I attended a panel discussion among food writers and critics Wednesday evening where the moderator asked who was bringing what to Thanksgiving dinner. One person said he was responsible for a signature family dish composed of onions baked in mayo and curry powder. There’s no explaining the habits of old money WASPs. A British panelist said she drops by Balthazar, the French bakery on Spring Street in Soho, and arrives with shopping bags filled with baked goods.
Nobody asked me, as an audience member, what I contribute to our family feast. And during the Q&A at the end of the discussion I didn’t raise my hand. Nonetheless, I believe that my offering, the same one year in/year out easily trumps the experts’ frankly lame ideas. I’m the self-appointed provisioner of our festive table’s chocolate turkeys. One to a customer.
I can’t say for sure when the tradition began but I suspect it dates back to a childhood Thanksgiving at my grandparents where each kid found a colorful foil wrapped turkey at his place setting. My grandparents were European, arrived in the United States just before World War II, and even though they loved this country I doubt that they were well versed in its holiday traditions. They left Thanksgiving dinner to their capable cook and my hunch is that the chocolate turkeys, along with the sweet potatoes blanketed in marshmallows, were her idea.
Once my grandparents passed away, though my grandmother took her time — she brought her appetite to Thanksgiving in her 104th year — I felt the weight of tradition fall on my shoulders. I frankly didn’t believe that any other family member could be trusted with such a stark and solemn responsibility.
For starters, the turkeys have to be solid, not hollow milk chocolate. They have to be wrapped in festive brashly colored tin foil — check them out and you’ll discover that the markings aren’t exactly the same on any two brands — and they have to be the right size. Neither too large nor too small.
You want them to be big enough so that you can gnaw away at them from several days after Thanksgiving but not so huge that they’re still demanding your attention come Christmas. It’s easiest to first attack and bite off the gobbler’s little head and wattle. But that seems rather cruel. I prefer to start with the base of the bird. However, you proceed it’s inevitably an exercise in sadness and loss because you’re destroying perfection. But what’s a self-respecting kid to do? The only thing worse than devouring it is not consuming it. It’s not a decoration.
This year I did something I swore I’d never do. I bought turkeys that weren’t foil-wrapped. Made from antique molds, wrapped in cellophane and a ribbon, they came from Vasilow’s, our old-time, tin roof candy store in Hudson, NY. I did so because they’re extremely tasteful as well as tasty and a relative bargain compared to what chocolate turkeys are selling for these days in Manhattan or online. The size of some of them is so stingy that they don’t even deserve to call themselves hens. They’re more like chicks. I also like to support local businesses.
By the way, I googled foil-wrapped chocolate turkeys and the first thing that popped up was See’s Candies candidate. Scroll down their website and you’ll find their customer ratings and reviews. The gobblers scored a 4.7 with 146 five-star reviews and eight one-stars. Can we just pause for a moment to consider what misanthrope, what dark tormented soul, would give a chocolate turkey one star? Part of their appeal is that you know what you’re getting. Unlike real roast turkeys that often disappoint — how many dry, dehydrated white meat and undercooked dark meat birds have you suffered over the course of your eating career? — chocolate turkeys are virtually fool-proof. They don’t disappoint. No matter how dry or soggy the dressing, brittle the green beans and what are sweet potatoes all about anyway? — 4.5 oz. of milk chocolate perfection is the perfect punctuation point, the sublime coda, to any feast.
I bought seven of them this year. One for every adult at the table. Six milk and one dark chocolate for my sister-in-law. I don’t want to trigger any dinner table arguments but I think semisweet chocolate turkeys miss the point. They’re too serious, too grown-up. The whole point of a chocolate turkey is to trigger childhood’s long dormant tastebuds.
Speaking of which for the first time in a long time we’re going to have actual children at the table. Toddlers. Our twin granddaughters. My wife warned me not to get them chocolate turkeys. Their parents have strived to delay their introduction to sugar almost as strenuously as they have to phone and computer screens.
I don’t want to rock the boat. But these are precocious little kids. In the same way they’re mesmerized by cellphones (hard if not impossible to avoid these days) they’re probably going to go crazy at the sight of these glorious gobblers with multi-colored sprinkles. Not having their own turkeys amounts to child abuse. Having said that I’m not sharing mine. And I’m certainly not going to be humbled into going into another room to take furtive bites.
Come next year these kids are getting chocolate turkeys no matter what anybody says. They can go cold chocolate turkey the other fifty-one weeks of the year but not on Thanksgiving. I’m willing to accept the consequences.
Ralph Gardner, Jr. is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found be found on Substack.
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