The Reality Behind Trump’s Wild Claims About Turkey Prices

And such small portions! The Farm Bureau would like you to know that turkey represents a shrinking slice of the cost of Thanksgiving dinner, because the cost of side dishes is rising faster. This year, the Farm Bureau says, a 16-pound frozen turkey represents only 39 percent of the cost of a 10-person Thanksgiving dinner—the lowest portion since 2000. When you factor in that families increasingly prefer pork or beef for Thanksgiving dinner, and therefore at many tables there’s no 16-pound frozen turkey, that percentage is even lower.

Myself, I like turkey year-round, usually on a sandwich with Swiss cheese, and if at all possible a dab of chopped liver. I will be cooking one this Thanksgiving, and I’d better wrap this up because I need to dry-brine.

Before I go, though, please know that the Pilgrims are not believed by serious historians to have eaten turkey at the first Thanksgiving. The menu was venison, waterfowl, and, more than likely, eels, and the meal’s purpose was not to affirm multicultural brotherhood but for the European colonists to cement a military alliance with the Wampanoag tribe against the Wampanoag’s traditional enemy, the Naragansett tribe. Eventually the Pilgrims started breaking promises to the Wampanoag (big surprise), and the Wampanoag and Naragansett joined forces against them. King Philip, son of Massasoit, the Wampanoag chief who’d tucked in with the Pilgrims at that first feast, led the combined forces in what became known as King Philip’s War. It lasted three years and was extremely bloody. In the end, the Europeans won and King Philip got his head severed and placed atop a pike at Plymouth Plantation. But that’s not a great story to tell in the middle of a big dinner.