Traditional Holiday Recipe

recipe box
By Shimelle Laine/ Flickr

By William Bradley

1 lb. ground turkey

¼ cup shredded parmesan cheese

¼ cup Cabot’s Habañero Cheddar

1 tsp of chili powder

1-2 minced garlic cloves

dash of salt and ground pepper

1 bag of frozen tater tots

1 bottle of barbecue sauce

3-4 horror movies—the cheesier, the better

Begin, years before, by trying to be traditional. Invite friends from your graduate program in English over for a big Thanksgiving meal. Your fiancée will make a turkey, and you can make the stuffing and mashed potatoes. Serve some green beans, too. Buy a pumpkin pie. This is, after all, your first Thanksgiving since you moved in together, just a month and a half before your wedding. You are Very Serious Grown Up People now, people who can be trusted to pay their bills on time and maybe even raise a kid. And this meal, you think, will somehow prove it.

Of course, neither of you really likes turkey—oh, sliced thin for a sandwich it can be fine, but huge chunks of dry meat? Even smothered in gravy, about the best you can say is that the gravy makes the meat less bland. You know that there are people who claim that their own turkeys are succulent and flavorful, but you suspect that they are fucking liars and that there is no way to turn turkey into an enjoyable meal. You can try to move stuff around on your plate so the turkey gets mixed up with the stuffing and the potatoes and the green beans, but doesn’t that just seem wasteful and silly? There’s always that flavorless chunk of bird flesh ruining every mouthful of delicious carbohydrates.

Your friends eat enough to be polite but are really more interested in drinking the wine and beer you bought for the occasion while they talk about Marcel Proust or Emily Dickinson or Jorge Luis Borges or Ron Jeremy. Drink your own Pinot Noir slowly as you try to clean up the kitchen—you don’t want to be the drunkest person at your own party. Not this early in the evening, anyway. But you despair and think about drinking even more as you realize you’ll be eating leftovers for the next several days.

•••

In the ensuing years, try to find new ways to do Thanksgiving as you move across the country multiple times. Go out one year. Order a pizza another. When you’re both vegetarians, do up a vegetable stir fry or just eat sides at someone else’s house. All are better than the usual Thanksgiving dinner, but it doesn’t quite feel special. Well, except for the part where you drink beer in the afternoon while watching football. And then, when you both agree you’re not really into football, drink beer in the afternoon while watching movies.

And though beer in the afternoon is always enjoyable, something seems off. Thanksgiving should be more notable than your typical day on vacation. You long for the pleasures that tradition provides. Without some way to mark the day as unique, an annual holiday to be celebrated as opposed to just a day off from work, it feels like you and your wife are missing out on something.

•••

Develop your own Thanksgiving tradition accidentally, after you both go back to eating fish and fowl when you learn that soy products have a negative interaction with a prescription drug that you have to take every day. Agree that neither of you wants to cook and eat a whole turkey, but decide that turkey burgers might be tasty. Acknowledge that stuffing and green beans, while good enough at a typical Thanksgiving dinner, don’t really appeal to either of you, and that while potatoes are delicious, they’re much better in “tot” form than mashed. Decide that you’re not really interested in being around other people—that you’d prefer to spend this day together alone. Also, conclude that the day’s movies will all be horror films, beginning with Friday the 13th, Part 3—the DVD of which actually came with 3D glasses that will allow you to enjoy the original theatrical 3D effects from the comfort of your own couch.

You or your wife should divide the ground turkey in half. Mix half the turkey with the Parmesan cheese, and half with the habañero cheddar—your wife is not as into spicy food as you are. Divide the chili powder, garlic, and salt and pepper between the two turkey and cheese mixtures. Form each mixture into two patties. Grill on a grill pan, turning frequently, until cooked through. This will take about fifteen to twenty minutes.

In the meantime, make the tater tots. Directions are on the bag.

Realize as you take your first bite that this is the best burger—turkey or otherwise—that you have ever eaten. It’s juicy and spicy and more flavorful than you ever imagined turkey could be. Dip your tater tots in the barbecue sauce—dip the entire burger in the sauce too, for that matter. Wipe your hands on a napkin before putting on your 3D glasses and pressing “Play” on the remote control.

Compliment your wife on this amazing recipe that is, mostly, her creation. Smile when she replies, “Thank you, baby.” Watch the film’s opening sequence, as Jason stalks and kills Harold and Edna. Watch your wife’s face as the teenagers load themselves into the van and the hippie guy—who looks like Tommy Chong and is clearly too old to be hanging out with these kids—hands them a joint that seems to leap from the screen into your living room. Laugh, both with and at her hysterical response.

As you finish your meal, lean back on the couch and put your arm around your wife. Let her snuggle into your chest, but be careful not to crush the arms of her 3D glasses.

“We’re so fucking cool,” she’ll sigh.

“We should have a kid,” you’ll say in agreement.

Repeat this process, once a year, every year—alternating movie choices and maybe someday no longer talking hypothetically about a kid—for the rest of your life.

•••

WILLIAM BRADLEY’s work has appeared in a variety of magazines and journals including The Normal School, The Bellevue Literary Review, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, The Missouri Review, Brevity, and Utne Reader. He has recently completed a book manuscript—a collection of linked essays—that he is now sending out to publishers, agents and contests. This is the second essay he has published in Full Grown People that references horror movies. He has a wife and two cats, but kids remain hypothetical for the moment.

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3 thoughts on “Traditional Holiday Recipe

  1. This is, as the essay itself says, “so fucking cool.” Joyous, snarky, and has Marcel Proust and Ron Jeremy in a single sentence. And if I ate meat, I’d try the actual recipe.

  2. i feel the same about Thanksgiving. Tried it all. Still missing something! And our non-hypothetical kids, they still feel like we should have a turkey. Thankfully, our local co-op sells pre-made turkey dinners where you get a turkey breast and all the fixings. You just warm it up in the oven and it’s better than any turkey I ever made. Brilliant! And I get to watch movies with everyone else, while it warms up, instead of slaving in the kitchen trying to get the sides done at the same time as the turkey…..Now, if I only liked scary movies….

  3. This makes my day. My husband and I, married a year and a half, have been trying to figure out what the hell to do for holidays now that we’re also Very Serious Grown Up People and in theory can make our own decisions. Our parents want to do things exactly as they’ve been done for decades, which was great when we were kids but now borders on pathetic. Whatever we end up doing should definitely involve some combination of beer and tater tots. (The Beeroness blog has great recipes for cooking with alcohol…all the tradition, plus a kick of ADULTHOOD!)

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