I love Thanksgiving. Unlike Christmas, Valentine’s Day, your birthday and National Hobo Week (9-12 August), Thanksgiving wasn’t invented by soulless fatcat corporate monsters to trick you into believing an indolent commodity exchange is a satisfactory replacement for human affection. No, Thanksgiving is a celebration. It’s the apogee of sensory overload and vicious irony, which is quite a position to hold in a country that has been historically dedicated to the exclusive production of both of these things. But the Puritans weren’t just good at culture rape, farm theft and musket backfires. They were also experts at sharing with other people what was theirs to begin with. So while you can argue that there were some “marginal” abuses of the goodwill of the indigenous peoples, what you can’t say is that there was no such thing as turkey or corn, and that they didn’t eat the hot hell out of both.

What we give thanks for has definitely changed over time. For example, the Puritans were happy that they didn’t have to spend the winter eating their shoes or dead people faces anymore. The Founding Fathers were thankful that France was willing to bankrupt itself into democratic revolution in order to help us shoot British people. The Titans of Industry were really thankful for our comically absent sense of regulation, and razor companies were thankful once hippies stopped happening. Even today, we continue to be thankful for casinos, jobs, liquor, croutons, even more liquor, family (lame) and whatever a Snookie and Pikachu are. That’s why I have trouble believing we haven’t changed what we eat on Thanksgiving for so long. You’d think a country so dedicated to the twin principles of self-entitlement and gratuitous gluttony could do a little better this; hell, half of our treasured vittles look like things our bodies refuse to keep. So whether it’s cranberry sauce (blood clots), mashed sweet potatoes (meconium), pumpkin pies (anger frisbees), stuffing (don’t make me say it) or peas (I don’t know,  tumors?), Thanksgiving is about as predictable as a first grade play making Squanto look like an Uncle Tom.

This holiday represents everything we, as a nation, know about cramming dead plants and animal pieces down our gullet. It’s time we started acting like it. It’s time. The time is now. Let’s slick this bitch up with some culinary shake-ups guaranteed to make children cry gravy and make your grandmother question her sexuality.

(The menu below serves 4 people. Adjust portion size and quality control according to your drunken passive-aggression towards specific relatives.)

HDaPK proudly offers the 1st Annual:

T-Give Xtreme! 1.0

Presented by KY spermicidal lubricant and Hardee’s

Appetizer

Snackagawea: Forget sexy Indian wilderness guides. Let this modern take on Pemmican blaze a trail straight from your mouth hole to your lower thorax!

Microwave four Snicker’s bars until they just begin to melt. Form into clumsy patties, and jam some asparagus tips into them. Like, deep into them. Cover in flour tortillas. Submerge patties completely in bourbon for 15 minutes. Remove from bourbon and place them in the freezer for however many minutes it takes to freeze. (I don’t know how long that is. I’ve never really done this before.) Remove from freezer. Eat, somehow.

Side Dishes

Potato Surprise: So many people like surprises! Don’t ask me why.

Skin 3 lbs. of Russet potatoes, and cut them into small pieces. Place them in boiling water until they are soft, but not falling apart. Mix in 1/4 C. whole milk, 2 C. heavy whipping cream, 1 stick of unsalted butter, and stir until fully incorporated. Add salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with “danger balls.”**

**Recipe for “danger balls”: wad up live wasps with three layers of fila dough. Place dough in toaster until wasps are angry. Glaze danger balls with danger sauce (4 parts maple syrup to 1 part Hawaiian Punch). Serve.

Whiskey: Open a 1/5 gallon bottle of Jack Daniel’s No. 7 sour mash Tennessee whiskey. Find old Nintendo and cartridge for “Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!”. Insert cartridge and controller, and turn on system. Serve. (Don’t forget to save those passwords!)

Capered Goose Fist with Jaegermeister Glaze: The goose fists (sometimes called “Carl Hanson’s wing-knee”) are considered a delicacy nowhere, and should be prepared with absolute hostility. Make sure the goose is dead first. They hate this otherwise.

Pluck one adult-sized goose. Save feathers. Cut off the goose wings, and trim wings down to two inches on both sides of the final wing joint. Cover wings in A-1 steak sauce. Place on a cookie sheet in the oven at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. While it is cooking, combine 8 shots of Jaegermeister with one jar of marshmallow fluff, and whip into a frenzy. Pull out wings just long enough to dump the glaze potion over them liberally, then sprinkle capers over everything (yourself included). Put back in oven, cook until brown. Remove from oven, and let sit. Cover with feathers. Serve. Try to make it look like an accident.

M&M’s 8 Mile Wrap Battle: You better lose yourself in the moment.

Inside of a standard crepe, lay down a thin bed of lentil puree. Sprinkle cilantro, cloves, garlic and the leftover beak muscles and knuckle meat from the goose. Scream. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Add three tears, 1/3 C. M&M’s. Roll up tightly into a nice little wrap. Garnish with shredded hot dog. Make sure you make enough to get all the way through the championship. These are meant to be eaten quickly, in contest against another. Construct a tournament bracket. Give first-round byes to pets and the elderly. The winner gets first cut of the main course.

Main Course

Montessori Turducken: this is sure to please everyone, and definitely isn’t a tacit contract with the unholy beyond!**

Have a duck get a chicken pregnant. Make sure the birth takes place no more than two weeks before T-Give Xtreme! It’ll look stillborn, but trust me, it’s not. (The timing is pure logistics–the lifespan of the hybrids are… somewhat compromised). You must kill both the father and the mother of the chicken-duck (chuck?). That part’s important. Pluck them. Burn the feathers. Kill the chuck, and shave its hair off. Hell, kill a turkey while you’re at it. You’re in too deep now. Hollow out all three. Shove the duck corpse into the turkey. Put the chuck corpse inside the chicken, and manage its way inside the duck shell. Insert 1 beer. Next, take a thin chisel and construct a complex network of tunnels inside the raw birds. This is the “chuck dungeon,” and the ghost will naturally learn which areas of the bird it likes the best, and just go there. Don’t worry; its ethereal wanderings will leave a thin layer of ghost juice throughout the birds that will taste amazing, though its favorite area (the juice hive) will have a higher concentration of flavor. Make sure you eat plenty of thyme; its aroma confuses communication across the nexus, and will help stop the chuck’s ghost from summoning the Black Wind out of vengeance.

**Don’t serve to old people. It… renews them.

Dessert

Haha, what? Are you kidding me? Really? Fine. Here.

Dancing Mungo with Portabella-Skittle-Snapple Syrup: The Dancing Mungo is a British (?) tradition that goes back to the days of yore, and probably further.

To start, soak 1 pack of regular Skittles in a bottle of Mango Madness Cocktail-flavored Snapple. While this mockery of nature is dissolving, melt 2 packs of Starburst in a 2-inch saucepan. Once melted, add 1/4 C. powdered flax seed, milk, and 1 C. of anything with a rooster on the front. Bring to a boil. Mix in 1 quart of yore (if there’s no yore, mix equal parts dark chocolate and regret). Add fire, and don’t forget to check for ticks! Reduce to a simmer. Mash up one back of Funyuns, mix with melted butter, and line a pie tin with it; this will serve as your “pie” crust. Pour in Starbursts. Puree 1 portabella mushroom cap; place in a microwave safe dish, and incorporate Skittle-Snapple base. Microwave until ready. Pour syrup over “pie,” then cook it. Look at it while it’s cooking. Think about what you’ve done today… really think about it. When you can live with yourself, remove from oven. Serve.