Tradition! Our family is like many others during the holidays. We have traditions. For instance, a turkey adorns our Thanksgiving table, and often stuffed Cornish hens appear on our Christmas or New Years day menu. We also have another tradition---Thanksgiving and other holidays---are usually celebrated the day after the holiday, allowing our son to holiday at his in-laws and our granddaughter to visit her father’s family. The actual holidays offer us a usually welcomed respite, a day of rest. This year our new neighbors invited us to join their dinner table, so we invaded their home Thanksgiving afternoon. My head turned in surprise in hearing a strange word in a conversation: turducken. Turducken? It had been spoken by Dan, the host for the day. It was the first time I heard someone mention the word. “Turducken?” I questioned, looking to see if some were on the table. “Where do you get turducken around here?” Dan explained it was an entrée made with chicken, duck and turkey. “It’s so difficult to make people order it,” he noted. When I returned home I looked up a piece in my 1997 commentary collection. From Marietta, Georgia: Tired of Thanksgiving turkey? (never!) Not enthused about another roast chicken? A duck just isn’t big enough for your brood? Turducken’s apparent creator, Cajun chef Paul Prudhomme, claims he made his first tri-bird in the 1960s. It is difficult, treacherous and complicated to make, he states, this in agreement with Dan. Turducken begins with a 20-25 pound turkey. The duck and chicken are smaller. All are deboned, keeping their skin and meat intact, and assembled with the center chicken in the center surrounded by the duck and wrapped in turkey. “The turkey’s skin is sewed and trussed around the layers of meat and stuffing, so the whole thing resembles the original bird, including the wings and legs…The finished product is roasted just like a regular turkey…” Well, I’ll be…I guess tradition can evolve, change, grow. The origin and one version of this product is assembled in a Marietta processing kitchen. Marietta…traditionally known for a chicken restaurant with a Big Chicken landmark. So Dan reminded me of the article in which I first read about turducken (in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette on November 27, 1997). But I ask, cannot anyone leave tradition alone? I relate with the father in Fiddler on the Roof. Tradition, tradition…Leave my turkey, chicken and duck ALONE! | 
