The Thanksgiving Turk-Off

My husband is massaging Kosher salt into the glistening skin of a raw turkey. He's balancing it on our granite kitchen counter on what used to be the dead gobbler's head. It's the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

He looks up at me and asks, "Are you nervous?"

"Me? No, you mean the Turk-Off?"

"Yeah, do you even have your turkey yet?" he asks.

I reply that I don't, but am smug that my simple recipe with a quality turkey will Out-Turk him for the second year in a row.

And so begins our second annual Turk-Off, a competition judged by the thirty or so relatives who attend my mother-in-law's elbow-to-elbow Thanksgiving extravaganza. Worn out by previous Thanksgivings, last year she asked us to bring the turkey, so I ordered the biggest one I could get from Whole Foods. A Diestel organic turkey.

My husband knew about my purchase last year, but he can't bring himself to eat anything organic because the price per pound makes him sick. He's an organo-rexic. This pretty much defines our marriage. Having battled chronic illness using natural means, I have a cost-benefit equation which always maximizes health, while his maximizes The Deal. If he's not sporting wood after paying for something, it was not a good deal. Costco is his boner zone.

So, last year, despite knowing that I already had a close-to-30-pound turkey in the fridge, my husband purchased a turkey at Costco that according to him cost only $6. I heard him come in the door, heavily walk into the kitchen, then was startled by a loud thud as his frozen bird hit the counter.

"I already have a turkey!" I said.

"Mine's going to be better."

"What? We now have to bring two turkeys?"

"Well, yeah, I thought I could do mine in the new rotisserie in our outdoor grill."

I was perplexed. It took a couple days for his antibiotic-laden turkey to defrost, but when it was soft, I found my husband in the kitchen with the counters covered in cookbooks from Jacques Pepin to Good Housekeeping.

The day before Thanksgiving last year, he decided on a very fancy recipe. He began hand-shelling pistachios. Then, he sauteed onions and sausage. Then, you won't believe this, but he de-boned the entire turkey. I have no idea how he did this, but suddenly the turkey was flat. A deflated invertebrate.

My husband then became a mad scientist holding a giant syringe. I just watched this whole operation, a bit quizzical, a bit bemused by the effort. I don't know where one can buy a giant syringe without making an armed raid on a pharmacy. Using said syringe, he injected a saltwater solution under the skin.

Then, my husband rounded the bird up again by filling it with the carefully prepped pistachio-onion-sausage stuffing. In the final step - or so I thought - my husband got some string from our garage and trussed the turkey in multiple places, with nice little bows from neck-hole to anus.

"So, you're not going to rotisserie it, are you?" I said.

"No, I'm going to slow-cook it."

I jumped into the competition. Well, verbally at least. "All this effort, and my organic turkey with my simple recipe is going to be so much better than yours!"

He threatened to impregnate me with the giant syringe. I left the kitchen imagining little turkey-human babies.

Thanksgiving morning arrived and I had yet to begin prepping my organic turkey. I started making some breakfast for me and the family. Commotion on our brick porch caused the kids to complain about the noise Daddy was making -- they couldn't hear SpongeBob's lines about Bubble Buddy's lactose intolerance. I looked outside.

My husband was chopping wood with an axe. I kid you not. Mad Scientist had morphed into Paul Bunion and he was chopping mesquite-smoked wood for the barbecue. Finally, he put his hand-chopped wood in a little container with some water and placed that and his trussed turkey in the BBQ, clicked on the flames and shut the top.

With all this work, I decided my husband forgot to take into account three things: (1) the time-value of money; (2) the cost of the ingredients used to cover up the taste of his inferior turkey - just like tricking-out a crappy car because you can't afford the Porsche; and (3) the incremental cost of buying a second turkey.

A few hours after Paul Bunion put his axe down, I got my organic turkey out of the fridge. I read the directions on the wrapper: slather with mixture of olive oil, paprika, and salt. Half-way through, pour one cup of warmed white wine on the turkey. Cover the turkey during the last hour. I didn't stuff it, though my father warned me by telephone that fatal omission would make it dry. Within ten minutes and without the use of a syringe, axe, or de-boning techniques, I had my turkey cooking in the oven.

Finally, both birds were done. We drove the kids and the two turkeys to my mother-in-law's house. We told the family about the competition, but not whose turkey was whose. They assumed mine was the trussed invertebrate. I watched the relatives take a little of my turkey and little of my husband's. I watched as they tasted each bird and decided which was better. I was dying to know what they were thinking. We revealed who had made each turkey.

Stated Verdict: A thrifty bunch who don't want to like the organic turkey, the relatives conceded that my turkey was more moist and tasty than the fancily-prepared turkey, but my husband got big points for creativity and effort.

In a strange twist, a couple weeks later, before the next family gathering, one of my husband's relatives called to ask if we could make my husband's turkey again. "Huh?" I said, "I thought mine was better!" Apparently, there was:

1. Some confusion over whose turkey was whose; or
2. Cognitive dissonance which couldn't let them recall that the organic, more expensive turkey was the one that actually tasted better. Or,
3. I'm just an in-law so they politely told me mine was better, then forgot about the little white lie later.

In any case, though I'm confident my organic turk-ster was better, confusion remains. I am thankful we have one more chance this year. Yes, that's what I'm most thankful for.

Once again, my husband is set to Out-Turk me. Keen on closing the moisture gap, his (alleged) $6 turkey is in the fridge "brining" in a large pot of salt water. My $40 turkey is keeping it company, happily sealed up in its wrapper.

If the brining evens-out the moisture gap, this year's Turk-Off will come down to one thing: taste. I'm going to prepare my turkey exactly as I did last year. Maybe I'll send the kids around the table with a clipboard and tell them to ask each family member to mark their vote. The cock-fight is on.

Alix writes for www.mednauseum.blogspot.com, a blog devoted to research supporting dietary and environmental causes of chronic illness. This is an original Silicon Valley Moms Blog post.