Tropical turkey/s and thanksgiving
Although Las Islas is not known to celebrate Thanksgiving nor serve/have turkey on the dining table during special occassions, I couldn't help but scan and post this "Dummies-like Guide to Turkey Carving" of some sorts for those who celebrate this special event around this time of the year. I got this while I was cleaning our mailbox two Mondays ago and remembered that it came along with the prized poultry that one of my dad' patient's gave us in exchange for his services a year and half ago.
I can´t exactly recall the exact date, but if my "photographic" memory serves me correctly, it was on a weekend in the middle of summer here (around late April or early May)...
But if there´s one thing I (distinctly) remember, it was mom´s constant reminder/s that whole week, saying that we should reserve the coming Saturday for family lunch, not eat anything heavy nor make any plans to go out of town or with friends etc.. She also made several calls to my lolo and aunt, who lived about a mile away from us, inviting them to come over and share the rare treat.
Not that we´re turkey first-timers or anything since we each have our own memorable encounter/s (whether in its edible or live form) with the famous fowl elsewhere, but it was probably the (literal and figurative) enormity of the event and doing it all together, which got her, and (in the process) all of us, excited.
All we knew about it was that it will be delivered all the way from this semi-mysterious but very generous person´s place in Quezon city, complete with the traditional (?) plum sauce, bread stuffing and all.
We were just told to prepare the biggest plates and serving dishes for it to fit into, which, we also thought was the biggest challenge we had but nobody mentioned that the sheer agony of waiting for it would be harder.
Good thing it arrived just in time for lunch just before anyone was tempted to eat the leftovers from breakfast or worse, call for delivery since no one cooked anything for lunch...
I am not exactly sure what happened next after the whole package arrived and if we followed or entirely forgot to follow the instructions (again probably because we were too excited, hungry or overwhelmed at it´s size and smell) or if Ate Sherna thought it was just your ordinary (but quite) oversized chicken and immediately cut it up like any other roast chicken dish we had while we were saying our prayers or something. Either way, it was quickly forgotten because what followed was a delectable blur, with no one making a comment about it´s smell or taste (if any).
We had pavo for about three days (in seperate occassions of course) even if we already gave about 1/4(?) of it to our other cousins, ran out of gravy (which we "unsucesfully" tried to duplicate with a recipe of our own), had lots of untouched plum sauce sitting in the ref for a week or so and makunat bread stuffing at that.
Not quite your usual thanksgiving but pretty good for first timer´s spending it in the tropics, right?
Which indirectly reminds me of a more famous filipino who has been getting more publicity than the usual because of his upcoming fight with the Golden Boy, and more so when he gave new meaning to the tradition just the other day in L.A. :
Click to view
Thanks...?!? among other things to be thankful for :)