Some years back, Ruth Reichl ran a
column about someone who analyzed family dynamics from the contents of the
Thanksgiving table. It was a provocative piece, and it got me asking a question
that I now ask, in a different spirit, as I make the rounds this time of year: What has to be on
the table for it to feel like Thanksgiving to you?
The process has been quietly
hilarious. Most start by essentially denying that there is anything special in
their mouths or hearts: "Just the regular things." Regular to you,
maybe. Or a reversion to the more-or-less cheerful assumption of childhood that
what is familiar is how all the world must be.
Everyone names the bird, but almost no one lights up at its mention.
“Oh, turkey, of course,” said A, with a self-deprecating giggle. She ended up
admitting that for her it's ham, smoked ham, that she has had as long as she
can remember, from her mother's table on to her own, and that the turkey might
as well be a center-piece. B, who lives by the juicer and makes her own
turkey-breast sausages so that they will be safely fat-free, spontaneously
recites recipes from her Pennsylvania-Dutch childhood, all of which seem to
start with a cup of melted butter and to finish with an inch of sour cream. Her
eyes gleam.
The taste of some childhoods: green
bean casserole, made entirely from processed foods, canned fried onion rings
and frozen green beans and cream of mushroom soup, so much a part of some
traditions that the recipe stands on the onion ring can. Its memory brought
tears to the eyes, for a variety of reasons. I recently saw a recipe I can only
think of as cruel, recreating this dish with fresh and scratch ingredients,
including shitake mushrooms. What's the point? It won't taste like childhood,
disappointing the Cs, and D who spent two-plus hours slivering fresh green
beans and whisking béchamel will feel, accurately, unappreciated. I think this
taste-of-childhood issue is the root of the two religions apparent at
Thanksgiving: E reveres the marshmallow, F holds it to be an abomination.
"Yams, with marshmallows of course. The little ones." "Yams, the
way I make them, without marshmallows."
Do mixed marriages take turns, double up, or mix the sacred with the
profane and go half-and-half with a DMZ?
In G's tradition, it's tamales, the
only time of year that her father takes serious action in the kitchen. As many
as can be found gather the weekend before, mix the masa, prepare the remembered
fillings and make up some new ones. H always promises to bring me a sampling,
but there are never any left, just descriptions. J waxed ecstatic about dinner
rolls and stuffing and yams and corn and mashed potatoes. Any particular kinds? “Nah, out of the box or
the can or the freezer is fine, just so they are all there all at once.”
“Mashed potatoes,” said K shyly, “real ones.” Real to her means smooth and
soft. “Real mashed potatoes,” said her husband, agreeing with her emphatically,
“but real means lumpy, and stiff enough to make ponds for gravy. If they're
lumpy, you know they're real.”
L has tried many paths to holding a
kinder gentler Thanksgiving. One year everyone offered to bring the touchstone
dishes, and she took them up on it. The trouble was that it was then no one's
Thanksgiving: the special dishes weren't the way she liked them, and L found
herself trying to accommodate everyone else's notions of what ought to be
there. For instance, a daughter swore that her new husband's family always had
three kinds of Jello molds, that it was generations of tradition and critically
important to them. L wanted all the families to feel welcomed. So, she took up
scarce time and scarcer refrigerator space and duly produced the Jello molds.
Came time to clean up and there they were, each one with only a spoonful or two
removed. Slow burn. Some years people
would brightly bring pies, but "tricked-out pies, pumpkin with molasses or
pecan with chocolate, and they tasted just plain wrong." Now a
daughter-in-law brings plain pies from Costco.
They do not thrill, but neither do they offend. One year L decided to do
a completely different Thanksgiving, and changed everything. She ended up with
a sort of Italo-French-Chinese Thanksgiving, which sounds intriguingly
post-modern until you think about how and where the whole feast began. Never
mind the culture wars: it was better in theory than it tasted in practice.
M admitted that her husband is the
cook, year-round, and that his rule becomes yet more imperious at this time of
year. (I recognize that.) This year, she wanted to have green beans. “No,” he said, “it's gotta be peas.” “But—“
she said. “NO,” he said, showing some
strain, “it must be peas or it is not Thanksgiving.” Did he command the entire
meal? “No no NO,” she said, eyes flashing; she always made the dressing. It
started with her mother's recipe that included several kinds of nuts and seeds
and herbs, and that was only where it, and she, started.
And how about my table? For me, it
seems to be recipes that take time, advance prep, and at least two stages of
pre-cooking. Spiced cranberry sauce whose spices are whole and start with
steeping in a sugar syrup, and that must ripen for a week. Dressing with at
least ten ingredients of which two themselves require what amounts to a recipe.
Yams that are parboiled, then bake very, very slowly in fresh-squeezed—not
negotiable—orange juice. Various guests asked one year about various dishes,
but when someone asked about the turkey, one friend sighed, "Probably
parboiled and then roasted in cream." Actually, that turns out to be
rather how I feel by the time we sit down: wilted, seasoned, opulent, a bit
crusty. As a family member used to say when she was a competitive cyclist,
"Stick a fork in me, 'cause I'm done."
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