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Personal Narrative: Rasting The Big Bird !

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Roasting the Big Bird!
Growing up in Brooklyn in the mid-twentieth century, there were only the four of us, my mom, dad, sister and me. There was no extended family; this meant that Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners were for four people. Turkeys back then were largely twenty pounds or larger, in fact even a twelve pound bird would have been excessive for a family of four. As a result, capon was the bird of choice for holiday dinners, accompanied by a small baked ham at Christmas.
Individual family tastes worked out so that I always got a drumstick. Finally, one Thanksgiving when my sister and I were just starting high school, my parents were entertaining close family friends, which finally meant Turkey on Thanksgiving. My dad saved a drumstick for me, the size of the leg was impressive and I expected it to taste like chicken. Wrong! The strong taste of dark meat turkey surprised me; fortunately and unusually, I was permitted to switch to turkey breast. This began a lifelong dichotomy of loving dark meat chicken and white meat turkey. …show more content…

There are two reason for this, in my humble opinion. In no particular order of causative importance, I credit the demise in popularity to the availability of smaller sized turkeys today. Back then finding a turkey under twenty pounds was rare indeed. Secondly, the availability of large roasters due to changing breeding practices makes the need for raising capons both distasteful and unnecessary. Specialty butchers carry Capons, but frankly at almost twice the cost of a similarly sized turkey. Consequently, unless you are that attached to the flavor profile of capon, there?s little incentive to pursue the

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