family meal(s) countdown

Our family Thanksgiving varies: it can go from as low as two people at the table (last year) to as high as eleven. Typically it's just seven (this year), even though there will be food enough for twice that number. We never waste it. Leftovers last us well into the week after.

It's obvious that you need some prep work for it. In advance. 

It's equally obvious that I am terribly slow at getting to it this year. Yes, I made lists (last week). Yes, I shopped for it (yesterday). But that's hardly enough. Why my pokey attitude in 2024?

I can blame age: at 71, I'm entitled to slow down, right? But there's more to the age issue: it's also the case that I become less fussy as I get older. In life, and in cooking. Even a couple of years back, I cared deeply about keeping that bird moist. I read the year's professed wisdoms on how to accomplish that: dry brine, rub, baste, spatchcock, cover with mayo, cover with buttermilk, cover with butter, cover with oil. Start hot, then go low. Start low, then go high. I've done it all. And yes, it always seems better than the year before, which tells me that the reality is always good, even though your fears of a dry bird are stamped into your brain so firmly that you are surprised when it actually tastes wonderful. And if it doesn't? Well what's the gravy for?

It's not that I don't care anymore. But it is true that I am less likely this year to seek out new recipes, to read every Thanksgiving food article that appears in my Inbox. I know what's before me. I'll go with what worked before.

Still, I wake up in the middle of the night and start fretting: is it really true that Thanksgiving is the day after tomorrow and I've prepared nothing for it? I need to get going!

It's a cold morning. Way below freezing. I kick out the ice in the feeding bowls outside. We need to start plugging them in. Our animals have to have a steady supply of clean water.

(I our in a steaming potful on this bitter cold morning)

Yes, it's cold. But it's also sunny. Makes you not mind quite so much!

I drive then to Madison Sourdough. I've not had a sweet roll or a croissant for breakfast for a while! I miss that which appears  on my sweatshirt today!

Breakfast, with Ed. At first he takes care of something he does methodically, each time a new catalogue appears in our mailbox -- he calls the place and asks them to please remove us (usually it's my name) from their mailing list. If you simply trash all those catalogues that flood your mailbox, you should call them too. It's such a waste of paper otherwise.

Okay, done.

We then talk about the threat of tariffs. This bouncing around of added taxes on imports is horrible for small companies that try to plan for the future and that try to keep product prices low. Could this imposition of tariffs put a machine manufacturing company (like the one he started) out of business? Easily. Layoffs come first, closure follows. Listening in to his frequent calls and consults with the company CEO, I have to wonder -- who on earth believes that this tariff move is going to improve the lives of anyone? So much time wasted on trying to predict what crazy and consequential and ruinous new idea is going to come down the pipeline in the next year or two. As Ed says -- even if in the best case scenario nothing happens, no lasting tariffs are imposed, it's demoralizing to do business in this environment. Well, America voted. Let's see if his company survives the tumult. If we all survive the chaos and tumult.

 

I switch my focus then to the dinner that has to appear at our table in 48 hours. I take out the turkey. It was to be small. I note that it's 13.5 pounds. That's not small! Well, of the nearly 50 Thanksgiving dinners I've prepared in my lifetime, I swear the turkey has always come in at somewhere between 12 and 14 pounds. So I'm ready for this guy (more likely it's a hen, since tom turkeys tend to be the larger ones in the store). I read that she was pastured and that quite likely she was happy in her brief life. If we're going to dig into turkey meat, it has to be from a happy bird. (Once again Ed brings up his new idea that we should grow our own turkeys next year. I'm hoping it's just one of those ideas that goes nowhere!)

 

This year, I do a simple salt rub of the bird and stick it back in the fridge. I'll probably spatchcock it, but honestly, I haven't quite decided yet. 

Next, I make a list of what to do when. For all the fuss that this meal will require, it honestly isn't my biggest cooking challenge of the year. That comes later, around Christmas, where I do three family dinners in a row. Thanksgiving lasts one day. I need morning snacks, a lunch that kids wont grumble about, and of course the dinner. Easy peasy, right?

By the time I'm done (with the list) I have to go and pick up the kids. 

I do this only once this week -- they're off for the holiday, starting tomorrow.  This means that our usual "take turns" method of allowing each kid to pick the "treat for the week" is not going to work. One day equals one treat. Forget the fries, forget the ice cream, I tell them. Let's go to Clasens Bakery to see if they have their Christmas treats out yet. 

They do!

Each kid picks a treat...

... and I stock up on my favorite cookie of them all: chocolate covered gingerbread pieces (a.k.a. hearts, stars and moons).

These two grandkids are enough apart in age and interests that they rarely play together in their free time at the farmhouse. She reads, he builds, Or, she sets up her characters and he sets up his. Side by side, but separately. But today they spent quite a bit of time working on a (school generated) computer game together.

You can't push them to find this common ground. But when they do find it on their own, it really makes for a beautiful afternoon.

 

My evening was wasted on technical issues. I had to buy a replacement kindle reading device (having left my old one on the flight into Jackson) and it arrived today. In setting it up I found that the newest model lacked a feature that I liked quite a bit on the older devices. And so I spent a good amount of time complaining to customer service in the hope that they will eventually restore it. (It has to do with what the kindle opens to once it's been turned off.)

Yes, I should have been embarking on my Thanksgiving preparations. But, the new laid back me thinks she'll have time for it tomorrow. In the end, there will be a turkey and it will get roasted. Everything else is just a side show, right?  I knew you'd agree!

with love...