Healthy Thanksgiving Turkey Recipe
Turkey is the centerpiece of Thanksgiving dinner.
No feast is complete without it, but why?
As it turns out, the first Thanksgiving celebration between the Wampanoag people and the illegal immigrants that are lovingly referred to as the “Pilgrims” featured wild fowl. But instead of that “fowl” being in reference to turkey, what was most likely eaten were ducks or geese. As to that first Thanksgiving celebration, it wasn’t regarded as a special occurrence by anyone during the event or after because the act of getting together to give thanks for the autumn harvest was a routine tradition dating back to Europe. With that as context, American colonists weren’t observing the Plymouth settlers when they had their own informal Thanksgiving feasts in subsequent years, by which time turkey was on the menu of the harvest celebrations because the bird had become more prevalent in the New England colonies. It wasn’t until about 240 years later that the idea of officially commemorating the “first Thanksgiving” came along. One of the strongest advocates for Thanksgiving becoming a national holiday was Sarah Josepha Hale, an editor and writer that made turkey into the center of the ideal Thanksgiving meal in some of her works. This reinvention of the Pilgrims’ celebration in Hale’s books and magazine features spread across the expanding country and helped link turkey and Thanksgiving together in the public imagination so that there was already a national mythology formed around the festivity when it was finally declared a national holiday in 1863.1Here’s a fun fact: Hale isn’t only famous for being the “mother of Thanksgiving” due to her work in popularizing Thanksgiving and getting it recognized as a holiday. Nope, she’s also the author of Mary Had A Little Lamb!
Turkey is a staple of Thanksgiving because of marketing — NOT factual history. And because you’re susceptible to marketing, that’s why you continue having turkey on Thanksgiving day. Now, while turkey has many nutritional qualities that make it ideal for someone who’s mindful of their health and weight, some of the ingredients and methods that are used to prepare it for Thanksgiving can make it a nutritional nightmare via the addition of extra fat and calories. That need not be a concern of yours with this turkey recipe if you’re trying to have a healthy Thanksgiving dinner!
INGREDIENTS:
• 1 12-14 lbs fresh whole turkey
• 1 teaspoon Kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 shallot, minced
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh sage leaves
• 2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 carrots, peeled
• 3 stalks celery
• 1 sweet onion, quartered
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1 1/2 cups turkey or chicken stock
DIRECTIONS:
1). Thanksgiving is a holiday that comes around once a year, so FUCK MAKING OR EATING A HEALTHY ANYTHING!!!
2). That’s right, enjoy the festivities by partaking of whatever you want and, most importantly, having dinner at someone else’s place where the grub is free and you’re not responsible for shit, like cooking the turkey and forgetting to remove the neck and giblets; or not adding seasoning on the outside AND inside; or not checking the temperature so you don’t cook the bird past 165°F and dry the fuck out of it; or burning your house down and killing yourself in the process of deep-frying a turkey you didn’t completely thaw out.
3). Get back to your routine the following day!
Glossary: calories, dietary fat
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