I saw the Larry David Thanksgiving thing last year during the one hour it was on-line before it was inexplicably pulled.
It’s back again this year.
Also, check out the raw foodist Thanskgiving: “I’m thankful for the raw food diet that is going to help me produce an ideal bowel movement in about 24 hours.”
I don’t look to Rachel Ray for food safety advice, I don’t look to her for cooking advice, and I don’t look to her for lifestyle advice: but lots of people do.
So while every food safety nerd I know is preaching don’t wash that bird, the food editor at Rachel Ray magazine gives an excellent demo on how not to prepare a 
turkey.
All the cross-contamination is there: scissors, counter-top, thermometer and contaminated water spread wherever.
People do and say lots of silly things around Thanksgiving. Chapman was even quoted, to his subsequent horror, saying “nowadays” in an interview.
But try out the next video and watch Alton Brown — who I will occasionally turn to for food advice – make a complete Thanksgiving dinner in a car hood on Mythbusters.
While the Mythbusters approach the entire project with their typical bravado/stoicism, Alton’s hidden a turkey leg somewhere “in case everything else goes to hell in a handbasket,” he deadpans.
“This is an entire buffet of potential doom for me, but here we go.”
I still listen to a lot of punk rock and I don’t really like being told what to do. I’m not sure many folks do. The approach I use is to provide the best available evidence culled from the literature to help eaters calculate the risks and benefits of food choices. Present the info in a compelling way and then step back to let the individual do their thing.
Hopefully the choice results in the least amount of barf. Eating has risks, whether it’s raw oysters, sprouts, or Thanksgiving dinner. USA Today’s Elizabeth Weise deconstructs the risks associated with cooking turkey and all the fixin’s:
Step away from the sink, and no one will get hurt.
You don’t need to wash your turkey before you roast it, and doing so can be dangerous. A British study found that washing poultry in the sink can spray bacteria up to 3 feet away. And with one in 50 turkeys estimated to be contaminated with salmonella, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food-safety inspectors, you don’t want a mist of turkey juice on your relish platter.
Given this contamination rate, the chef’s job is to keep the raw turkey juices away from anything that isn’t going to be cooked to 165 degrees, the temperature required to kill disease-causing bugs (the ones of interest in poultry -ben). Unfortunately, too many people start their feast preparations by plopping their turkey in the sink and giving it a good wash. There’s no need to do that. It’s a holdover from long ago when poultry routinely arrived with bits of blood and pinfeathers still attached. Cooks were instructed to wash the carcass well and use tweezers to remove any feathers that didn’t get plucked. With today’s modern processing, none of that is necessary. You just want to get the turkey into its pan and into the oven with as little dripping and splashing as possible.
If it’s a lack of refrigerator space that’s impeding your thawing, Doug Powell, a food-safety scientist at Kansas State University, notes that in any Northern climate, you can simply put the turkey outside in the garage in a closed cooler to keep out pets and vermin. His department wrote a paper on the topic and found that as long as the temperature is below 40 to 45 degrees it’s perfectly safe.
Then there’s the big question of whether it’s safe to lick the beaters when you’re making dessert. According to the Food and Drug Administration, approximately one in 20,000 eggs is contaminated with Salmonella enteritidis, the most common type of illness-causing salmonella. Benjamin Chapman, a(n assistant) professor of food safety at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, says he’s content to “let others make their own risk decisions.”
But for himself and his family, the answer is no (at least when I’m around and influence the decision – ben).
Check out these videos for risk-reduction steps:
Thawing the Turkey
Turkey Preparation and Preventing Cross-Contamination
How to tell when the turkey is safe to eat
Handling the Leftovers
From a Kansas State University press release:
When it comes to your Thanksgiving turkey, a Kansas State University food safety expert has two tips that could help keep your holiday meal safer:
* Don’t give your turkey a bath.
* Always take your turkey’s temperature.
Washing the turkey before popping it in the oven may be something you saw your mom — or grandmother — do, but Doug Powell, professor of food safety, said it’s a practice where mom really didn’t know best.
“Washing the bird has long been disregarded because of the food safety risk of cross-contamination,” he said. “Do not wash that bird — you’ll spread bacteria everywhere.”
Studies have found food poisoning bacteria like campylobacter or salmonella are common on poultry carcasses and can easily be spread by the splashes from washing the bird, Powell said. That means the sink, countertops, water taps and anything else in the vicinity — including other food — can become cross-contaminated. Washing hands after handling and preparing the bird also is a must.
Once the unwashed bird is in the oven, Powell said cooks should do themselves a favor and rely on a good thermometer to let them know when the main attraction is ready. Turkey should be cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees. Just checking to see if the juices from the bird run clear when the bird is pricked isn’t an accurate indicator of its doneness.
“Color is a lousy indicator of safety,” Powell said. “No matter how you cook your bird, the key is to use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to verify safety.”
To help keep foodborne illness from spoiling the Thanksgiving holiday, check out food safety infosheets, prepared by Powell and Benjamin Chapman, a food safety 
specialist and assistant professor of family and consumer sciences at North Carolina State University, available at Powell’s blog:
* For tips on why not to bathe the bird, https://barfblog.com/infosheet/bathing-birds-is-a-food-safety-mess/.
* For tips on preventing holiday foodborne illness, https://barfblog.com/infosheet/avoid-foodborne-illness-during-the-holidays.
* For tips on holiday meal safety, https://barfblog.com/infosheet/holiday-meal-food-safety-2/.
A holiday food safety video also is available at https://barfblog.com/holiday-food-safety-dont-wear-the-turkey-on-your-head-and-other-tips/. And the Spanish and French translations of the infosheets can be found athttps://barfblog.com/infosheets-esp/ and https://barfblog.com/infosheets-fra/.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it’s largely non-denominational and 
celebrates the harvest.
I like that. So does Amy. She even feathered her hair 1978-Farrah-style for the occasion.
We also clean the house and have leftovers for a week. I make a great turkey stock.
Canadian Thanksgiving is this weekend, and I’ve hosted meals from Thurs to the Monday holiday over the years. We decided to bring our tradition to Australia, where the biggest challenge wasn’t explaining what 
Thanksgiving was, but sourcing and then biking home with a 21-pound turkey in my knapsack.
It also cost four times what a Canadian bird would have cost.
This particular bird came from New South Wales, and has some unique instructions on the label.
Washing the bird has long been disregarded because of the food safety risk of cross-contamination; do not wash that bird, you’ll spread bacteria everywhere.
And who puts foil in a microwave? I have no idea how a 600W microwave could cook a 21-pound turkey at home. But the key is, however you do it, use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to verify safety.
Thanks to all our new Australian friends who made this our best Thanksgiving yet.
One hour to show time for 25 Australian friends. Looking not bad. More later.
Actors may not know cross-contamination, but former TV heartthrob, about to be famous scientific author (more about that later), Kansas State MS grad and 
Winnipeg health inspector Rob Mancini proved he knows his stuff as he hammered home the importance of cross-contamination on CityTV the other day.
The video is at:
http://video.citytv.com/video/detail/1877249789001.000000/thanksgiving-food-preperation/
From some dude’s blog, self-described as a reminder of “how little I do and how pointless my life is, ” comes this picture of how not to season a turkey.
The author writes, “The meals began on Thanksgiving Day Eve, also known as Wednesday. M invited a variety of foodies, J and I over to her flat for an early dinner. The meal consisted of the 
staples, though prepared in fresh and healthy ways. …
“Conversation topics: food, more food, France, the world, startups, renting in SF, ghosts.
“A French couple was there, and it was their first Thanksgiving. Hopefully the impression was positive.”
Hopefully they didn’t suffer bouts of barfing from salmonella or campylobacter that could easily have been part of the health ways preparation. These foodies need Ted Allen’s book.
We opted for a low-key Thanksgiving last night (today in the U.S. is tomorrow in Australia) with steak, prawns, mushrooms, potatoes, homemade rolls and, in a nod to our favorite American holiday, glazed carrots.
Although summer officially begins next week with temperatures in the humid 80s (F, 27s C) it gets dark about 6:30 p.m. because there’s no such thing as daylight savings in Queensland. 
Windows and doors are usually kept open to capture summer breezes, but closed as the nocturnal wildlife emerges at dusk.
I was slow.
Finishing a final prawn, a possum scampered by the patio door but instead of entering the dining area, high-tailed it across the deck and dove into a tree.
Those possums look cute but can be nasty. Two women in Tasmania became ill this year with tularaemia, in both cases linked to possum bites, the first time that strain of the disease had been found in the southern hemisphere.
Public Health Director Roscoe Taylor said there was a very small risk the disease could be spread through tank water.
"In theory, wildlife feces can accumulate on a roof and get flushed into your rainwater tank. But we believe the risk of getting tularaemia this way to be very low. Water treated with chlorine is safe to drink.”
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In her somewhat annual Thanksgiving message to barfblog.com, Michéle Samarya-Timm of the Somerset County Department of Health, NJ, gets stuffed.
At Thanksgiving, if conversation isn’t about the bird, it’s about the stuffing: in the bird, or outside the bird? I teach food safety to a variety of folks, so my stance on this stays consistent…outside and 165 F.
Attendees at my food safety class last week brought up a refreshingly different question….does it matter what the stuffing is made of?
I know the barfblog guys are particular about stuffing; Doug wrote about it last Thanksgiving. His refrigerator potpourri technique sounds tasty…a gourmet mélange of basic ingredients. Call it barfblog’s Best Thanksgiving Stuffing, if you will. But this recipe has competition.
Cookbooks and websites are chock-full of the best-ever stuffing recipes with subtle twists on traditional ingredients. Using bread? Options are endless: Cornbread, multi-grain whole-wheat, .jpg)
sourdough, rye, bagels, and the ever-popular squishy white Wonder Bread.
Not a bread person? How about a rice stuffing? You can choose from white, wild, saffron, risotto, or last night’s leftover steamed. It’s easy to see how basic substitutions have expanded the variations for grandma’s recipe.
The advent of processed foods managed to usher in some more kitschy offerings, that surprisingly have cult followings: Corn Flakes stuffing (featured this morning on NPR), Ritz Cracker stuffing, or even White Castle hamburger stuffing.
I began to wonder about alternate approaches to this traditional side dish. I’ve heard of stuffing made with items such as sausage, lobster, clams, chestnuts, pine nuts, zucchini, or bacon.
These can all be personalized marks of a creative cook. In addition, I recall many times in my own kitchen when I needed to get inventive for lack of an essential ingredient. So I might be able to understand why there is a recipe for popcorn stuffing. What surprised me were the more unique renditions of this holiday classic that could make a Thanksgiving one to remember:
Didn’t have time for breakfast this morning? No problem – you can make stuffing from oatmeal, grits, grape nuts or captain crunch.
Don’t like the taste of turkey? Pair it with stuffing made college-style with pizza…or Italian style with prosciutto, salami and pepperoni …or man-style with steak and bacon.
For a multi-cultural twist, try tortilla chip stuffing, lasagna stuffing, or a mofongo mix – a Puerto Rican specialty of fried green plantains mashed up with bacon, sofrito and olive oil.
You could consider the epicurean dish turducken (a chicken stuffed into a duck, which itself is stuffed into a turkey) as the ultimate in stuffing options…or is it?
I pondered…is there anything edible that can’t be cooked as stuffing?
I tried searching for the strangest options, and uncovered stuffing recipes containing alligator, applesauce, chocolate (now that may be onto something), peanut butter, Twinkies and donuts.
Devil Dogs, cookies, pop tarts, matzos, malted milk balls — you can pretty much put anything in; if it’s edible it can be made into stuffing.
The key is not the ingredients so much as the food safety. You can make stuffing from homemade cornbread, marshmallow peeps, bologna or rutabaga, so long as you cook it thoroughly and check it with a probe thermometer. 165 F kills a whole host of common pathogens. Kill the pathogens, not your guests.
Stuffing isn’t evil; cooking it incorrectly is.
Thankful for all those who keep our families, our food supply, and our country safe.