FOOD: Cross-dressing your bird for the holidays.

It’s that wonderful time of the year again and we’re on the cutting edge that runs its fickle jagged line between tailored lines, gender faux pas, blatant foppery and gaudy plumage.

Bright and cheery outfits are popular and trending for most birds, the descendants of those known cloths horses, the dinosaurs. However real designer accessories can be difficult to secure leaving one’s perfectly stuffed and roasted turkey feeling quite naked, even in the company of top-hatted mashed potatoes and tuxedoed yams.

We suggest lose-fitting cheesecloth, solid vegetable patterns, giblet blends, floor-length drumsticks and basting…lots of basting.  The rest is just arm candy.         

Always remember: Even an educated turkey cannot fly and many still prefer polyester. Issues involving the separation of dark meat from white meat, as well as the use of yoga pants with leftovers, remain not nice conversations at the holiday table.

It can be like pulling feathers to get them to dress up any other time of the year with the possible exception of the Fourth of July.

Across the bird world parrots, puffins, starlings, ravens, Peruvian condors, Blue Amazon flummery and other less appetizing breeds do not do well in the oven or in the fashion arena. Raptors and birds of prey are uncooperative. But they can be convinced to cross-dress if they think it will disguise their real motives.

Next time: Fruitcake Yurts for Lent.

-Beth Kampachi