sausage stuffing still inside! This was so that the sons on returning home after their evening prowls could easily get at the bird for late night snacks. And they all survived. This might be explained by the morning-after breakfast prepared by the father of an egg-tomato-onion-garlic concoction served with home-made oil-cured sausages chased with a shot of brandy in a cup of molasses-thick coffee reheated from the evening before. It was an Italian household.

I remember my own school-days of left-over turkey and stuffing sandwiches with cranberries, made early in the morning, stuffed into our over-heated lockers, and eaten sometime after noon. I can only surmise that the anti-oxidants in the cranberries had something to do with it. Or we were just lucky!

An article I found in a recent paper, “Family History forged at the dinner table,” points out that it is all these quirky, even life-threatening, shared family moments at the dinner table that can warp our sense of humour and scar us for life. (I’m sure that wasn’t the intent of the article; just what I read between the lines.) This reminded me of a newspaper article saved from last Thanksgiving. Apparently, at a family Thanksgiving dinner, an uncle took exception to being criticized for picking at the turkey with his fingers rather than cutting off a slice with a knife. He ended up stabbing the two complainers, both relatives, with the aforementioned knife.

I wonder if the women-folk managed to get the turkey and trimmings safely tucked away in the fridge in the requisite time period. Yes indeed, a fine family moment to go down in history!