We had hoped to simplify Thanksgiving this year. We have recently moved to temporary lodgings in an apartment while the new house is being finished, and confidently, and foolishly, have stowed most of our household gear in a storage unit. You couldn’t find Rosebud in that crammed storage space. Indiana Jones couldn’t find the Grail tucked in all those boxes and piles and rolls of rugs. It’s not crucial that I have turtlenecks just yet, but it might have been convenient to have the measuring cups, the garlic press, or a decent knife during the past month. I have been drinking my cheap white wine from a plastic wine glass left over from our Florida pool days. We have no festive Thanksgiving platters or cheery Pilgrim candle holders on hand. No good china. No electric knife. No gravy boat. They are tucked deep in the bowels of the Extra Space Storage Building. It’s looking grim here.
Next week we will be gathering together in a rental cottage near Savannah to share the Thanksgiving festivities with our daughter and her partner, and their two dynamo boys. Holiday cooking in rental houses can be fraught with complications because you never know what to expect, or how well-stocked the nearest grocery store is. Usually I overcompensate and overpack: the KitchenAid stand mixer, the cookie sheets, the roasting pan, the rolling pin, the gravy separator, the electric knife, a few platters, rolls of aluminum foil, parchment paper and Saran Wrap for the leftovers, mayonnaise for the leftovers turkey sandwiches, candles, tablecloths. Crafts for the boys. You name it, I would have packed it. We have never traveled light before. This will be an interesting year for us all. Interesting being the key word – like a grim passage in Dr. Spock, foretelling disaster and unmet developmental marker expectations. Irreversible disaster, and ruin.
At first Mr. Sanders and I had supposed that we could make changes to the traditional menu and streamline the prep. We floated that idea on a group call yesterday – where our suggestion that we skip the turkey this year was met with shocked silence. Dead air. A vacuum. Disbelief.
Then we suggested bringing a nice big homemade lasagne; heavy with sauce and cheese and spicy meatballs, redolent with garlic and memories of home. We had rationalized that we could just heat up the lasagne, and have lots of time to go for walks, find shells, rent bicycles. We didn’t realize that we had produced a hide-bound traditionalist, who was raising children steeped in Americana myths and legends. With the precision of an Ivy-trained lawyer, she argued that we must have turkey. Thanksgiving needs hot rolls and lumpy gravy. How could we expect them to go without green beans and cranberries and pie? Life is just not worth living without stuffing and candlelight and mac and cheese. Her final argument: what about the children?
Some of those bright and chirpy food writers say that you can prepare all of the Thanksgiving dishes ahead of time. They also have well-stocked test kitchens, staff, and expense accounts. Please excuse my very unladylike guffaw. In this rental apartment, which is just like a college dorm room, we have one cookie sheet, one nonstick frying pan, one mixing bowl and one battered old brownie pan – so I will not be preparing anything in advance. We don’t even have a Hot Pot. I harbor the fear being in a strange kitchen with its inevitable dearth of potholders. There was one year in a Thanksgiving rental that we were spatchcocking a 24-pound turkey, for the first time. Ever. Six college degrees were deemed useless as we grappled with the enormous carcass and one potholder.
I am considering hocking my soul and buying a Thanksgiving dinner already prepared by the closest grocery store. That will pry open the children’s eyes to the grim realities of modern living. This is the year that the boys will probably also figure out the truth about Santa. Bye, bye childhood. Sigh. Being an adult is hard.
Wish me luck next week. I am going to listen to Julia Child who believed: “If you’re alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who’s going to know?” This is excellent advice as we might have to resort to instant mashed potatoes, and gravy from a jar this year – and no one will be wiser. I bought the pie crusts yesterday. I know for a fact that the Pepperidge Farm dinner rolls that we will pick up Tuesday night at Food Lion are going to be delicious, too. Which will leave us plenty of leisure time for family walks and photo ops and whipping the cream. Use your time wisely. Life is short. Bring potholders. Gobble, gobble.
Even Joan Didion used store-bought side dishes. In Wednesday’s New York Times: “She paid assistants to help cook and serve for these big occasions, and didn’t sweat details that could be finessed with store-bought ingredients like frozen artichokes or canned sweet potatoes.” We can rest reassured by Didion’s literary precedent setting. Joan Didion’s Thanksgiving: Dinner for 75, Reams of Notes, By Patrick Farrell.
“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain
Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.
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