When I was a wee child, my Aunt Helen arrived for Thanksgiving, and as she was an expert in everything, as she lived in a metro area, she of course announced she as going to prepare the Turkey, and a Turkey is capitalized as they are so important to a Holy Day meal.
In reality, turkey is not that great of meat. It is like pork, in you just know it is pork, and if you eat pork every day, you start contemplating how bad pork tastes, as you can not hide pig meat no more than peppermint or citrus flavors.
So any way, Helen the resident expert, because she is a millionaire, lives in a metro area and drinks gallons of alcohol at every holiday, which is usually 450 days a year, as one does not want to miss a day, she is the chef of the roast beast that Thanksgiving.
Mom of course is stuck doing all the other cooking, which is what Mom always was stuck doing in and on every holiday event.
Everything is going well, the mashed potatoes, corn, cranberry salad etc.... and coffee as Mom always made great coffee as she stirred an egg into the mixture and boiled it all.........
Where was I?
Yes Helen, the experte who is rich and resides in a gaited metro area, arrives at noon with the turkey.
There should have been warning signs in this, as the distnnct aroma of a hint of singed feathers was in the air, as in came the turkey roaster, and was deposited for Mom to make gravy, and upon opening it, as Helen was off in the parlor announcing the common folk she had arrived, we discovered a bird which was black.
Now I know that most people would call that burned, but I think of it now as the color that black tastes like. Black tastes like Aunt Helen's Thanksgiving Turkey, and I still can smell and taste that thing.
Upon inquistion to the Beloved Uncle who was telling the tale with Grandpa to us on the sly, apparently Helen had arisen at 6 am for the main event, and stuffed the Turkey into a roaster, where upon metro chef etiquette she turned up the oven to 500 degrees to "sear in the juices".
That is steak usually, but as it is all meat, I can see how an expert would not comprehend the difference of association.
So that is the Turkey, only one we have, so that is what we eat. Mom makes gravy which tastes like turkey soot, which I am sure you have no idea of the flavor, but it is the taste of black and it tastes just like Aunt Helen's Turkey.
The meat was not black, but interesting thing is with turkey juices and fat baking out, that by osmossis or something, like reverse smoking, you get a nice burned feather flavor that impregnates the meat too.
Yes let us not have smoked apple wood Turkey, but a nice burned sooty flavor smoke to the fowl feast.
I never did quite figure it out, how in the hell someone would not be so ashamed of destroying a Turkey, that they might not have gone to town to get a new one, as why in hell would you show up with a sooty bird and then act like that is what the hell it is supposed to look like.
See I watched television and Butterball turkeys are not black. I would think Aunt Helen should have seen one on television to know that burnt is burned, and not what a bird should appear like.
Then again I see these chefs now who all say "caramelized" in things, and that is just a fancy name for burned up sugars, which caramel is brown and not black, but I do see alot of the taste of black in the experts..........they way people used to cook before they knew how not to burn the hell out of things.
So anyway, everyone looked forward to Thanksgiving and Turkey, and we had to give thanks for a burned bird that tasted like oily sooty vaporized feathers.
Maybe Helen thought she could bluff the rural folks by acting like that bird was normal, or maybe she cooked that way in the metro. I just am still dumbfounded by that mystery, but then again she might have been that dense and thought that you could ruin an entire meal and it would not matter.
It was like the year the brother in law, decided to deep fry a turkey, and it sort of looked fossilized brown as it was too done. I had a hell of a time trying to cut the meat off that leathery bird, that had a distinct sound of snapping when I tried to cut it as the meat was jerkyized.
I am thankful that I know what the color of black tastes like. It is the taste of Aunt Helen's Turkey, which in Darwin evolution it tells the tongue, "DO NOT EAT THIS OR YOU WILL GET SICK" as people should not eat things like wood ash, forest fires or other black things, as things which are black only occur in nature as a warning to not eat those things.
Turkeys are things meant for stupid people. The producers put a little red and white thermostat in them to tell you when they are done. That plastic thermostat should not be melted into the bird I suppose. There are things too like directions on the wrapping. Barring that, 350 degrees pretty well will keep you from having smoke rolling out of the kitchen and leaving a vapor trail from Grandpa's house to your Mom's house, to leave a meteorite type smouldering pit in her kitchen in what was a turkey roaster.
I think this is enough of that fond Thanksgiving memory. One would think that the smell of burned Turkey and the taste of burned Turkey would have abated after these many years, but I still can scent that as I type this and I still can taste that color of black.
agtG
