Most Recent Posts

The turducken — a whole chicken stuffed inside a whole duck stuffed inside a whole turkey, all boneless — is a relatively recent culinary phenomenon. Though popularized in the past 20 years with the help of Louisiana's Chef Paul Prudhomme and John Madden, who brought one to a football game broadcast in 1997, the turducken actually builds on a long tradition of creative bird-into-bird stuffing.

Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de la Reynire, the world's first restaurant critic, in 1803 launched the Almanach des Gourmands, what the Paris-based dining historian Carolin Young calls the world's first serial food journal. He would edit and publish this best-selling guide to seasonal cooking and restaurants until 1812.

Like any good publisher, Grimod de la Reynire knew he needed to slide in some extra flair from time to time. And in 1807, he put out a recipe for rti sans pareil, the roast without equal.

The Salt

Frogs And Puffins! 1730s Menus Reveal Royals Were Extreme Foodies

The daredevil-ish recipe calls for a tiny warbler stuffed in a bunting, inserted in a lark, squeezed in a thrush, thrown in a quail, inserted in a lapwing, introduced to a plover, piled into a partridge, wormed into a woodcock, shoehorned into a teal, kicked into a guinea fowl, rammed inside a duck, shoved into a chicken, jammed up in a pheasant, wedged deep inside a goose, logged into a turkey. And just when you think a 16-bird roast is probably enough, it's not. This meat sphere is finally crammed up into a Great Bustard, an Old World turkey-turned-wrapping paper, for this most epic of poultry meals.

Holiday Recipes

The Veggieducken: A Meatless Dish With Gravitas

While there's no record of anyone actually making the rti sans pareil, Grimod de la Reynire seemingly achieved what is every publisher's goal: capturing (generations of) eyeballs. (If you want a visual of the concoction, check out the illustrations that Wired magazine and Vice came up with.)

It's clear that culinary stunts with meat started long before chefs were grilling steaks with molten lava. Take the cockentrice, a half-pig, half-turkey combo that rode the line between mythical beast and gastronomic masterpiece during the reign of Henry VIII in the 16th century. It's been re-created by Richard Fitch, the project coordinator for the Historic Kitchens at Hampton Palace, who told Vice that while these dishes certainly weren't the norm, Henry VIII once served a cockentrice and a dolphin to the French King, Francis I. (As we've previously reported, royals of that era went to great lengths for a culinary thrill.)

While the roti may seem freakish or excessive today, we do have the bacon-wrapped alligator, a sort of modern-day meat mummy.

For those who heart turducken, the demand is high enough that big-box stores like Sam's Club and Costco now stock them. There's even a vegetarian version, if the stuffing concept floats your boat.

food history

Thanksgiving

After a spate of deadly violence in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to speed up home demolitions of attackers as a punishment and deterrent.

This week, the family home of Palestinian Abdel Rahman Shaludi was destroyed. Last month, Shaludi, age 20, drove a car into a crowd of people waiting for a light rail train, killing a 3-month-old baby immediately and injuring eight others, including a woman visiting from Ecuador who later died.

Police fatally shot Shaludi at the scene.

i i

Israeli policemen secure the scene after Shaludi drove into a group of pedestrians in east Jerusalem on Oct. 22. Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

Israeli policemen secure the scene after Shaludi drove into a group of pedestrians in east Jerusalem on Oct. 22.

Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

At half past midnight Wednesday, Israeli soldiers arrived at the East Jerusalem building where he had lived with his parents and five siblings.

"They didn't ring or knock on the door," says Shaludi's mother, Enas Shaludi, 43. "They only pushed in the door, rushed in and began to scream."

She says they were given five minutes to get on warm clothes and told to each take a blanket. Their family home is four stories tall, each floor with two apartments, each apartment the home of an extended family member.

Five days before the soldiers arrived, Israel had warned the family their home would be destroyed. So the parents and remaining five children had moved out their belongings and were sleeping in a relative's apartment on the same floor.

Everyone was forced to leave, waiting a few blocks away for several hours.

The military says soldiers used explosives to destroy the front outside wall and most interior walls of the apartment.

"It was dark, but we see the flashes and lights," says Enas Shaludi. "We heard breaking stones."

By the time they returned, the floor of the destroyed apartment was covered in concrete rubble. One wall of the attacker's bedroom was still standing, the lower half decorated in blue wallpaper with a pattern of hot air balloons.

All the apartments of the extended family were ransacked.

Tamir Shaludi, an uncle of Abdel Rahman, the attacker, owns the apartment just upstairs. He says soldiers broke his door and a mirrored table, turned over furniture, and emptied drawers and cupboards.

"Why?" he asks.

He worries his apartment is no longer structurally sound, and he feels this Israeli practice is patently unfair.

i i

Palestinian Nibras Shaludi, 13, holds a photo of her brother, Abdel Rahman Shaludi, in the remains of the family apartment that Israeli troops destroyed this week. Abdel Rahman Shaludi was fatally shot by police after he killed two people in Jerusalem last month. After a series of recent attacks, Israel is speeding up its once dormant policy of destroying attackers' family homes. Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

Palestinian Nibras Shaludi, 13, holds a photo of her brother, Abdel Rahman Shaludi, in the remains of the family apartment that Israeli troops destroyed this week. Abdel Rahman Shaludi was fatally shot by police after he killed two people in Jerusalem last month. After a series of recent attacks, Israel is speeding up its once dormant policy of destroying attackers' family homes.

Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

"I am very upset at what happened to my brother's apartment," he said, referring to the father of attacker Abdel Rahman Shaludi. "But I am even angrier that I'm punished too. Because I have never had one thought of even picking up a stone and throwing it at Israelis."

Not far away, the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof is recovering from Tuesday's synagogue attack, in which five Israelis died.

Neighborhood resident and young father Abraham Dick is studying to be a rabbi.

"Obviously everybody's still in pain," he said.

Israel plans to destroy the family homes of the two Palestinians who attacked the synagogue. Dick says he wishes Israel didn't have to.

"We are never in favor of aggression," he said. "But I would be in favor of it, if that's what it takes to save lives."

Israel stopped such home demolitions after military leaders questioned its effectiveness nearly a decade ago. According to statistics of the Israeli human rights group B'tselem, Israel destroyed just over 650 family homes of attackers between 2001 and 2004. Since then, the military has destroyed six homes for what B'tselem calls "punitive" reasons, including that of the Shaludi family.

Israel decided to revive the practice earlier this year. With the recent spate of attacks in Jerusalem, Netanyahu vowed to speed them up.

Knesset member Dov Lipman says he knows much of the world sees the practice as vindictive and collective punishment. But, despite the long hiatus of the practice, he believes it works.

"We know from interrogations over the years there are young people who do not carry out terror attacks because they know there will be implications for their families," he said. "The moment we know that, we have to do it. "

At least a half a dozen families of Palestinians who carried out attacks recently have received notices that their homes will be destroyed. They can appeal.

Meanwhile, Enas Shaludi isn't sure where her family will live now. But she tells her kids God will give them beautiful houses in heaven.

East Jerusalem

Israel

Israeli-Palestinian Coverage

What's your temperature?

That's the question of the hour. The Ebola virus has made taking your temperature part of everyday conversation. People in West Africa are doing it. People returning from the region are doing it. And so are the overly paranoid in the United States.

For anyone who's been exposed to the virus, a body temperatures of 100.4 or higher has been deemed the point of concern. The goal, of course, is that magic number: 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Except 98.6 degrees isn't so magical after all. In fact, that might not be your normal temperature.

For insights into the range of temperatures we can experience, we consulted with Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior associate at the Center for Health Security at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and Dr. Benjamin Levine, a professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center who knows a thing or two about fever (his specialty is exercise science).

For Ebola, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature for which medical attention is necessary.

When Ebola is not a factor, Levine defines 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit as a serious fever. (Although he notes that you could register a lower temperature and still be harboring an infection.)

These high temperatures can actually save your life. If you have an infection or virus, your body's response is to raise your internal temperature to kill it off. In other words, fever is your body's defense against whatever is making you feel sick. So before you take fever reducers like Tylenol or aspirin, you may want to consider letting your body do its job, says Levine.

"Lowering the temperature with Tylenol doesn't help you fight infection," he says. "It just masks it. But if the patient is shivering, shaking, sweating, you may want to lower [the temperature] for comfort reasons."

Baseline normal temperatures differ from person to person and from day to day. But if you're worried about what your thermometer is telling you, here are some points of interest, from the low to the very, very high.

56.7 degrees: Anna Bagenholm, a Swedish medical student, spent 80 minutes under ice after a skiing accident in Norway in 1999. When she was rescued, her body temperature was 56.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Although she was clinically dead, resuscitation efforts were successful and she now has only minor nerve damage. (Do not try this at home).

95 degrees: Initial signs of hypothermia set in, such as shivering, dizziness, confusion and increased heart rate, says Adalja.

98.6 degrees: This is the generally accepted "normal" temperature, though different people can have different "normals" and even the same person's temperature can vary throughout the day and still be considered normal. Temperature is lower in the morning, since you're less active, and women tend to have slightly (less than half a degree) higher baseline temperatures than men. A 1992 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association measured the temperature of 148 adults four times a day for three consecutive days. The mean was 98.2 degrees.

97-99 degrees: This is what most doctors would describe as the normal temperature range, according to Levine.

100.4 degrees: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified 100.4 as the benchmark for concern about Ebola. Depending on an individual's normal baseline and Ebola-related symptoms, a triple-digit temperature in the context of Ebola is cause for concern.

101.5 degrees: Anything at or above this level is classified as a serious fever, says Levine: "Lower doesn't mean you don't have an infection, but that's when you've crossed a threshold of concern."

107 degrees: Multiple organ failure can occur, and the high temperature itself might bring on seizures. But Adalja says hospitals in the U.S. wouldn't let it get to this point: you'd be treated with fever reducers and cooling blankets.

115 degrees: On July 10, 1980, 52-year-old Willie Jones of Atlanta was admitted to the hospital with heatstroke and a temperature of 115 degrees Fahrenheit. He spent 24 days in the hospital and survived. Jones holds the Guinness Book of World Records honor for highest recorded body temperature.

fever

temperature

medicine

Global Health

An outbreak of the plague has sickened at least 119 people and killed 40 in Madagascar, the World Health Organization reports Friday.

The outbreak started back in August in a rural village, WHO said. Then it spread to seven of Madagascar's 22 regions. Two cases have occurred in the country's capital of Antananarivo.

"There is now a risk of a rapid spread of the disease due to the city's high population density and the weakness of the health care system," the WHO writes.

Goats and Soda

Shades Of The Middle Ages: The Plague Popped Up In China And Colorado

Shots - Health News

Decoded DNA Reveals Details Of Black Death Germ

The plague is not new to Madagascar. The disease re-emerged in the country in the 1990s. And now Madagascar reports more cases than any other country — about 300 to 600 each year.

People catch the plague bacteria — Yersinia pestis — from fleas that live on rodents. So the disease thrives in cities with poor sanitation.

After a coup d'etat in 2009, Antananarivo's health and sanitation systems collapsed, Aaron Ross wrote on the Pulitzer Center's website in January. "Trash can go weeks, even months, without being collected and rats have become a common sight along the narrow alleyways that coil around the city's steep hillsides," Ross wrote.

The plague's signature symptom is large, swollen lymph nodes. This form of the disease is called bubonic plague. And it's not very contagious.

When the infection moves to the lungs, it's called pneumonic plague, a form that's more dangerous. It kills quickly, and it spreads from person to person through coughs.

In the current outbreak, so far, only 2 percent of the cases are pneumonic, WHO says.

Both forms of the plague are easily cured with antibiotics when the disease is caught early.

Madagascar

bubonic plague

Infectious Disease

Global Health