I'd like my turkey with a side order of meat please

Firstly I would like to wish all of my two readers a very Happy Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving, and usually entertain the family at my house, but this year I have a break, and am going to my parents house. I must say, even though I really do love cooking the Thanksgiving meal, it is going to be really nice just to be a guest at Thanksgiving, and not having a mountain of dishes and the exhaustion thereafter will be a treat as well.


I have done all sorts of turkey recipies....one where I placed a mosaic of herbs under the skin, and one year I ordered a turducken. Just in case you don't know what it is, it is a turkey stuffed with a chicken that is stuffed with a duck. I know that sounds perhaps a bit lewd, but trust me it is indeed delicious.

And then this morning I found this meaty mammoth on the intertubes:





Y'all what you are seeing is a turducken that has been wrapped in bacon. Jeebus it looks like something a butcher tripping on acid would create, but who can deny the deliciousness of bacon? Surely I cannot - bacon makes everything better, and I must say that the druggie butcher that thought this up is genius.

Here is the beast fully cooked:


Oooooh gimme a piece of that y'all!

Images courtesy of http://bacontoday.com/turbaconducken-turducken-wrapped-in-bacon/

Want

There are not many things I miss about New York. I fell in love with Nashville and middle Tennessee shortly after moving here, and getting over the culture shock. For example, if you are walking on a downtown street in Nashville, and make eye contact with a stranger, said stranger will smile and or say hello to you. My New York friends will think that is some crazy shit, but it is indeed true.

I usually miss New York around this time of year, when the weather gets cold and I think of my Italian extended famliy gathering in Queens, around a big table, with really gorgeous food that I would kill for right now.

I would really like to replicate my Nonno's minestrone, but so far that has proved to be impossible, because I think it was infused with his soul as he stirred the pot over and over until it was ladeled into bowls.

There is another problem with growing up with Northern Italian cuisine and being far removed from a lot of Northern Italians. It is hard as shit to find certain products here in the South.

Perfect example: cappeletti. Oh, you say you are not familiar with this? Well, let me 'splain by all means. Cappelletti is a pasta extremely similar to tortellini, but they are smaller, and mostly consumed in broth as a first course for either a Christmas Day or Christmas Eve dinner. It is by far the most perfect and gorgeous soup I have ever had. I would not even bother asking a grocery store clerk if they carried cappeletti, because they would invariably scratch their noggin and be like "cappawhat?", so I would just be happy finding a good frozen meat tortellini, but alas I have not found any.

Sad y'all, so sad.

So I guess I will have to make the pasta myself, which is the textbook definition of labor intensive. It will be a chore for me, because my cooking style is quick, combine flavors on the fly sort of cooking, and this is more like manufacturing. But I am desparate, so I think this will happen before winter is over. I need a fix.

Gone

The 4th floor is empty.

Gone is the cowbell.

Gone are the ceremonial throwing chairs.

Gone is the miniature baseball bat used for therapeutic purposes.

Gone are the people that I have worked with for many, many months.

I am a solitary person by nature. I have never had a lot of friends - not because I have cooties or anything, but I have always been happy entertaining myself. It's a middle child thing. Since March, I have worked with a great group of people. Yes, they were young, crude, and took the Lord's name in vain a lot, but I loved their spirits and their passion.

And now it is all done, and I am back working by myself in the solitude of the second floor, slowly getting back to the job I used to do and was good at. It feels like a warm blanket that was just waiting for me all this time.

Except now I am alone. I guess I am in a period of mourning for the cameraderie. I feel numb.