The 5 – Thanksgiving Foods

This is your pal BeefLoaf and I bring you, THE 5, Thanksgiving Foods.  As some of you may know, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  This isn’t an anti-Christmas thing (although truth be told, I do go with Xmas most of the time because I am lazy…..Mrs. BeefLoaf’s family would do the old CHRISTmas thing, but they realize I’m not the one to bother with all of that so whatevs)……I actually really enjoy Xmas too, but not as much as Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving has the gathering of family / friends, but without the presents, just the food….and the booze.  You get together, share a meal, watch some football, it’s terrific.  In honor of my numero uno holiday (other than the White Sox Home Opener), I bring you the 5.

5 – Stuffing – A Thanksgiving staple and a delicious treat.  To be honest, most stuffings aren’t worth a damn, but BeefLoaf’s Mama makes the boss stuffing, she uses bacon or sausage or both and its a mutherfucking delicious.  I wish I was in town this year to enjoy it (going to hang with my inlaws for Turkey Day instead….more on that later).  Sit around, talk shit to Chorizy-E and crush mama’s homemade stuffings.  My mom is a humble woman, but she knows her stuffing is the joint, and will announce its presence with authority.

4 – Wine – There has been a lot of talk, whispers if you will over the years, the unspoken things that you really don’t hear about baseball fans / bloggers / idiots, but I come to you today to tell you the truth……I fuggin’ love wine!  I’m not talking 2 Buck Chuck, I’m talking FINE WINE.  As noted in the Sunday Soak last weekend, I was in Oregon with friends trapsing along the landscape gulping Pinot’s everywhere.  I even have a wine cellar.  I know this is going to be tough on some of you, like when you found out about Rock Hudson or Perry Mason, but I had to come clean today.  The holidays are a great time for wine and I can’t help but sharing with family and friends.  I shan’t nerd out in these pages, but if you want to chat about what an exquisite wine lineup would look like for Turkey Day, hit me up in the DM’s.

3 – Pie – I’ve time and again had the Pie v. Cake debate with Mrs. MySoxSummer (she’s a cake freak) and I won’t back down from my position that Pie kicks ass and takes names.  The traditional Turkey Day fave is Pumpkin, which to me, is kinda meh…….PIE DRAFT!!!….

The top rated Pies this holiday season are……

5. Peach

4. Apple

3. French Silk

2. Pecan

1. Cherry

I know you probably have your favorites, but face it, none of you out there have ingested as much pie as I have, so please stand down.

Pretty sure Pumpkin and Apple are on the menu for me this coming Turkey Day and I can’t wait to knock down a nice slice of Apple Pie.  Still debating if its going to be warmed up and with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on it……you wouldn’t look down on me if I did, WOULD YOU?

2 – Gravy – When everything is going wrong for you, you know who always made you feel good, listened to your concerns and never left your side, that’s right….Gravy!  Now, I know what you are going to say, Gravy isn’t a food, but you’d be wrong.  In the seminal book “Zero to One“, founder of Paypal and investor in Facebook, Peter Thiel asks the question “What is something you believe to be true that most people disagree with you on?“…..For me, this is that Gravy is a food.  I’m pretty partial to sausage gravy being spread all over biscuits for a tasty breakfast, but in this case, normal turkey gravy will do.  I’ll liberally put gravy on my mashed potatoes and stuffing, heck, I’ll probably even dip a dinner roll into my gravy, because IDGAF.  One thing I usually skip the gravy on though, is the #1 answer below, because I love that food THAT much.

1 – Turkey – What else were you expecting here?  I’ve always loved Turkey, but my affection grew several years back when my old pal Sal The Balls OUT Guy advised me on making my own holiday Turkey and the rest is history.  I love the ritual of getting the bird all ready and getting the aromatics and the butter compound together.  I also love tearing into the piping hot bird and enjoying the MOIST deliciousness that is a perfectly cooked Turkey.  Now, I know, some of you out there probably have had a bad experience with Holiday Turkey, possibly a Xmas Vacation style bad experience, but I emplore you to give Turkey (like peace) a chance this holiday season.  Besides, what can be more American than Turkey on Thanksgiving………….and speaking of that, a little side note about my father-in-law Champ, whom I’ll be breaking bread with this Thanksgiving.  Way back in the day, when I first started spending holidays with my in-laws I found out that there would be NO TURKEY for thanksgiving…..we would be having HAM…..HAM….can you believe that shit!  Now, this wouldn’t be THAT big of a deal, but Champ is one of these folks that would have #tcot and Patriot in his twitter profile……you know the type.  I can’t think of something less patriotic than fucking HAM for Thanksgiving………you think when the Pilgrims were giving smallpox to the indigenous people of the Americas that they would have the audacity to serve HAM? As Jules Winfield would say, “Pigs are filthy animals, I don’t eat filthy animals”…..(side note, I fucking love Pig, but that’s not material to this post)….no way, our founding fathers were serving a flightless, basically defenseless bird to their new hosts (and infecting them with countless diseases)……Anywho, myself and my bro-in-law KC Kyle restored order and ensured that Turkey would be served then and going forward at the Thanksgiving feast.  So yes, I will be having my #1 on Turkey Day!

Happy Thanksgiving!! From Section 108!!