Archipel-a-gogo!

It may only be 12:30 a.m. here in Boston, but in la belle Paris, where I will be living for the next five months, it’s already 6:30 in the morning! Thus, I’m not sure how often I’ll be blogging from here, but I have a travel blog, PAS ENSEMBLE, that I will be writing with my friend Andrew, during my European escapades. So if this one gets a little lonely, be sure to check that one out for the latest in photos, videos, and reflections galore. Until then…

…bonne année!

My Holiday Bliss: Wheat germ waffles w/ champagne, while listening to Wilco and Friendly Fires on new earmuff headphones. Seeing Grandma in a Snuggie, complaining that it’s “too long to walk in.” Winning the prize for buying-clothes-for-brothers. Wearing two watches at the same time.

What’s your Holiday Bliss like?

I know this is a little late, but here are the best photos from Ciderfest 2009! Special thanks to the McFarland family!

An Ode to Oatmeal

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Every Thanksgiving, millions of Americans sit down to the traditional Thanksgiving dinner: mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and of course, a turkey.

There’s no historical evidence that turkeys were actually served at the first Thanksgiving dinner in 1621. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, it is more likely that the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Native Americans shared ducks and geese, which were much easier to hunt than the native wild turkeys.

Today, there are also plenty of alternatives to the traditional oven-roasted bird out there. Many Americans deep-fry, brine-soak, or barbecue their turkeys. Others bake hams, roast ducks and boil geese. Vegetarians even cut out the meat altogether, opting for the meatless tofurkey.

But one holiday meat (that number to be used lightly) stands out from the rest without question: the turducken.

It sounds like the title of a children’s book. Or maybe a science experiment gone wrong. But no, the turducken is a Cajun culinary tradition that’s been turning heads for nearly thirty years. Made popular by Louisiana Chef Paul Prudhomme in the early 1980s, one turducken can feed as many as 30 people.

But turducken isn’t a bird you’re going to find at a run-of-the-mill supermarket. It’s not even one bird—it’s three. A turducken is a boneless, skinless chicken, inside a boneless, skinless duck, inside a boneless turkey.

Ron Savenor, owner of Savenor’s Market in Cambridge and Boston, is a turducken purist. According to Savenor, the only kind of turducken worth having is one made locally.

“You can buy frozen ones online, but we make them out of local turkeys, fresh Long Island duck, and local chickens, which are all as good as it gets,” he says. “The flavor and moisture are far superior. You can really taste the difference.”

Savenor’s store is one of the only places Boston residents can grab of one of these giants, which can cost upwards of a hundred dollars.

But Savenor’s general manager Juliana Lyman says that people who buy such an expensive bird say it’s worth the price.

“These are people who enjoy the extravagance side of holiday food,” Lyman says. “They’re fascinated by the idea of having three animals in one sitting, on a big platter, waiting for them to dive right in.”

So what are turducken rookies in for when they sink their teeth in for the first time? Savenor says you can’t describe it any other way: “Tastes like turducken.”

Although you’ve probably already made your Thanksgiving meal plans for this year, here are some places around the Boston metropolitan area to find turduckens for Thanksgiving 2010:

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Too expensive? Interested in making your own? Check out this how-to video:

©2009 photo by Devon S. Maloney

As I stood for a record-breaking 20 minutes in the pouring rain, with no umbrella, no raincoat, in an all-wool-and-cotton ensemble, waiting for the bus that would take me to Cambridge to do an interview with a guy who stuffs dead birds into other dead birds that people eat for Thanksgiving (true story to come), I had the following thought, that I would like to share with everyone, regardless of its lack of novelty.

Think about fire and water:

Everyone knows fire is dangerous. Hold your lighter to the palm of your hand: yeah, that’s what I thought. Even a TINY flame can give you a real bitch of a burn…I’ve lit enough Chanukkah candles to know.

A couple little drops of water, though, isn’t going to do much. I mean, our bodies are made up of 98% water as it is. BUT A TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR will make you pretty miserable, and a tsunami WILL kill you…

I guess the conclusion is, don’t be fooled…water is tricky lover. Could we live without fire? Probably…there’s electricity and gas now, you know. But water? Can’t live without it, but it could definitely kill us.

Yeah, water’s got us by the proverbial balls, doesn’t it?

Om nom! Now that's what I call RAW oysters! (image from Disney's Alice in Wonderland)

 

“It’s ridiculous,” said customer Nancy Chacere. “People are sick and dying of E. coli [from] eating beef. Why are they worried about oysters?”

– “FDA Bows to Pressure From Fans of Raw Oysters,” by Debbie Elliott

Everyone, I’ve found it. They’ve done it, and I’ve found it.

I found an audio slideshow on NPR’s website. It’s And it looks pretty delicious.

Okay, okay, so maybe the audio and the slideshow aren’t embedded in each other, but the radio story about the FDA giving in to outraged consumers and suspending the sanitizing process they had placed on raw oysters is accompanied by an independent click-through slide show as well as a full text story on the issue. This way, readers are able to click through the photos at their leisure, instead of being tied down to a timed flash-through.

This is a great package, especially because the story is off the beaten track, even though it involves one of the most important governmental agencies in the country. This kind of quirky story is idiosyncratic of its news source and, well, it made me kind of hungry.

Let’s see some more of these varied multimedia pieces, NPR!

Check it out: You might find the best-kept secret in Cambridge at one of these independent shops in Central Square. Video by me (Devon Maloney), music by The Peasantry and You Can Be A Wesley.