Sometime before “seconds,” you will read an article plucked from today’s headlines titled, “How to Have a Low-Carb Thanksgiving.”

A Low Carb Thanksgiving is an oxymoron, like a “convenient bank,” or a “victorious San Diego Chargers” team. An oxymoron might also be someone who’s had too much oxycontin.

A traditional Thanksgiving dinner includes bowls of cooked bread called “stuffing.”
Traditional stuffing preparation is very graphic and involves stuffing the stuffing into a stuffing cavity “il le oiseau,” or “in the bird,” as it says in the original Pilgrim texts and before the invention of Stove Top.

The first pilgrims in New England did not have stuffing and had to make do with mashed snow. Their kids had names like Cotton, and Wool and Yeast. Their limited diet was supplemented with wild pheasants until Benjamin Franklin’s bill to have the turkey named The Official National Bird failed in the House of Representatives. Turkeys became fair game.

This not only saved us from being ridiculed as “a nation of turkeys” but was especially good news for the bald eagles that went on to lead pampered lives as models for coins, flags and football teams.

But turkeys might get the last laugh. That’s because turkeys are loaded with a dangerous chemical called tryptophan. This is a kind of “natural euphoric” that makes someone who’s just had stuffing, mashed potatoes, and biscuits say “Can I have both the pumpkin and the apple pie?”

A proposal before the federal government would require labeling of birds to warn consumers of safety concerns: “Do not operate heavy machinery or a fork while under the influence of this turkey.”

A recent Thanksgiving innovation is to deep fry the turkey in an industrial sized vat of combustible oil to a temperature of 817 degrees Fahrenheit. After frying the bird at this temperature for an hour, you will either have delicious turkey or a butterball that orbits the earth every 17 days.

On Thanksgiving, the cook frequently forgets to cook a vegetable. That’s why the pilgrims, who were very plucky, invented cranberry sauce. All they had to do was open the can—and presto, a vegetable.

Another truism about Thanksgiving is that the leftovers are better than the original meal. The day after Thanksgiving is turkey enchiladas.

If you come up with a low-carb recipe for turkey enchiladas, keep it to yourself.

Rich Acello is a syndicated columnist; you can reach him at richace@cox.net