PicoBlog

I’ve never been a huge fan of the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. It’s a meal as brown and heavy as...a very heavy thing that is brown (I am too tired for simile at the moment). Sliced turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and brown gravy make for a dull color palette, which in my professional opinion, is even duller on the human palate. But I suppose most things are dull on the palate, since it is located on the roof of one’s mouth (something I only just learned this morning, which is an embarrassing thing for a dentist’s son to admit). No amount of cranberry sauce, Brussels sprouts, or green bean casserole can save one from it.

The day after Thanksgiving, however, is one of my favorite eating days on the holiday roster. My father used to make marvelous, Shaggy-from-Scooby-Doo sized turkey sandwiches for lunch once his stomach was no longer distended from the previous day’s gluttony. They were marvelous creations, but not helpful for my own currently distended gut and my attention over the last few years has been turned in the direction of what I consider two of the most boring (but necessary) components that traditionally comprise the T-Day plate.

My preferred leftover creation has nothing to do with turkey, unless you consider mashed potatoes and non-invasively prepared stuffing guilty by association. Often, this Un-Dynamic Duo becomes little more than bland-ish lumps of starch which will either be left to molder at the back of your friedge in your mother’s old Country Crock margarine tubs or have their molecules overstimulated in a microwave and consumed dispassionately.

But when they come together with a few simple ingredients, get rolled into spheres roughly the size of a fast-pitch lesbian league softball, something fairly magical happens to them.

They become stuffles.

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