Dueling Turkeys!
How is it possible that I never before noticed the phenomenon of the Cream Puff Turkey? Looking something like a cream puff swan put through a mutagenic process of unchecked cell division, there's not one, but two shops in Granada Hills that are proudly displaying these creatures: Ara's Pastry in the Old Town section of Chatsworth Street, and Vrej Pastry in the Trader Joe's center. I learned from speaking to the lovely lady manning the counter at Vrej that in parts of town with large Armenian populations, like Burbank and Glendale, the Cream Puff Turkey is a standard offering at Armenian/European bakeries -- a time-honored Armenian-American tradition, it seems. The bakeries even compete with one another for supremacy in the field of Cream Puff Turkey artistry. It's something like a war over there -- and in a Cream Puff Turkey war, everybody wins. The competition is so stiff that at first, Vrej didn't want to let me photograph their turkey -- I think they may have