Friday - 259th

And what does the day after Thanksgiving look like? The clean up continues. Pots, pans, dishes are stacked in the cupboards. Recipes are returned to the Thanksgiving folder and the whole pack is shoved back on the shelf. Thoughts of turkey remain, but they're without ambition (leftovers? we can always do sandwiches) and with some relief (phew! I don't need to roast a turkey for a whole year!) and a bit of pity (the poor French... their turkey roasting is still before them, since the French these days often go with turkey for their Christmas meal). Oh, I do like turkey preparation, but it takes so long to get the bird ready and it requires a meticulous coordination to have it be done just as everything else is set to go! Ah well. Thanksgiving traditions are about cooking. Perfecting that turkey is a lifelong project. I surely must have roasted some forty or more birds in my life. One more behind me! And now I face Christmas.

Only not today. After my morning walk...

 

And breakfast... Lackadaisical...

And tidying, Ed and I take a better walk -- one in our local park. The sun is out and we are at the edge of a two day warmup. A few deep breaths on this very pretty day!

Oh, but that felt good. Can face the world again. The clothes dryer that stopped working, the credit card company that wont release my $34.11 in rewards because they can't resolve the fraud claim that has been without movement for four weeks, the knocked up vacuum cleaner, the stove top in need of a scrub. All silly nothings. 

And of course, there is no dinner to cook. Sure, I tossed a salad. Otherwise, today's plates are the same as yesterday's plates. Same colors, same tastes. The beauty of Thanksgiving is that it has this spillover effect. In many ways, it just stays with you for a long, long time.

Thanksgiving Day

So different, so much the same! But that's true always, no? Perhaps this year poses for most of us the greatest hurdles toward being in each others embrace, but then, there have always been years with great stress. No one goes through life without some amount of drama or disappointment  and Thanksgiving can't always heal pain and promise us unbounded joy and unity. And maybe this year, when we appreciate the togetherness we cannot have, we are, in fact, more likely to love deeply, at a distance, to feel grateful for the time that we had and that will come again. There is happiness in gratitude. True happiness. And so yes, I am wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving holiday.

A real November day: cold, but not freezing. Damp, but not super wet. I walk with the gang to the animal feeding stations. Let me honor the oldest of them all -- Java. Such a mother hen. She doesn't run like the rest, she hops and gallops. Like a chicken on a pogo stick!

 

Let me honor, too, the farmhouse that gives us so much comfort and joy...

And now it's breakfast. Special today. Apple cake from the bakery. (I snipped some sweet pea shoots and mint sprigs from the yard. These plants seem not to care that we are past the growing season!)

And now it's time to roll up the sleeves and hit the kitchen. In trying to stay within the bounds of sanity, I cut out one of the dishes. [I heard on NPR that on average, people are gathering in wee groups but spending way more on Thanksgiving food this year. Odd how we try to fill a void with overabundance.]

Do you mind if I skip baking the corn muffins? -- I ask Ed.

Gorgeous, do you want to skip the turkey? That's okay too!  Yep, he always makes me laugh. 

I start with the cranberries. Have to use frozen ones this year, but believe me, no one will notice. (With apples and spices. Recipe from one of my favorite (occasional) bloggers, the ever generous and talented Catherine at Ben and Birdy.)

 

Somewhere in the background I have the Macy's parade. When Santa comes, I'm to hop over to my daughter's house with this pie. (Purchased, not baked by me.)

 

(Hey, Mrs. Claus is in a mask. Perhaps my grandkids will feel common fellowship with her, having had to mask up routinely to keep others safe.)

Outside, distanced. I back far away so that I can have them take off their masks for this photo...

Home again. This is where I have a window of no kitchen work. Too early to work with the turkey. Ed and I are about to take a walk, when the FB Messenger jimgles. It's Primrose, with parents!

And that's not all -- we connect to my Madison daughter and her brood. Hey Ed, look, we're all together!

Utterly delightful!!! Happy Thanksgiving indeed!

 

And now Ed and I do take a walk. We climb up the construction hills to the east of us, just to check things out. 

(A view of the farmette: bare trees reveal the outlines of the farmhouse, the silo, the sheds and the barn)

It's muddy. I mean, really muddy. We retreat and stick to the sidewalks of the New Development, pausing every time we come across a puddle to work on cleaning our shoes. I'd say this ranked as a very "interesting" stroll. 

And now kitchen work intensifies. Bird is prepped and goes in. I make the turkey stock and get the potatoes -- both sweet and yukons -- ready for their scalloped bake. And brussle sprouts. And mushrooms for the gravy. That's the Thanksgiving roll: everything starts slowly and then intensifies as the dinner hour approaches.

Finally. The turkeys are done!

For the Madison young family -- herbed. For the Chicago bunch -- spatchcocked  and brined. For Ed and me -- herbed as well. Three turkeys. Shared in the classic 2020 way: on screens!

 

Ed and I sit down to our dinner. Next to each other, as we like to do when we go out to eat.

Plates of food, with the colors of a Thanksgiving meal. Repeated in more households that I can imagine.

After the meal there are always the dishes. Lots and lots of dishes. As I go through the steps of cleaning up, I think about those who had a tougher year. So many people to worry about, to wish well in these most difficult times. So many stressed families. Maybe this day, with its turkeys and cranberries and yams, was just a little more normal. Maybe people could take the time to smile, to exhale. Maybe even to feel happy.

With love...

Wednesday - 257th

The day before Thanksgiving. Normally, in years when the family gathered, it would be near chaos here, at the farmhouse. There have always been three meals in the game plan for Thursday -- a breakfast for when everyone arrives (baked goods, some store bought, some freshly made), a lunch that keeps them all from going wild with hunger when the turkey is not even near ready (roasted squash soup with dumplings, chive scones), and then of course the Big Meal. 

By comparison, this year, Wednesday is quiet. But not as quiet as it was in the years when the kids were taking their families elsewhere for the holiday. I don't know why, but this year, I decided to do a Thanksgiving meal for just Ed and me. Maybe it was because for a while I thought we may be having at least one young family here for the day. So I began making plans for that possibility. When we realized we couldn't pull it off safely, I could have cancelled the whole deal: the bird, the side dishes -- all of it. Ed wouldn't have batted an eye. 

But I did not cancel. Somewhere in my head I thought that in cooking along with my daughters (albeit not in the same kitchens), I'd be part of their day more fully (and they would be keeping tabs on my turkey as much as they had in years when they were in the next room). I did beg the turkey farmers for a shift to a small bird, but they told me that this year, their birds grew and grew. They picked out the smallest of their flock and last I heard the turkey clocked in at 13 pounds. I am grateful that Ed likes frozen leftovers, otherwise we'd be eating turkey from now until Christmas.

[A bit of trivia for you: are all Thanksgiving turkeys Toms? For some reason, I always imagined that they were. But it's not so. First of all, male turkeys are more appropriately called gobblers. Why? Because they gobble as they chase the girls. But, tom will do. If your turkey is big, like over 15 pounds, then it's nearly certain that it's a gobbler. The smaller ones? It's a toss up. All hens are small, but I suppose at 13 pounds, mine could be a scrawny gobbler or a robust hen.]

Still, my Thanksgiving this year is greatly simplified. There is only so much food you want to make for two people (especially where at least one of them never wastes leftovers). We'll skip the lunch prep. And breakfast? As you know all too well, Ed and I always have breakfast. This year I'll add a baked good option. But I wont be baking it. 

Given all this, my Wednesday is nothing if not easy. 

I get up late, face the anxious cats (where is our food??)...

Walk the wet and bare farmette lands... (snow? what snow?)

And fix us a breakfast that Ed is willing to take outside, even though it is 41F (5C). One of the cats is out there and he wants to keep her company!

[We are in a state of cat shock: sometime in late August one of the big guys, a twin brother to Friendly, disappeared. We assumed he died because he was, like his brother, very affectionate. We called him Friendly II. Yesterday, he showed up again! Scampered into the shed for the morning feeding, startling his siblings and me, happy to reintegrate into our daily routines. Was he lost? Sick? Hurt? As usual with these cats, there is a lot that we will never know. So once again, we have six cats with us here.]

 

At noon, I drive to do my curbside pick ups. Bakery first! I'm a bit wistful. It's raining hard, but I'm staying outside. I dare peak in, but what good is that -- I can't inhale that bakery smell that I love so much. No matter. I open the trunk, hop back into the car and wait, imagining that maybe next year I'll buy out all the croissants and cinnamon rolls and apple cakes, letting loose all that pent up craving for a real bakery experience.

Next, I drive to where the turkey farmers are distributing their prepurchased toms and hens. (Turkey pick up in someone's driveway...)

Honestly, I haven't had such a fresh bird since my grandma chased a hen around the yard and took an ax to her over a tree stump before Sunday dinner. We will see tomorrow if I can do her (or maybe him) justice.

 

Evening. In normal times, you do not want to cook big stuff on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. You're gunning to meet holiday deadlines.  But I'm not really gunning for anything grand this year and so I get a tiny bit ambitious tonight. I have a huge mound of tatsoi (that deeply green veggie that is sort of like bok choi only different) and lots of clumps of fresh ginger from my CSA farmers. A sautee is in order. Too, I have this ground salmon which could be made into delicious Bun Cha (Vietnamese meatballs, typically made with pork, but in this case -- with the bits of fish that remain after cutting the salmon fillets).

A big meal on Wednesday. That's not a good thing! Ah, but this year, we are allowed to break the rules.

And then I settle in to do some reading, allowing myself to think back to other years and other meals, feeling grateful that at a time when there is so much wrong with life on this planet, there, too, is so much that's right and good and noble.

Tuesday - 256th

It's day two of Thanksgiving week! This is when I should develop a cooking timeline. Normally, I'd be out grocery shopping. Not this year, of course. We had our food delivery. All that's left are the turkey and the bakery goods.

Ah yes, the turkey. Today, our bird moves from being a live animal, to something you marinate and sprinkle with herbs and stick in the oven for a hearty meal. Our farmers promise us that all their turkeys lead joyful, carefree lives. Today it all ends for the poor birds. Tomorrow I'll do a curbside pick up of our guy.

But it's hard to focus on any of the food preparation this morning. We wake up to a beautiful, sugar coated landscape!

It wont last. Not in its splendid entirety. By afternoon, the snow will change to a misty rain. But for now, it's lovely out on the farmette lands!

It's a good reminder that winter isn't a season we merely want to pass over and leave behind. Ed and I are real snow fans and especially when the white stuff comes in a quiet way, staying put on even the most delicate twigs and pine needles.

The day will come when every surface will be ice covered and slippery. When the car will feel bitter cold. When shoveling a path will be a chore. But none of that happens today. For a brief while, we are all enchanted!

Breakfast is a little hurried. I want to run over to my daughter's house to deliver some ingredients they need for their own holiday preparations. And I want to witness that kid joy that comes with the first bigger snow. I need to hurry before it turns soppy wet! Ed! Wake up! It's breakfast!

Ed! (Note that I finally trimmed both beard and hair.The Santa look is gone for now.)

 

I'm off.

For once I tell the kids to skip the masks. I'll stay only a couple of minutes and keep to a super distance. Sometimes it's good to let them just stay in a moment of normalcy. 

(The little girl has one outfit that she likes. Call it her isolation leisurewear.)

(Sparrow, on the other hand, is proud of any animal that appears on his shirt or sweater.)

 

Again I am thankful for Zoom, in my meetups with friends of course, and today -- in my camera lens!

It's true that by afternoon, the rain is pernicious and not at all pretty. But that's okay. We're promised sunshine for the holiday. Now, where was I with my Thanksgiving recipes??

Monday - 255th

Welcome to Thanksgiving week! Let's talk about it during the morning coffee moment.

 

 

 

To readers who live outside the United States, I think this holiday may be a bit of a puzzle. We have an image of warring peoples coming together on this day, back in 1621. Yet over time, we have come to understand that our image is just that -- a wishful thinking about an event that was far more complicated and had more than one troubling aspect to it. We impute a generosity of spirit on all sides to that first Thanksgiving, even as it may have had little of that. Possibly for good reason.

And yet, we can take that image and run with it and let its finest details become part of our celebration. And that's what we do: we create a holiday that at its essence celebrates graciousness and family and coming together in this godawful month when the weather is rarely pretty and daylight hours are short and few between. And we all cook the same meal! Or, mostly the same. Unless you're a vegetarian, you're going to be eating turkey. And cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes and maybe pie. Pumpkin pie. I mean, we may be creative in our recipes, but they're all dancing around the same core ingredients! In our imagination, this is what a fall harvest would have netted those sharing a meal way back when, even though, of course, few of those components were likely to be part of the bounty. With the exception of cranberries which were, in fact, native to North America. Oh and a yes to pumpkin, though definitely not pies, as there were no ovens and no ingredients for a crust.

And yet, our meal reeks of tradition. Isn't it just so strange? And strangely wonderful? 

Man oh man, do I love this day!

For years and years I've roasted that bird and worked all day at putting food on the table for my family. This is what you do on Thanksgiving. You cook, you eat together. That's it.

So, are we eating together this year?

No we are not. 

My younger girl's family lives in Chicago and though they are excellent at taking precautions and mitigating the spread of the virus and both she and her husband work at home, nonetheless, their child goes to day care and so there is a risk of transmission.

My older girl's family lives a 16 minute drive from the farmette, and my daughter and her husband, too, work from home. But baby sitters were helping with child care and so even though the family maintains strict isolation and safety protocols, there, too, is a risk of transmission. They tried to meet the isolation guidelines (14 days without sitters or any outside contact would put them in the category of safe), but work demands were too great and so our initial plan to meet up on Thanksgiving Day fell through.  [On the upside, they are gunning for that 14 day isolation as we speak, and by December, they may have counted off the requisite number of days. That, coupled with testing would allow them to rejoin our bubble and I will be able to jump in once again to care for the kids, giving them a break from sitters, at least for the month of December.]

When you measure the disappointment, I think you'd have to take it from the perspective of the younger members of our multigenerational family. They are all doing Thanksgiving alone, in their nuclear pods, for the first time ever. But for Ed and for me -- well, we've had solo holidays before. My kids have many households to balance during the holidays. In-laws, their dad and his partner -- they all deserve their share of holiday time. And so there have been years when Ed and I would dine alone, ordering Thanksgiving sushi and calling it a day.

How will this year look for us all? It will be super interesting! My girls and I are all roasting turkeys. I'm going back to one of my oldest recipes, my older daughter will be picking up that recipe as well. My younger girl will be repeating a stuffing she and her husband baked here last year and they will be doing a corn recipe that belongs to his family. There will be moving pies: my ex will be dropping off a pie with my younger girl, I'll be dropping off a pie with my older girl. She'll also get my cranberry corn muffins, just because she likes them. We have technology in place so that we can look in on each others cooking efforts. Honestly, from my perspective, it's not as intimate as when they're all here, but I haven't had them all here very often in recent years and this is a heck of a lot more in the spirit of Thanksgiving than sushi with Ed. (A few years back, he and I actually ate at the Japanese restaurant: sole diners, surrounded by the family that runs the establishment, all anxious for us to be done so they could run out and start shopping for bargains.)

And there you have it! A 2020 Thanksgiving. Followed by a distanced masked park meetup with my younger girl a few days later, and a December resumption of the bubble we will be able to create with my older girl's family.

But for now, let's stick with Thanksgiving. What do you do on a Monday of the big cooking holiday? You make sure your pantry has all the essential ingredients. I've been doing lots of grocery washing, sorting, shelving, Our mudroom takes the overflow and I do have to admit it's hard to walk there right now. Too many squashes, onions, potatoes, yams, broths, sprouts, and garlics.

Next? Well, it's important to use any good weather hours for exercise. They aren't a given this week, so in the late afternoon, we squeeze in a hike in our county park.

 

And it's super important in these days of isolation and more isolation to squeeze in time with friends. I do that as well.

 

And then we glide straight into a quiet evening. First day of Thanksgiving week is behind us. Tomorrow, two things have to happen. Oh, but wait -- that's tomorrow. For tonight -- I am loving the glow of the candle, the color of our year-round lights on the staircase, the promise of good leftovers for supper and a moment with my sweetie on the couch, picking up some yet unseen episodes of Grand Designs, were real people struggle to construct dream homes in inhospitable surroundings under trying circumstances.

Sunday - 254th

We seemed to have spent a good part of the day engaged in the act of selling. Hold on there -- did we really do this in our state of total isolation? How do you sell stuff without dealing with people?

All good questions. The thing is, I have a couple of old cameras that basically still work and Ed has been after me to pass them on to someone else off of Craigslist. Not only for the money this brings, but, too, so that someone can squeeze a few more years of life out of them. Realizing that my repeated statements of "not now, I don't have time" are mere excuses for an inherent reluctance to take money for used stuff, he finally did the legwork for me and set up listings for two of my old machines.

Today, an interested party called. 

It's a cold day and I did my morning walk briskly. 

 

 

I was about to start in on breakfast prep when Ed sang out -- someone wants to come to look at the camera.

The game plan: put it out neatly with all its accessories on the chair in the driveway and stand back.

What if he picks it up and drives away?

Not likely. 

The interested party didn't pick it up and scamper off. Instead, he examined it, put the money in a box and drove away happy. Now, in truth, I don't know that he really left the amount of money we settled on, but it almost doesn't matter. He was happy. And we have less clutter on the shelf. Importantly, someone will enjoy taking photos with it. Thank you, Ed.

The cats came over to see what the fuss is about, so Ed of course does not want to abandon them. We eat breakfast on the porch even though it's a pretty cold day! Just a touch above freezing!

 

We do still go out for a walk, but without great ambition. It's as if one accomplishment for the day is enough. We walk the New Development and talk housing choices. And admire the farmette from its rear end.

 

And in the evening I take a supper over to the young family.

 

I used to vary the menu, but I got a crew of happy seafood pasta eaters and so this is what we have been having every Sunday for the past several weeks: seafood pasta!

Ed and I don't mind. Repetition of a reliably yummy dish is a good thing in our house as well. Candle lit, sauce bubbles away on the stove, salad in the making.

 

 

Again, the feeling of gratitude stays with us, even as we realize how many are working beyond exhaustion right now to help care for those who are not so lucky.

Thinking of them now, with love.

 

Saturday - 253rd

Who knows why we sometimes choose to do the things we do. Something within you steers your attention in one direction and before you know it, you and your sweetie are washing all the windows in the south facing front room. He on the outside, on a ladder, you -- indoors.

 

I know we're rather focused on the way the front of the house looks right now, ever since the front entrance was reconstructed earlier this fall. Suddenly, (on my morning farmette walk), I care that the geraniums look pretty as you peek into the farmhouse from the road.

 

But it's not as if you can tell that these windows have not been washed for some half a dozen years. And yet, after breakfast, after we tick off all the things we should do today (move chips, trim that beard!, take a walk)...

 

 

... we bypass everything on that list and attack the windows, Ed using exactly three squares of paper towel for all seven of them, me -- well, slightly more generous on the towel end, but with the same sparkling result from both sides. (Guilt has me reuse some towels on kitchen windows, so long as we're on this glass cleaning trip.)

Don't be fooled by Ed's short sleeves (and shorts) outside. It is a cool day. Just a handful of degrees above freezing. Nonetheless, the sun is out and so a walk is definitely in order. Ed is really smitten with the vast new area of the Nature Conservancy that we explored just yesterday. We hadn't ventured more deeply into the woods. Perhaps today is a good day for it?

We drive the few miles to the trailhead and immediately change our minds. It's November 21st, the start of the deer hunting season (it lasts a week and there are many guns and many men aiming them at moving things). Not a fun time to walk the woods. But so long as we are at the southern tip of Lake Waubesa, why not explore the community that abuts the eastern shores of the lake? We often stroll along the lakeside road near us (meaning along the western shores). Why not check out its analogue to the east?

 

We've looked across the lake so many times, but we've never actually explored this area. And it's interesting! Hilly, with homes descending steeply to the shore. People are out on a day like this -- putting up holiday lights, playing ball in the driveway. The community has a good feel to it and as we stop to chat with one of the residents (at a great distance), we find out more about the village's commitment to clean lakes and restricted development. So we learn something too.

 

Wouldn't you call this a most productive day? I'll add to it grocery unpacking -- the bulk of all items needed for the holidays and beyond. And picking up one of the final CSA veggie boxes, with beautiful sweet potatoes and brussel sprouts and still some more squashes and pumpkins for future roasting.

I opt for doing one more day of leftover chili. Perhaps I should have been more ambitious, but still, with a salad, it's a healthy supper! I was reminded today of Ed's eating habits prior to our time together. The guy often leaves old scraps of paper  in their place, way past their useful moment. He has a grocery shopping list on the side of the small refrigerator at the sheep shed. It has to be at least 15 years old -- from before the time of me cooking dinners for the both of us. 

 

 

I think we are a step above that in terms of healthy eating.

 

Evening.  Clean windows make for good views (this from the kitchen window)...

 

Primrose and her mom call, now beautifully on display on the small kitchen TV...

 

 

I stir up the chili, chop up veggies for the salad.

We are lucky: the gift of good, seasonal food, of a beautiful November day, of knowing that the kids are fine. And a quiet evening at home, with popcorn. Yes, so very lucky.