This year, I decided my family should try something new. I wanted to add a little flavor to the same-old-same-old, huge-ass turkey concept (come on, ten pounders are so last year). This Thanksgiving, I wanted to try the one, the only turducken.

I know, it isn’t that new of an idea, but it just sounds so delectable. For those of you who don’t know just what this little fantasy of mine exactly is, a turducken isn’t what happens when a turkey, a duck, and a chicken fall in love and decide to have babies (but that’s actually close). A turducken is actually a recipe for a chicken stuffed inside of a duck which is then stuffed inside of a turkey. Sounds delicious, right? Who would not want meat, stuffed inside of meat, stuffed inside of meat? A crazy vegan, I know, but they don’t count.

According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, the turducken is Cajun in origin, but no one is quite certain where it actually began. The concept has been around for a while, but wasn’t popular until a good old football announcer decided turduckens would be a great reward to hand-out to the winning players on Thanksgiving Day. Madden even went so far as to show the layers of the turducken using his much-loved Telestrator.

When I told my father that this would be the new plan for Thanksgiving dinner, he laughed. Turducken meant too much work, too much money, and — oh right — too much work. But after working my youngest-child wily ways, he agreed to at least research it and maybe make it.

I, naively, thought that the turducken was the end-all and be-all of Thanksgiving meals. That is until I saw this: a Whole Stuffed Camel. That’s right, you read me correctly: a whole freaking stuffed camel! The recipe is from the International Cuisine cookbook.

It consists of:

• 1 whole camel, medium size
• 1 whole lamb, large size
• 20 whole chickens, medium size
• 60 eggs
• 12 kilos rice
• 2 kilos pine nuts
• 2 kilos almonds
• 1 kilo pistachio nuts
• 110 gallons water
• 5 pounds black pepper
• Salt to taste

Serves friendly crowd of 80 to 100.

I know what you’re thinking: how much salt do you need for that “salt to taste”? Well, my guess is it would be about four pounds of salt, probably the largest amount of “salt to taste” ever known to mankind. Also, remember that the 12 kilos of rice are uncooked. When cooked, rice expands a drastic amount. This amount of rice would probably fill an entire dorm room. Imagine it: you walk down the hall to your room, there is the smell of cooking in the air, you open your door, and bam! Cooked rice from top to bottom fills your entire room. Yes, that is a hell of a lot of rice.

It’s ironic that the chickens are stuffed with hard-boiled eggs inside the camel. Chickens being re-stuffed with the exact same thing that they start their lives by popping out of. I feel so bad for them. Those chickens have got to feel like their whole life was a waste. And how large is a “whole lamb, large”? This lamb does need to be large enough to hold 20 whole chickens, plus a bunch of rice. That’s a lot of poultry to stuff inside of any poor lamb, dead or alive.

Making a whole stuffed camel isn’t very popular – in fact, there are few documented cases of the “dish” ever being prepared. The recipe comes from Saudi Arabia and is said to be cooked for Bedouin wedding feasts. Many believe that it is a myth, but it has been in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the “largest item on any menu” (although this recipe has the chickens stuffed with fish and the eggs stuffed into the fish).

I thought the mammoth meat-eating recipes would stop there, but I was, again, naïve. Stuffing animals with other animals seems to be a long-standing pastime for we crazy carnivores. It turns out there is a long list of other stuffed dishes, including

• Gooducken = Goose + duck + chicken
• Turduckencorpheail = Turkey + duck + chicken + Cornish game hen + pheasant + quail
• Turgoduckmaguikenantidgeonck (I don’t think this can actually be pronounced) = Turkey + goose + duck + mallard + guineafowl + chicken + pheasant + partridge + pigeon + woodcock (you will need a sturdy, strapping table for this one: it packs in a whopping 22lbs of bird)
• Bustergophechideckneaealckideverwingailusharkolanine = bustard + turkey + goose + pheasant + chicken + duck + guinea fowl + teal + woodcock + partridge + plover + lapwing + quail + thrush + lark + ortolan + passerine (if you know what even half of these birds are then you need to throw away your National Geographic Field Guide To The Birds Of North America and look in the mirror because it says “LOSER” on your forehead)

These, um, interesting variations on the popular turducken seem far less appetizing to me. I’ve never wanted to eat a pigeon, even if there is a woodcock stuffed inside, much less to eat 17 different birds stuffed inside one another. Maybe some people think that a great way to bring in the holiday is to eat the partridge instead of housing it in that damn pear tree. Maybe some people just hate birds.

My family, on the other hand, ended up being Plain-Turkey-Janes and only stuffed our turkey with bread and vegetables. Although, after realizing how many meat-filled-meat meal choices there are, I can’t help but to wonder just what it would be like to have that much meat on my table ready for the devouring. Maybe next year…maybe this Christmas…