I’m just starting to build out this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade review, which will obviously need to be published sometime before Thanksgiving, otherwise the whole system falls apart. In the meantime, feel free to peruse the previous parade reviews, which include stuff that’s certainly a lot more interesting than what I’m working with this year. Don’t worry, I’ll just have to try harder.
1984! – 1985 & 1986! – 1989! – 1993!
Hard to believe that Thanksgiving is less than a week away. I’m pretty excited about it. My entire family is eating dinner at my mother’s place, which in no way, shape or form has a seating capacity that matches the number of people going there. It’s gonna be one of those fun, old fashioned holidays with people stealing seats and sitting on top of each other. I think, once in a while, families need to do that.
Of course, I’m blessed to have a really, really big family who all live within negotiable driving distance. Every year, I get a bunch of e-mails from people who, through work or choice, don’t live anywhere near their families, and who oftentimes find themselves spending the holidays alone. This reminds half of me to be thankful for what I have, but there’s also the other half of me, and that half thinks that a holiday season spent alone might pave way for some really odd-but-neat traditions. Like, let’s say you don’t have anyone to spend Thanksgiving with. You’re not going to make a whole turkey for yourself. What’s the next best thing?
Come on, admit it. It’d be pretty rad to spend Thanksgiving alone on a couch, flipping through old sitcom marathons, carefully placing the portable heater so that your feet are the first parts of your body hit by the buzzing, artificially warmed air.
And instead of cooking a whole turkey for yourself, you’d whip up the classic turkey TV dinner. I’m kind of obsessed with TV dinners. I don’t eat them often because there are few foods worse for a person, but man, the history behind them is so rich. Long before companies started selling them in grocery store freezer aisles, families would purchase these great, clever little foil pans with which to get the most out of leftovers. It was great. People would drop chopped leftover ham into covered foil trays, stick a homemade Post-It with “HAM” text on top, throw it in the freezer and forget about it for eight months. I don’t know why that sounds cool, but it does. And I don’t even eat ham. Can’t even stand the word “ham,” to be honest.
Soon after the leftovers-in-a-foil-tray phenomenon, Swanson spearheaded the precooked TV dinner movement, starting with a platter that looked very similar to the one above. Yes, frozen turkey was the first TV dinner, and the kind sold today is not totally unlike the original version from 1953. The main difference is that the original came in a foil pan, which was more conducive for oven-cooking in a world that hadn’t yet met a microwave. I wish today’s TV dinners came in a foil pan, and would happily risk having my microwave explode for this end.
After around five minutes of nuking, you’re left with a couple of slices of gray turkey, some stuffing, mashed potatoes and cheek’s worth of corn. Though the picture above may be a little more reminiscent of the climactic “slimy electrocution scene” from the end of Gremlins 2 than dinner, I didn’t think it was so bad. I guess the trick is in adding enough salt and pepper to where everything on the platter just tastes like salt and pepper.
I haven’t had a proper TV dinner like this in years, and though it was nice to take the edible trip down memory lane, I think it’d be even more fun to do it on Thanksgiving proper. I have a tendency to fall ill around every holiday, and it’s only a matter of time before I catch a flu the night before Turkey Day and have to spend it home on the couch. When that day happens, I will totally revel in the opportunity to make a turkey TV dinner my official holiday meal. I’ll play sad music in the background to complete the mood. Something with a lot of drawn out sax solos.
In other, mildly related news, I think I’ve found the only soda that might topple Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash as the perfect liquid compliment to any holiday dinner. I can’t take the credit for finding it, actually. Someone tipped me off a few threads back, and I had to enlist the help of my sister who lives all the way down in South Jersey to locate it. (For whatever reason, the stores in my city suck when it comes to stocking special holiday edition foodstuffs. I don’t want to mistake apathy for atheism, but these store managers have no God.)
FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY, it’s Pomegranate 7 Up! Pomegranates might seem like a weird fruit to choose for a holiday edition soda, but I’ve seen ten trillion turkey recipes that call for pomegranate seeds as platter garnish. Pomegranate seeds aren’t the new black, but they seem to be the new parsley. It’s borderline, but not unreasonable for a holiday edition soda. Plus, the label has a bunch of snowflake graphics on it.
I have a bias for any type of red fruit, so I like this. I like it a lot. It has a strangely sophisticated taste, or at least, that’s how I justified using a clean wine glass instead of just washing a normal glass to drink it from. It definitely has a pomegranate taste to it, albeit it a little less tart. Oddly, the label claims that they use “100% natural flavors,” but the list of ingredients only validates that by including “natural flavors” as an ingredient. So I’m not sure how much real pomegranates play into the flavor. If they don’t at all, please don’t tell me. Ignorance is bliss. I prefer to — nay, need to believe that my special 7 Up is truly imbued with smooshed pomegranate seeds.
Guess I should get to work on that parade article. Or maybe I’ll do that tomorrow and make a Pomegranate 7 Up martini tonight. Somebody flip a coin.
PS: I posted another new entry today. Don’t forget the other new entry. It needs as much love as this one.
Posted by Matt. E-mail me!
Ghosted by 
Special K
44th and Sunnylane? Really? I used to have a house at 15th and Sunnylane. I also have a friend in a neighborhood at 44th and Sunnyland. He drives a blue Nissan Xterra and rides mountain and road bikes. So if you ever see a guy on a yellow road bike, having tattoos all up his right arm…. yeah, run him over.