Fruit Turkey

There once was a turkey named Ned.

Who didn’t quite want to be dead.

He came up with a plan

To convince a young man

To serve up a fruit likeness instead.

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Whether you’re carnivorous, vegetarian or vegan, or follow some new trend I’m unaware of, over-indulgence is often an issue for Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas celebrations. Why not serve something healthy? One option is to make a fruit turkey as shown above.

You are very unlikely to find a fruit turkey on any menu, but here are some advantages of making one or more:

1) You can tailor fruit turkeys to your tastes and those of your family and guests.

2) They are simple to make.

3) Making something this healthy is rarely this fun!

4) If you have a hard time getting kids to eat fruit, making a fruit turkey may do the trick. Children can even make choices and help with the assembly. What kid doesn’t like a say in what they eat?

For the fruit turkey shown in my cover photo, I used a pear for the body. Choose your favorite color of pear, but don’t pick ones that are too ripe or the skewers won’t stay in place. The beak and the feet are carved from carrots. The eyes are dabs of cream cheese with a raisin on each. Whether or not anyone eats these parts depends on if anyone is dared to do so and is willing to follow through. Well, they are edible after all.

For the “feathers,” I started with blueberries, but I didn’t use them twice for mine because they were hard to skewer owing to their size. Maybe you can find bigger blueberries than what my small Arizona town offered when I was shopping. Next, I added green and then red grapes, favorites of my family. Pineapple, mandarin orange slices, and banana slices were also included. I alternated the favorites to make it look as cool and as feathery as possible. Any fruit could work. You could even use a melon baller and add cantaloupe and/or watermelon.

My example shown above is purely fruit, but you could easily change things up by adding pieces of cheese and/or slices or chunks of dried meats. Again, so many choices! You could make an entire charcuterie turkey!

If you don’t care about how indulgent you are, you could also add some chocolate pieces or other sugary snacks. Rolos come to mind as a good size and “skewerable” treat. Those gummy-like orange slices would be big enough and offer a good shape. If you’re creative enough, you may be able to make a dessert turkey, perhaps mixing fruit and savory choices.

Why not have options? Your guests can simply choose skewers that appeal to them. Consider having extra products in bowls and extra skewers on hand for people who might want to have fun making their own “feathers.”

If you live somewhere where peacocks are prevalent, you could get away with calling this creature a fruit peacock. Okay, so peacocks do not have anything to do with holiday traditions as far as I know, but you could start something new. Anyone hear of a peacock in a pear tree?

I hope you try to make a fruit, charcuterie, or dessert turkey and let me know what you included. Did you enjoy the creative process? Did your family or guests like it?

I’ll leave you with one last silly limerick.

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Seeing fruit turkeys, guests craved,

And then they all jealously raved.

Best of all, we ate light

And enjoyed our whole night,

Knowing Ned, my cute turkey, was saved.