Zombie Turkeys

It just isn't Thanksgiving until the zombie turkeys ravage through the local fowl population.

For those of you who haven't been following along for last umpteen years, I'm contractually obligated to make rice krispie turkeys every Thanksgiving.  It never goes according to plan.  There are always casualties...and blood, so much candy coated blood.

This year two days before Thanksgiving, at precisely the exact moment I was going to make krispie turkeys, I realized I had everything except candy corns.  No worries, I had lots of errand to run, surely one of my stops would have candy corn.  No such luck, but my last stop was near a Piggly Wiggly, which for those of you outside the Midwest is the actual name of a grocery store chain.  Not even lying. 

Anyway, I thought I had struck out there too.  I was on my way out when I saw a fairly deserted "seasonal" shelf and there was candy corn.  Not real candy corn mind you.  That's to say not Brach's candy corn.  Yes, I live with candy corn snobs.  That's a real thing too.  But it's still candy corn and they probably wouldn't notice. I knew that was a lie as soon as the thought entered my head, but if I embraced it I could finally go home.  Next to the candy corn was mixed candy corn.  There was the traditional orange, yellow and white, but there was also ones with some brown and others with red.  I knew in my heart my turkey connoisseurs won't be fooled by the store brand candy corn anyway so I might as well go for broke and have colorfully feathered turkeys.

Lets just say I will not be buying Piggly Wiggly candy corn again.  The traditional ones flavor wise were suitable.  The brown, yellow and white ones had sort of a caramel flavor that was acceptable.  I don't what flavor I expected the red ones to be, but cherry never crossed my mind.  It was wrong.  Sticking them into rice krispie balls would have been nothing sort of criminal.  The worst part was how soft they all were, fine for eating, if you're into that sort of thing, but not for poking into krispie balls. I had a lot of points smush and some corns even split right down the middle.  I ended up poking holes into the krispie balls with the tip of a potato peeler and then pressing the candy corns in.

No matter what there are always some candy corns that won't stay put. I've learned to embrace this phenomenon buying gluing them in with red candy melts.  Some of the bloodied turkeys get to be team Zombie and the rest are team Victims.  The poor schmucks below don't have a clue to what's going on, but ignorance won't save them.  In the end they all get eaten, even the zombies.

I used last year's recipe and at least one person described them as being akin to biting into Heaven. Your mileage may vary.