Thanksgiving

(listening to Franck's Chorale #3 in A Minor)
I have much to be thankful for. Generally speaking, I have more than I deserve in life. In particular, I'm thinking of this weekend (all four days of it). I left Sauron's Corporate Pit of Toil on Wednesday afternoon, and I bent all my thought and will toward Thanksgiving dinner. My back had been steadily improving since last week's lumbar sprain, so I was able to do the cooking (I work with a roomful of pharmacists. I gleaned enough information to decide to interrupt my muscle relaxer for a day, allowing me to drink Beaujolais while safely using a knife).

Thanksgiving is a day of cooking and gluttony; it is therefore my favorite holiday. I picked up a few things at the mobbed grocery store on the way home. I was greeted by my wife and her parents, who stayed with us for the holiday. I love having them around. Lindz and her Mom had already made two fine pies: one pumpkin and one cranberry-pear.

(Karg-Elert's "Marche Triomphale: Nun Danket alle Gott")

I got up early on Thanksgiving morning. Lindsey's father and I procured a few more forgotten items at the store, and I started poring over timelines and steps in The New Best Recipe. I was pleased to have been allowed to cook everything (I like being in control of my kitchen), but much work stood between me and six sated diners (Lindz's aunt and a guest were to join us). I had prepared the cranberry-onion confit, a jamlike, flavorful delight, two days earlier. I had already dried a mountain of bread cubes for the stuffing. I began sipping a Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale at 11 am. I started chopping onions, carrots, celery, apples and bacon. This was the menu:

Roast Turkey (a 13.5 pound Kosher bird)
Bread Stuffing with Granny Smith Apples, Sage and Bacon
Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Gravy (made from scratch with vegetables, roux and turkey drippings)
Cranberry-Onion Confit
Green Bean Casserole (brought by Lindz's aunt)
Several bottles of Georges DuBoeuf Beaujolais Nouveau 2005
Pumpkin Pie and Cranberry-Pear Pie with Frangelico-spiked Whipped Cream

I spent a total of five blissful hours in the kitchen. Lindz's folks tidied up the house, went for a stroll, played Scrabble and offered me help several hundred times. They know I love to cook, but they were convinced that I was working too hard. Chopping and sweating four pounds of onions is profoundly relaxing to a weirdo like me. I had a lovely time. I accepted the gracious offers of help when it came time to turn the sizzling bird over. Other than that, I monopolized the kitchen entirely. I even made some pita chips for an appetizer while all this was going on. My back felt pretty good, even though I knew I would pay for it later. The beer and wine helped things, most assuredly.

The turkey was resting on a carving board on top of the clothes dryer (every horizontal surface in the kitchen's vicinity was occupied by some part of the preparations), and I was bringing everything else together: mashing the potatoes, adjusting the thickness of the gravy and putting the bread, stuffing and green bean casserole into the vacated oven. The house was full of conversation and laughter. I put all the food on the kitchen counters, and the guests filed in to fill their plates. We sat down, Lindsey said a blessing, and we ate. All was right with the world. The food turned out to my satisfaction, and everyone enjoyed themselves. We ate heartily and spent a good while chatting over after-dinner drinks and pie, bobbing gauzily on a sea of Frangelico and tryptophan.

My guests admonished me to stay seated while they cleaned up. It's fairly difficult to fit five people into my little kitchen, but they did it. Fortunately, I was stuffed and slightly drunk, and that allowed me to relinquish control of my precious little realm over which I had held dominion all day. The most impressive feat was fitting the leftovers into the fridge. I chatted with my brother and my friend Charlotte on the phone while this was going on. They spent Thanksgiving together, sipping champagne and nibbling all sorts of good things. They had been the core of my Thanksgiving ritual for years in San Diego, and we had soared to dizzying heights of gluttony and epicurean gratification. We had always cooked lots of non-traditional things and gorged ourselves with whatever conglomeration of transplanted individuals we could assemble. In some ways, it was always the opposite of the traditional, family-oriented thing I did this year. In many ways, it was the same day of good food and good company that one would hope for. I miss the San Diego style Thanksgiving, but I certainly love the Raleigh version as well.

Lindz's aunt and her friend expressed their thanks and said their farewells. The rest of us stumbled off to bed. We spent the next day loafing around, not shopping with the rest of the world. My father-in-law wanted to take us out to dinner. It seemed, however, that all of us were enjoying the quiet of the house. After taking thought, I decided that we would light a fire in the fireplace, get a bunch of take-out Chinese food, and open the bottle of Mumm's Blanc de Noirs which I had purchased a few days earlier. It was perfect. A good sparkling wine goes with anything, but sitting around the table with good company and a variety of Chinese food is as good as it gets. We had some pie afterwards, played a game of Scrabble (I won!) and sipped Frangelico by the fire. Lovely.

So here we are, staring down the barrel of another Christmas. The in-laws have gone home. Lindz and I have enough leftovers to sustain us for weeks. The turkey carcass and a bunch of rice from the Chinese take-out have been reborn as a huge batch of soup. The weather is becoming bleaker. My gift shopping is not done yet. I should bake Christmas cookies. When did I start trying to impersonate a grownup?
(Boellmann's "Suite Gothique," Op. 25)