Turducken

by Leigh Pomeroy

I learned a new word yesterday. It's called "turducken". I found it in A. J. Jacobs' The Year of Living Biblically, right near the bottom of page 20.

I was reading The Year of Living Biblically (subtitle: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible) because my wife gave it to me having bought it with her member discount of 30% off at our local Barnes & Noble store.

Begin digression. Those who are clicking on the links of the books mentioned in this post will notice they all go to Amazon.com. The reason is this: If you buy a book through a link on Vox Verax, I get an eensy-beensy bit of credit which helps me buy more books, albeit from Amazon, not Barnes & Noble. I would share the link wealth with barnesandnoble.com, but their system for setting up links is so complicated I could never figure it out. The good news, however, is that their online ad server, DoubleClick Performics, has recently been purchased by Google, which hopefully will make it easier for us simpletons to figure out their system. End of digression.

The reason why my wife gave me The Year of Living Biblically is twofold. First, she is somewhat of a biblical scholar as she teaches the subject in her history courses at Minnesota State University Mankato. Second, and more importantly, I'm sure she was thinking that I needed to read something with a little more humor than what I've been reading lately, which has been books like (going back chronologically),

• A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by James Shapiro (a gift from my mother)
• Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) by David Cay Johnston
• The Worldwatch Institute's State of the World 2008: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy, which I've been reading as the free PDF downloads become available on the Worldwatch website. (Lest you think I'm cheap, I just yesterday signed up for World Watch Magazine, which I was able to get for a 20% discount courtesy of their special April promotion. You can get it too by entering ED2008 in the coupon code box when checking out.)
• Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization by Lester R. Brown, which is available entirely as a free PDF download, but which I purchased anyway from a friend who was passing 'em out like candy on Halloween.

All are serious tomes. And her reasoning was that, despite the state of the world — or perhaps because of it — one needs some humor from time to time.

Which brings us back to turducken. As it turns out I did know what it was as my father (rest his soul) prepared it for special occasions, only I never knew the word for it. No, it isn't anything like lutefisk, around which both jokes and church dinners are centered up here in the Minnesota nordland. In fact, turducken is far more palatable than lutefisk, which I must admit I've tried... once.

I'd tell you what it is, but I need to get off to church — er, actually, the Unitarian Fellowship, which a lot of people, including my wife, would argue is not really a church but a "lecture society," as she calls it. And she's right in this case as today's "sermon" is by a professor of construction management and is entitled "Eden Campus: Africa's First Green Business School."

So instead your can go to that wonderful resource that all college professors love to demean but secretly use, Wikipedia, and read about turducken yourselves.

Happy Sunday!

Next up: "What wine goes with turducken?"