It’s almost Thanksgiving, so it’s turkey time again.
Hobby Farms is the place to look for turkey recipes. We can show you how to safely roast it for Thanksgiving dinner and fashion it into yummy leftovers. There are lots more tasty turkey dishes in the HobbyFarms.com recipe section, too, such as Turkey Vegetable Soup with Rice, Turkey Squash Skillet Supper and Three-bean Pumpkin Chili with Turkey.
Most people buy a factory-farmed, supermarket turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, but homegrown heritage turkeys taste much better [https://www.hobbyfarms.com/farm-industry-news/2010/11/23/conserve-heritage-turkeys.aspx]. That’s because heritage breeds were developed for flavor and not just a lot of white meat. To learn how to raise your own heritage turkeys, check out The Livestock Conservancy’s Heritage Turkey Manual. It’s free!
You all liked the turkey factoids I wrote about in a 2011 post called “Talking Turkey,” so here’s some more turkey intelligence you can share at the Thanksgiving table.
- On November 24, 2011, 661 people dressed like turkeys attended the 44th Annual Capital One Bank Dallas YMCA Turkey Trot in Dallas, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
- Guinness also recorded that the world’s strongest bird gizzard belonged to a wild turkey that crushed 24 walnuts in their shells within four hours and ground surgical lancet blades into grit within 16 hours.
- Englishman Paul Kelly holds the Guinness world record for carving a turkey in 3 minutes 19.47 seconds flat. He also holds the world’s record for plucking three turkeys in 11 minutes and 30.16 seconds.
- Uzzi and I Googled bands with turkey in their name. We found the Evil Turkeys, Fried Turkeys, Frozen Turkeys, Nervous Turkey, Jive Turkeys, Confuzzled Turkeys, Red Dirty Turkeys and several Wild Turkey bands.
- Turkie is the star of really strange movie called ThanksKilling. It’s a slasher film about five college kids who encounter a homicidal turkey that wants them dead. Actors at the Balagan Theatre in Seattle, adapted the movie into “ThanksKilling: The Musical.” That’s weird!
- Mom’s favorite turkey is the humongous dressed bird that Mr. Bean gets stuck on his head in a vintage British TV special called “Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean.” You can watch it on YouTube if you like.
- Mr. Scrooge buys a huge turkey for the Cratchit’s Christmas dinner in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Now turkey is favorite fare for Christmas dinner in Great Britain.
- In the 1970s, if someone thought another person was inept, she called him a turkey.
- In bowling, if someone bowls three strikes in a row, that’s called a turkey, too.
- President Harry S. Truman said, “We should all get together and make a country in which everybody can eat turkey whenever he pleases.” Makes sense to Uzzi and me!
