• Join The Fed
• Advertise with The Fed

• About Us
• Contact

In This Issue

• Todurken: Hot Poultry Threesome
• New York City Hates The Homeless (Surprise!)
• Pope Lives It Up In Final Days
• Letters to the Feditrix: We Want Orangutans!
• Columbia's Investments Are Really Shady (Another Surprise!)
• Italian Neo-Fascism: Sexier than Ever
• Hidden Origins of your Favorite Holidays
• Macy's Parade Unites Jaded New Yorkers in Disgust
• Slow Motion Gunfight Saves Christmas
• Barnard Feminists Full of It (You Guessed It!)
• Reality TV to follow Nike's Lead, Exploit Third World Women
• Fed Staffer Admits Inappropriate Santa Fantasies
• Family Time Blows (Got you Again!)
• The Obligatory Vegan Option: Tofurky
• Why Holiday Diversity Scares Me
• A Paris Hilton Holiday Comic
• Your Retirement Fund
• Silent Vengeance: Book II
• Wacky Fun Whitey
• Robot Ninjas vs. Zombie Vikings

For Thanksgiving dinner, it is traditional to have turkey. For Christmas, I believe it is ham. For Hannukah, we carve the holiday latkes. From what I remember of the presentations we had at my elementary school, on Kwanzaa they all drink something from the same cup. But in Louisiana, we have the perfect dish for any holiday meal: the turducken.

When I was in high school, my family started going to a Christmas party every year at the house of one of my mother's co-workers.People would talk for a couple hours, and then we'd have dinner at about two in the afternoon, and the main course was always turducken. Turducken?

The turducken looks like a turkey. This is because when you look at a turducken, you are looking at a turkey, but not just simply a turkey.Oh no. The first time I went to this party, when they carved the formidable fowl, I was surprised to see various strata of poultry revealed. As it turned out, the turducken was actually a chicken, stuffed in a duck, stuffed in a turkey. In other words, birds going where they were never meant to go. But it was really tasty.

What is the origin of this monstrosity? Some have wondered whether the birds are stuffed inside each other while alive or whether they are bred this way. If this were the case, the horrifying bird-creature that would result sounds like a beast out of Greek mythology to me.Eating a turducken would be something like eating a much dumber centaur. Would they be bred boneless, complete with cornbread, shrimp, and spicy andouille dressing oozing from their nether-regions?

In fact, the origins of the turducken cannot be definitively established, but many accept that it sprung fully formed from the mind of EmrilÕs less annoying Cajun counterpart, Chef Paul Prudhomme. Chef Prudhomme claims to have invented this culinary beast back in 1962. I have never witnessed the making of a turducken. The people who have the annual Christmas party probably buy one frozen. From Chef Prudhomme's recipe, it looks like a gargantuan task:

Making a turducken is a multiple day project. First you gotta make groceries. Here's an abbreviated shopping list: chicken & duck, plus entrails; turkey; andouille; shrimp; 9 cups celery; 8 cups green peppers; 12 cups chopped onions, plus 6 whole onions; cream; milk; evaporated milk; 5 sticks of butter; 7 bay leaves; brown sugar; 6 cups fine dry French bread crumbs; a total of 43 tablespoons and a teaspoon of 5 kinds of Chef Paul Prudhomme's Magic Seasonings; a small hammer; 6 sheet pans; metal or bamboo skewers; tobasco; vodka; tomato juice; Worcestershire sauce, etc. (Okay, the last 4 are for a bloody Mary, 'cause it's gonna be a while.) Then you gotta make cornbread and bone the birds. If you think that sounds dirty, you're right. You've gotta cut up four carcasses and rip the bones out. Yep, that's what we Louisianians call a good time. Then you've gotta make five kinds of dressing, and stuff/spread them in/on different parts of the different birds, along with Chef Paul's Magic Seasonings. (They have names like Chef Paul Prudhomme's Meat Magic). In this process, all the birds get pretty much spread out into flat meat sheets with legs and wings and heaps of various stuff on top. Then you've gotta roll up the birds inside of each other, and secure them shut with a skewer. This is a full day's work. On day number two, you bake this sucker for 9 hours and make another kind of dressing to go with it. Then find about 30 people to eat it. Yum.

While making the turducken is quite a feat, it's not the only meat concoction of it's kind. South Africans enjoy the traditional osturducken, which is basically a turducken stuffed in an ostrich, probably minus the Chef Paul's Magic Seasonings and the shrimp and andouille. Even more impressive is a similar Middle Eastern dish: whole stuffed camel. That's right, it's a whole camel, and it's stuffed with a lamb, stuffed with 20 chickens, stuffed with 60 hardboiled eggs and more. Feeds 80 to 100 people. Now that's a lot of meat.