Cavities

This Thanksgiving, Lisa and Dwayne are coming to our house for dinner, and I'm really excited about that. If there is one thing I never have trouble being thankful for, it's the friends who grace my life. Among other things, Lisa and I share a love for cooking, kitchen gadgets, wine, and the belief that Thanksgiving should be kept traditional. The protein should not be something you swim with, the potatoes should be mashed, gravy is the key to a holy meal, and the stuffing should not be wild and crazy. It didn't occur to me to mention to her that I don't technically use the stuffing properly, meaning I don't stuff it anywhere. (then call it dressing, my mom said.) By the time I did communicate that to her, which fortunately didn't send her running to make new plans with normal people, I was left thinking about why I don't participate in this weird ritual.

I've never put the stuffing in the turkey. Meaning I've never used stuffing as actual stuffing. I make the stuffing separately because animal innards gross me out. The word "cavity" in reference to anything other than something wrong in a tooth turns my stomach. So shoving my hand into a cavity - or poking foreign objects into a cavity - with something I intend to eat later has never actually worked out well for me. (remember... all those years I was 98% vegetarian... some things never go away.) I do all kinds of other things to keep the turkey full of flavor - like surrounding his roasting pan with nice, gentle, non-violating items like aromatics. I think it's like aromatherapy for the turkey in that it relaxes him, enabling him to bring out his juices, as opposed to having something shoved up his ass while he tries to get all moist and tender for us. That would just make him uptight, if you ask me, leaving him stingy with the juice.

A couple of months ago, Jon was going through just a bit of stress when he was interviewing with the CIA wanna-be's, and I worked double time to be a good wife. It doesn't come natually to me, being an extra good wife, so it is actually something I have to plan out. On one particular stressful night, I think he was in the garage obsessing about the Yeti, so I pulled out a whole chicken, knowing he wanted Beer Can Chicken for dinner. I hovered over the dead bird for a few minutes mustering up the will to touch it's raw flesh, and then slowly, carefully, inched my hand into the chicken's cavity and pulled out the unmentionables from inside of it. Awful things came out of it. Awful. While my dog and my cat were scurrying about at my feet wanting to snack on the unmentionables, I focused on surprising Jon with something he never, ever suspected I would do. It would be like me coming home and finding that he had cleaned a bathroom, toilet and all. As much as we don't like to admit this, we have our roles; I pay Marin to clean the potties and he sticks his hands into a chicken's cavity. But there I was, my hand up (or was it down?) a dead piece of poultry and I wasn't passing out! Total victory for me. Feeling inspired by my own guts while throwing the chicken's guts away, I even peeled some garlic to insert in the beer can, massaged the chicken with olive oil, and tied his legs up with butcher's twine. But when it came to the beer can and where I was supposed to shove it - I just couldn't. And when it came to eating later that night, I couldn't really do that well either. The chicken and I had just had too much intimacy for me to carve him and chew him. But the whole preparation thing - Jon was very happy with me.

I asked my mom why she doesn't stuff a turkey either, and she mentioned the problem of food poisoning multiple people have with stuffed turkey. Apparently it messes with the temperature somehow and has given a lot of people some very bad Thanksgivings as a result. As for me, I'll just rename the stuffing "unstuffing" and call it good. And I'm happy to cook every single item on our Thanksgiving menu, just as long as someone else's hand goes up that turkey's cavity to clean out the frightening things left in there. (or is it down?)