My first college course, my first fall away from home (eleven long years ago), was a writing intensive "California culture" course. We had very vague writing prompts, that may have been followed by something like "or write whatever you feel like writing." I think we were supposed to be writing persuasive essays, or thoughtful analyses on the nature of culture. I ended up writing about my personal observations of my immediate culture, then comparing them to the ideas posed by our readings. The professor loved it and I earned a very high "A" in the course.
One of the essays I always remember was talking about Thanksgiving. I wrote something like how it was all this work and all these family members I mostly didn't know, the awkwardness, the good food, etc. When I found the essay years later, I was surprised by how much negative sarcasm it was riddled with. I am a sarcastic person-- it is my style of humor-- but mostly I was recounting these activities in such a negative light.
I bring this up because I really did feel those things at that time. Thanksgiving was a stressful, frustrating ritual filled with food catching fire, smelly old folks swapping pills, pomp and circumstance and uncomfortable shoes. As far as I was concerned, it was an interesting experience I would skip if I could and would not participate in as an adult (other than going to relatives' homes and letting them do it).
There was a trend on t.v. shows of friends in their 20s getting together and having a Thanksgiving of their own, sans family. I tried that once for a person I was living with. I cooked all day and prepped for two. We sat down at the meal, and it was over in fifteen minutes. "Well," I thought, "I tried, but it still seems pretty stupid."
Last summer, I read a memoir, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." The details aren't important, but she pointed out a detail I had never thought about. The idea of this meal replicating a celebration made by religious zealots (who were dumb and planned poorly), in honor of actually overcoming their racism and hence, not starving to death, always seemed a little lame. As I was reading more about food culture, about how (before trade) you only ate what was in season, or what could store over winter, the idea of the pumpkin pie and squash soup was appealing for the first time. Having never been a fan of pumpkin pie, this was quite a discovery. The sweet, fruity, squashiness was delicious as it had never been. The memoir went on to talk about all the traditional Thanksgiving staples as being native and inherent to the North American continent, hence, a truly American meal (turkey, cornbread, pumpkin pie, etc.).
This year, I made the decision not to go home for Thanksgiving, in leu of going home for the winter break. I kept saying I would 'probably' make a meal, but kept secretly hoping to be invited to someone else's. J came back for the week, and mostly we have been hanging around, killing time (I hate killing time). I kept saying, "you don't mind if I don't do Thanksgiving dinner, right?" and he kept saying, "not at all." But I was feeling guilty about it. Top it off with a whole week of hanging around town or the city (i.e. not making art or applying to jobs, i.e. killing time), I felt this was a truly wrong decision. Last night, around 9PM, I said, "J, I don't have a plan. I don't have recipes picked out, but I am making a shopping list and we are having Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow."
Thus began the ritual of cooking a meal, preparing a bird (we had a free-range, local-farm chicken instead of a giant turkey), preparing sidedishes (the one time of year I make multiple sides of veggies), gravy (I don't even like gravy), and taking a stab at an heirloom stuffing receipe and a pumpkin pie (why didn't I just buy one?). I couldn't believe how gross and fascinating it was to separate the skin of an animal from its muscles, to thrush my fingers in that new space, pushing in tiny cubes of butter, cloves of garlic, and twigs of rosemary. J looked at me like I was crazy as I revealed the secret ingredient to my home-prepped sun-dried tomatoes.
It took all day.
I utilized every culinary technique I have learned in my life. J went out and bought a meat thermometer for me (nope, didn't have one). My step-mother's stuffing (recipe retrieved from an internet site which copied it out of sunset magazine). I marveled at the beautiful smells of the fresh herbs-- from the food and the tips of my fingers. I remember when it was first published, her outrage at the maazine's inclussion of the phrase "can be substituted for dried herbs." At least the internet copy removed that phrase from the receipe. Chopped onions in everything (the finer the better, but what a chore). Cornbread for the stuffing (did I leave my skillet in the last rental?). Potatoes, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, bacon-greese gravy. Cranberry sauce. Zuchinni and yellow squash. Country-style biscuits.
The point is, I made it, it took hours, and it was delicious. The onions tasted of butter and rosemary. I never noticed flavors transfer that way. The gravy still tasted like bacon, ergo, I loved it.
