That three-layered cake of pies has nothing on this abomination:
Tanner Ringerud explains:
An entire Thanksgiving day meal – including turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and even a sweet potato desert – all condensed down into one horrifying cake. The recipe is available on Chow.com, for those of you with adventurous and open-minded families.
For Ron Rosenbaum, there's no contest:
White meat turkey has no taste. Its slabs of dry, fibrous material are more like cardboard conveyances, useful only for transporting flavorsome food like stuffing and gravy from plate to mouth. It's less a foodstuff than a turkey app, simulated meat, a hyperlink to real food.
A reader writes:
This contest is tough because sometimes you don't disagree with a message but rather the smug and condescending way the artist frames it. With that in mind, I nominate Billy Joel's anti-teen suicide ditty "You're Only Human (Second Wind)".
Whoever decided to make that jaunty little ditty about teen suicide is either truly dark or truly a genius. It wins a nomination because it's just so weird.
A lifelong vegetarian recounts how she gave up the "lentil loaf" tradition:
One afternoon, as I was walking to the subway with a friend, I became distracted by a pigeon. It waddled ahead of us, a large bird with a fine breast. So plump. So moist. I knew my thought would sound wrong. It came out anyway. "That pigeon looks delicious," I said.
Because it's time to be thankful for small mercies. And it's a charming little tale.
Abe Sauer reminisces about holidays on the farm:
We never had the kind of daylong Thanksgiving events I've come to know in my adulthood since the farm went under. The all-day social event. The football games. And the drinking. Good grief, the drinking. You don't tie one on during Thanksgiving knowing you have to get up and milk cows at 5:00 AM.
Igor Galynker advises Americans on the correct way to drink vodka:
Russian men drink vodka shots. They drink vodka with gusto while making loud breathing noises. They drink vodka as if their manhood depended on how loud those noises are. After these shots, Russians eat. They eat small morsels of food, chewing pensively, their gaze directed inward like that of a woman in late stages of pregnancy. … I suggest that you, like Russian aristocrats, enact the whole ritual three times before your Thanksgiving meal. I have been doing it with my American friends for twenty years with wonderful results.
Bret and Jemaine also nail it:
Andrew Womack gags over Doritos® Late Night® All Nighter Cheeseburger® Flavored Tortilla Chips:
Let’s put aside the fact that these tortilla chips aren’t going to deliver the jocular good times their name implies. Let’s put aside that a real cheeseburger is likely a healthier food choice—except let’s not, because the ingredients list shows THEY ACTUALLY PUT A CHEESEBURGER IN THERE. Yes, that burger’s been powdered, but it’s right there: “natural beef flavor.” And also cheese (Swiss cheese, even). And yeast—for the bun? There is also protein.
But no, let’s put even that aside. Because what makes DLNANCFTC so repulsive, so unforgivably awful—a Tea Party in your mouth, if you will—is that you’re now eating a shelf-stable hamburger. They couldn’t sell it to you in a box at Target, so they put it in a bag of chips.
"Childhood" by Debra Bruce appeared in The Atlantic in April 2004:
Exiled once, allowed back in
to guide you through,
I didn't know my time was up.
But by the river, in snapping grass,
still in the habit of noticing,
crouching with you at a leaf or wing,
I spotted caterpillar frass
speckling milkweed as he feasted,
getting ready to split, released
from a too tight self. In just a week
he'd grow a better, brasher skin.
Exiled once, allowed back in,
I leaned down in the snapping grass,
but stopped at the thud of your new voice:
Come on. Big deal. So what.
(Photo: California Milkweed by Marshal Hedin).
The Dish 