THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 20, 1995 TAG: 9511200074
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
A majority of Americans prefer the stuffing and gravy to the Thanksgiving turkey, an ABC poll discloses.
Which does not surprise me.
That's been my attitude. It just never occurred to me that more than half the country's population agreed.
Baked turkey, all golden brown from basting, looks appetizing; but it is essentially a tasteless viand, a kind of blank slate on which other delicacies may be writ.
It is the sort of vittle in which the byproduct is better than the main dish.
For flavor and succulence you cannot compare the white meat of turkey, however you carve it, to a plump chicken drumstick, crisped to a golden brown in a thick dusting of plain white flour.
Turkey, in itself, is neutral.
People, especially rabid Southerners, can become quite impassioned over food, get in fights over it as if their family honor has been besmirched because somebody doesn't like red-eye gravy.
``IT'S WHAT I WAS RAISED ON!'' they yell.
They feel as if whoever prepared the gravy or grits or collards, or sweet potato pudding roofed by toasted, tanned marshmallows, whether the cook was wife, mother, aunt, big sister, older cousin or beloved family cook, has been insulted.
But turkey never got anybody in a fight. Oh, there can be a mild hassle over whether one prefers the white or the dark meat - but nobody ever came to blows over it.
So you don't like the white portion - so what, the other fellow is not so fond it himself.
Now when it comes to stuffing - or dressing, if you prefer - there you find variety in spices and the filling, whether it's corn bread or loaf scraps. Oyster stuffing is tasty.
Some of my kin use pecans for flavoring. An aunt tried acorns but I'm gratified to say she fed it to squirrels. They went wild over it. Talk about it ever since, I suppose.
You have a meal when you ladle the rich turkey gravy over the dressing. And the best part of the turkey is the recurring, never-ending hash, well-seasoned for breakfast over waffles.
In the plate, some cranberry sauce, cooked from the whole berries, lends a much-needed tartness to the bland meat. A spoonful of horseradish sparks the turkey in sandwiches, and there's no better body for soup on a cold day than turkey boiled with whatever escorts you can introduce: rice, noodles, carrots, celery, anything goes.
Benjamin Franklin backed the turkey for our national emblem, a virtuous bird, in preference to the eagle, which he dismissed as a scavenger and bully in seizing prey from small birds.
I do not know how Ben stood on the turkey as fare. From his girth, I'd say he hankered for stuffing. by CNB