Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Stuff yo'self

This week over at "The Unbelievables", my writing partners Jeff Hickmott and Michael Noble are sharing Thanksgiving side dish recipes! You won't have to worry about offending anyone because all of our recipes are ethnically ambiguous, just like this family:

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I fear, however, that in our haste to share our favorite side dishes, we may have overlooked the main dish! So here's a recipe for that:

TURKEY, OR WHATEVER, ALA CLARK
INGREDIENTS
  • A turkey. Or a goose. Or a duck. Or a chicken. Or a ham (aka pork turkey). Or vegetables (aka not turkey), a big lump of them, made into a loaf shaped like a dead animal carcass, I guess
  • Stuffing
  • Salt
  • Pepper
INSTRUCTIONS
  1. If there's stuff already inside whatever you're going to cook, take it out. All of it.
  2. Throw it away. Some people will tell you that you can use that stuff for gravy or soup, or in the case of vegetables, seeds, for growing new vegetables. Some people are horrible, filthy liars.
  3. Take your stuffing (Use my recipe if you want, or don't. I don't care. Stuffing is like God; it can be whatever you want, as long as it makes you feel good about yourself and the world around you and you don't try to impose your stuffing on others. Think I give a shit? I don't. No disrespect or anything but I have my own life to lead. Worrying about what you do or don't do when it comes to stuffing is something I just can't take on right now.) and put it inside of what you're cooking. Go ahead and pack it in there. You might have to carve a hole into a ham or the vegetable lump loaf in order to do this. That should be self-evident and I shouldn't have to tell you that.
  4. Apply salt and pepper. Once it's cooked, you won't know that you did it but it's something you do when you cook.
  5. I was just informed that you can't really stuff a ham. Sorry. Pull all that stuffing out of there and fill the hole up with the ham you dug out to make it. You didn't throw that ham away, did you? You idiot! That was perfectly good ham!
  6. Heat up your oven. 325° F. That's pretty hot and should get the job done. You probably could have done this while preparing the food to cook. Oh well. The moment has passed. You can't sit around now and fuss about just how much of your life has been wasted. That will happen later, when you talk to your family.
  7. If you don't have an oven, try a slow-burning box of some sort. No temperature controls on those so you're going to have to just eyeball it. I honestly don't know if that will work. I'm thinking probably not.
  8. Depending on the weight of whatever you're cooking, it's going to need to be in there for anywhere from 2 1/4 hours to 6 1/2 hours, however long it takes to get the internal temperature of the food to a bacteria-eating-your-body-from-the-inside-out-proof  165° F.
  9. If you live in a country that uses C degrees instead of F degrees, good luck because nobody knows what the hell that is.
  10. Take it out when it's done.
  11. Eat it.
If for some reason this or any other recipes don't work out, don't despair...

Happy Thanksgiving!

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