A gooble gooble dickel, I'm thankful that John Madden only costs a nickel!

Thanksgiving is drawing near, and I thought I would share with you the one Schrute family tradition we consistently uphold. Most folks gather their families together to gorge themselves with all sort of holiday eats. Turkey is often the preferred choice of meat to be served. However, each year the Schrutes go out to Mr. Gates' back yard where he raises John Maddens. This has been small yet not so profitable side project for Gates. Unfortunately for him the Schrutes are the only returning customers. But, luckily for us his operation is close and he usually cuts us a good deal. The kids really enjoy the part where we cut his head off and let him run around in the backyard for a bit.

One might ask, why?!? Others may ask, how does one prepare a John Madden for a Thanksgiving feast? Honestly it is not very easy, in fact it is quite labor intensive but so worth it. About a month before Thanksgiving, we feed him a turducken each day, until 2 days before Thanksgiving. Some of you loyal readers might not be familiar with what a John Madden fattening turducken is. So, this is what it entails (Please note the numbers I have provided for you to follow along, it's basically like stacking a set of Russian stack dolls, only we start stuffing the smallest bird into the larger bird): 7-parakeet, 8-starling, 6-magpie, 9-pigeon, 5-crow, 10-mud duck, 4-flamingo, 11-spotted owl, 3-whopping crane, 12-buzzard, 2-bald eagle, and 1-turkey, plus any other seasoning that may be applicable. On year, Gates told us a that lamb fries would be great treat to stuff inside the parakeet, but Quigibo got violently ill, so we haven't done it since.

Unfortunately, we found out this year that our John Madden had a mate. Low and behold it was a Brett Farve!! Man Gates needs to keeps his Farves out of the Madden's pen! This year there was all sorts of half washed up quarterbacks and half fat sports announcers all over the place! Thankfully, we were able to separate our purebread Madden from the half breeds. I'm not sure a Madden/Farve mixture would taste as good.

You might also wonder how in the world does Barby fit that oversized Madden in the oven? She doesn't we hire a backhoes to come and dig a oversized pig roasting pit to cook him in. The whole process takes about 5 cords of wood, and 2 whole days of cooking time! Next year, I think we will rent a dumpster and fill it with peanut oil to deep fry that fat Madden! Also, we will bypass feeding John Madden turduckens for a month and will just stuff him with the whole turducken before we cook him. Mmmmm, tasty....I can wait for leftover Madden sandwiches to take to work!