It may be strange, but meat can sometimes make you friends. Or, a Thanksgiving story.

Last week, right before Thanksgiving, Pat and I went to a local restaurant for lunch. This place is one of our favorites in Asheville. It’s usually packed with the best cross-section of people, from the downtown business types like the owner of the local grocery store mega-chain to the little old ladies who push their walkers into the corner while they eat lunch with their friends who always wear red lipstick and sweatshirts. And there are nurses with their workplace tags hanging off their shirts, and grandparents with grandkids in tow. You can get things here like awesome cheeseburgers and desserts and homey dishes like country-fried steak, though I’ve never brought myself to order it. I just order soup most of the time. 

We were sitting at a small table next to the window talking about our trip to Cincinnati for Thanksgiving to visit my brother- and sister-in-law and our cute little nephew. We had the dining room practically to ourselves and we talked about how they just moved there about six months ago and we hadn’t been to see their new house yet. We were excited.

And right when our waitress came over to bring us our food, Pat said we were going to have a turducken.

A turducken??? I asked.

Yes! he said.

Have you ever had a turducken? I asked the waitress as she put our plates down. She looked at me like I was a bit crazy before smiling at me. Like I was a bit crazy. We’re going to have one for Thanksgiving. I think it’s a duck in a turkey.

No, I haven’t, she said. Hmm… I’ll go ask. And right like that, she headed off to the kitchen.

We laughed, picked at our food and stared out the window. She came back about a minute later.

It’s a duck in a chicken in a turkey, she said. (Her uncle, I think, who is also the chef at the restaurant) told her to tell us that it takes like 10 hours to cook.

Ten hours! I said. Oh my God! That’s like the Thanksgiving we had in San Antonio with Pat’s family when the turkey took six hours to cook because the meat thermometer had melted and was stuck on 140 degrees.

We all started laughing and she started telling us about her Thanksgiving. Her family, which owns the restaurant, was going to have 70 people over for Thanksgiving at her grandmother’s house. They were going to cook all the turkeys and hams at the restaurant and everyone else was going to bring side dishes. My grandmother will probably call me and send me to the ABC store to get all the liquor, because we all go through a bunch of wine and stuff, she said.

Of course! Can you imagine 70 PEOPLE at your house for Thanksgiving?

Then her other uncle came over and we talked about the turducken, how it comes deboned and takes a long time to cook. She took off and grabbed a framed picture off the wall. It was of her family last Thanksgiving and we counted about 40 smiling people standing in front of a brick house. She pointed out her mom, her grandmother. We laughed that people were going to have to sit on the roof this year to get in the picture.

I asked how they make all the food and she said her grandmother has six ovens in her house. SIX. That’s where all the cakes and Greek desserts for the restaurant come from, too, from this house with six ovens. So there are plenty of places to cook, she said.

By that time, Pat and I had finished lunch and were ready to go. We asked each other’s names and promised to report back about our Thanksgivings when we saw each other next. 

When we got to Cincinnati, Pat and his brother headed out to get the turduckens. An hour or so later, they came back with bags of groceries: cranberries, green beans, and TWO turduckens. Thankfully, they were just the breasts of the birds, not the entire things.  We, still debated the best cooking times Madden style. Paula Deen would have been proud.

It was, of course, delicious. See?

To end the perfect turducken Thanksgiving, we headed out to dance with the baby to reggaeton at full volume. We might make this all a new tradition. I think the Pilgrims would have been proud.

And while I’m now calculating how many trips to gym I have to make to cancel out all the Thanksgiving festivities, I’m still laughing about how the holiday was filled with unexpected friendship-making and fun. I hope yours was just as fun!