Perfectionism III: Thanksgiving Dinner

Oyster Stew

Rocket Salad with Pear, Pine Nuts and Beetroot

Cider-brined Roast Turkey with Sausage-Fennel-Crouton Stuffing

Wild Rice Risotto with Cranberry and Mushroom

Mashed Red Potatoes with Giblet Gravy

Sweet Potatoes Roasted with Figs, Shallots, and Pecans

Grilled Brussels Sprouts in Balsamic Vinaigrette

Sautéed Green Beans with Hazelnuts

Hot Red Cabbage and Apples

Maple-Glazed Carrots

Ambrosia Salad with Marshmallows and Mandarins

Cornbread and Butter

Cranberry Orange Chutney

Olive Tray

Radishes

Assorted Pickled Vegetables

Pumpkin Pie

Apple Cobbler

Chef Kee’s Cheesecake with Sour Cream Sauce or Pomegranate Sauce

Cranberry Bread

Fresh, Candied or Salt and Pepper Nuts

Apples, Oranges, Pomegranates

Assorted Cheeses

Hard Cider

Sparkling Cider

Chateau St. Michelle Wines

Mineral Water

Coffee

As a confirmed foodie, the annual food orgy in late November is my holiday. During my teen and college years, I lived close enough to my grandmother to celebrate Thanksgiving at her house.  Early in that decade-and-a-half, we feasted with grandparents, a great-grandmother, a great-aunt and uncle, and at least a half-dozen assorted cousins of my grandfather, along with the five of us in our family. My mother’s family history abounds in childless or single-child families so the gathering was heavy in WWII generation and I and my siblings the only children. 

My grandmother provided a meal whose tables truly groaned from the weight of the many dishes.  My father jokes that my grandma didn’t think a holiday was rightly celebrated “unless there were 93 sides dishes”. With so many celebrants, groaning tables were quickly demolished. As the older generation of relatives died off, Grandma continued to cook in the same variety and quantity for fewer of us.  We stepped up to the challenge and continued to consume prodigious amounts of food.  The holiday became for me a festival of bounty, manifest in gratuitous variation of edibles.

Because I love to eat, I learned to cook and Thanksgiving is a made-to-order opportunity to indulge.  My family of creation, however, is not nearly as passionate about food as I am.  Unless I insist, we eat boring, busy-suburban-family meals-on-the-run. When I did insist, I would pull out all the stops.  I made far too many dishes of kinds not much appreciated by my family but that I wanted to eat.  And, of course, in my perfectionism, I tried much too hard, took on far more than I could reasonably handle alone, so that always at least one dish was ruined and the meal never met my expectations.  I was grumpy and irritable long before sitting down to eat.

When I got sick, making even daily meals became too much for me and we spent over a year without celebrating any holidays at our own house.  Since summer of 2007, I’ve only made one holiday feast.  Last year, I finally agreed with my husband’s declaration that what it costs me to attempt a full-hoopla holiday is just not worth the effort.  We decided that I would pick one holiday a year to go all out with food and trimmings.  Naturally, I chose Thanksgiving since it is the only holiday strictly about the Eats. 

I found it a relief, oddly, to know that there would be once a year when our house was the destination feast.  We would invite guests (something else my family dislikes), make loads of food, and no one would complain because it was only once a year.  So, last year, that’s what we did and I loved it.  This year, however, I’ve been sicker than I was last fall and then I complicated the issue by going to a conference in Vancouver last weekend.  The conference was the first official, organized educational attempt I’ve made since the conference in 2007 when I first realized how sick I really was becoming. It took way more out of me than it seemed to deserve—just the travel left me huddled in bed, shaking and incapacitated, by six that night and required the whole next day to rest and recuperate while the family saw the sights.

Needless to say (although I was the last to admit it), any kind of effort at all was more than I could manage this Thanksgiving.  I left the entire day to the rest of the family to plan and execute.  The girls only wanted sandwiches made with deli-processed turkey on their icky sandwich bread and “stuffing from a box”. 

The other evening as I lay resting with my feet up (amazing how much difference that posture makes in handling chronic fatigue), I began writing a fantasy menu.  Of course, everyone in the family ridiculed it—when a foodie lives with non-foodies, it is given that no understands the power of simply thinking about good food.  One daughter asked if this list was all the food I wanted to eat that I hoped someone would make for me; she thought it was a joke but she hit the nail on the head. 

So I share it here in hopes that another misunderstood foodie enjoys the Thanksgiving wishes in every dish.  I am thankful today for my readers.  And for my husband who understands me enough not to serve me a kid’s sandwich and was willing to plan, shop, and prepare a real turkey breast, a spiral ham, chips, shrimp starters, some decent bread, and all the sandwich accessories.