Morning After Thanks

Morning-After Thanks

Lately for me the day after Thanksgiving has been the time when I count my blessings. Some people spend that Friday plunging into their holiday shopping while others dig out their leftover turkey recipes, but I spend the day thankful that I’ve gotten through my yearly tradition of Thanksgiving dinner nutties. And I thank my family for putting up with their crazy wife and mother.

We don’t have a huge celebration that involves scores of far flung family members flying in from Outer Mongolia. It’s just the four of us, five if you count the dog. It may be a small celebration but it’s our own--fraying tempers, experimental recipes, unmet dinner deadlines and all. Ever since the girls have become old enough to cook and bake it’s become a yearly tradition for mom to grouchily declare that next year we will definitely be eating in a restaurant!

When the girls were little I did all the cooking. The day was hectic but manageable. I would choose a dinner time then work my way backwards preparation-wise and, voila! Turkey was on the table at 3:00. But mix together two cooks, one baker and a mom who is not good at sharing a kitchen and the pot and mom boils over.

The irony of this is that we have a huge kitchen. But we only have one stove, one oven, a small amount of counter space and one cook who likes to experiment, so it can get nuts. Two years ago Lisa entered Schottenfeld folk lore when she took three hours to prepare a soup recipe. I think we ate at 8:00. Needless to say I became a tad distraught. I declared that from then on we would enjoy our Thanksgiving dinner at a neighborhood restaurant.

But then last year Lisa was in India during the holiday and the three of us rattled around that big kitchen rather forlornly. I swore that from now on no matter happened I would not lose it on Thanksgiving. So this year I told everyone that maybe we should simplify matters and consider take-out food. I even semi-jokingly suggested a Chinese restaurant.

To my surprise Lisa and Steve were very amenable to my suggestion and at first Mariel seemed to be as well. I began to look forward to a Thanksgiving spent lounging on the couch with a glass of champagne while digesting my hot and sour soup. And then I got an e-mail from Mariel asking rather plaintively if it would be possible to do take-out and mashed potatoes. And perhaps stuffing. And cranberries. And maybe some corn bread and apple pie. And of course asparagus. And then Lisa mentioned that she had this incredible baked root- vegetable recipe that was out of this world—and then I put my head down on my computer keyboard and sighed. The moo-shi pancakes were out--an old fashioned Thanksgiving it would be once again.

“Fine”, I told everyone. “But we would not over do it—there would be no three-hour, twenty-vegetable soup, no fruit chutney, and no muffins.”

“What about chocolate chip cookies and biscotti?” Mariel countered.
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As I rested my head on my computer board I concentrated on the bottle of champagne that I would imbibe. I was just grateful that the girls were vegetarians so there would be no worrying if the turkey would be ready on time. What I was not grateful for was Steve’s attitude toward Lisa’s vegetables.
“What in the heck are root-vegetables?” he kept asking. “I don’t think that I’ve ever eaten a root-vegetable and I’m not sure I want to start now.”

“You’ve eaten carrots and beets,” I countered, “And somehow you’re still alive!”

The week began on a high note since Mariel came home on Monday evening. She was working the Friday after Thanksgiving so she made up for it by coming home early. I had to work till Wednesday but coming home at night to find a smiling daughter and dinner on the table was lovely. Then Lisa came home early and my home and heart were full.

We decided on an early 2:00 pm Thanksgiving dinner so that we could spend the afternoon playing our favorite game, Trivial Pursuit. Everyone was assigned their specialty: Mariel--baking, Lisa --veggies, me--stuffing, potatoes and salad, Snoopy--begging and Steve the washing up. We were doing great until we hit a snag when the cookies ran into assigned root-vegetable time and I almost forgot the potatoes. But a little slippage was to be expected, so dinner would now be at 2:30.

And then we were in the home stretch with only asparagus and cornbread to go and I blew it. I had forgotten to set the timer and before I knew it the asparagus was limp and the corn bread was burnt and I lost it and went into my restaurant rant. But Mariel, who was having a much more mature moment than her mother, literally told me to cut it out. So I poured myself some champagne and lit the candles on the table while Lisa scraped off the burnt corn bread topping.

And despite the absence of egg drop soup and the fact that the only turkeys that we saw were the ones that wandered into our yard that day, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving, root-vegetables and all. And I hope you did too.