This year we are in the US and I’m cooking a traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings and we’ll have lots of family around the table. As a Dutch person I did not grow up with the tradition of stuffing birds, but when I married an American I married a lot of foreign culture as well, so I learned. Love will do that for you.
Whenever I cook a big turkey, I think of my mother’s comment, years ago when she visited us in the US for Christmas. She watched me wrestling with a monster turkey and shook her head in consternation. “Why don’t you make it easy on yourself and just cut it up and roast the parts?” she said with Dutch common sense.
Well, yes, but . . .
Tradition, culture — it can be puzzling.