A friend and I have already started discussing what we want to cook for Thanksgiving, which is just over a month away. I asked: "Can we please skip the turkey?" Because if there's any bird duller, I haven't tasted it.
I valiantly made the case for cooking pork, chicken, goose or duck - anything at all to avoid the turkey. But my friend refused to be persuaded because, she said, people expected to be served turkey on Thanksgiving.
My dislike for turkey began in my youth. As we did with all holidays, both American and Chinese, my extended family gathered at my grandparents' house in Los Angeles, in the United States. To satisfy the appetites of her eight children, their spouses and her 23 grandchildren, my grandmother cooked several turkeys.
The main problem was that most of us liked the dark meat. Turkeys in the US are selectively bred to have enormous breasts, as most Americans tend to prefer the leaner and drier meat. My grandparents, out of respect, were allowed to take as much dark meat as they wanted, but for the rest of us, the rule was that we had to take some dark meat and some breast.