Thanksgiving Leftovers, 2004

In November, 2004, Mark and I celebrated our fifth “anniversary”.  To celebrate, I planned a trip to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium to see two exhibits that I was sure he would love: Jellies and one of sharks, the name of which is escaping me.  The trip was to actually occur before Thanksgiving as he was planning to go to southern California with friends.  I had managed to make plans with my mom.

I will not go into detail with the trip.  Suffice it to say that if I had been willing to admit it, I should have seen it as a warning of what was on the horizon.  I will tell you that Mark’s hours had been severely cut at his job and we were bro-o-o-oke.  Making rent was becoming a monthly challenge – never mind eating.  I was so determined to “celebrate” making it five years that I pulled some money out of savings to pay for it.  There was no way I was going to be able to afford making a Thanksgiving dinner as well.  I was fairly annoyed that he had planned a trip, but, like most things, I let it go.  In the end, he opted to not go due to finances, though he neglected to tell me that until I was walking out the door to start the drive to my mom’s.

“You can still come,” I said.

“No.  I’ll stay here with the kitties.” (“We” -read he found them and I caved – had acquired a pair of kittens on Halloween).  “They’ve already been left alone enough.”

I sighed.  “All right.  If you change your mind, you can take a train to San Jose and we’ll pick you up.”

Margaret had opted to spend Thanksgiving with her daughter, and Cathy and Jason  were expecting Jason’s mother, so it was to be just Mom and I.  I was looking forward to it – we usually have a really good time together.  A few hours later, I walked into her kitchen to find her unwrapping a turkey.  She had declined the turkey from my office on the grounds that it would be just the two of us (and only her eating the thing). 

“What are you doing?”

She looked at me.  “Defrosting the turkey.”

“Mom, I thought you weren’t getting a turkey because it was just us.”

“It was free because I spent over $50.  It’ll be fine.  Margaret and I will eat on it when she gets back on Friday.”

I shrugged and poured a glass of water.  My mom has her own quirky sense of logic.  “What do you want to do for dinner?”

I awoke Thanksgiving morning to the smell of turkey stock.  Arriving in the kitchen, I discovered that my mom had already been up for hours.  The stock was bubbling, the squash was in the oven, the pies were done (pies? I thought), and Mom was mixing stuffing.  “Uh, Mom, it is still the two of us, right?”

“Yes, unless you want to call Cathy and Jason.”

“No, they have Jason’s mom.”

“Well, there will be plenty of food.  We can certainly feed everyone.”

“I think Cathy wants to do this one.  Wait…plenty of food?”

“Well, I figured we’d make a Thanksgiving dinner, and you can take some home to Mark and Margaret and I will have leftovers.”  I had told her the night before about Mark cancelling his trip.

“Um, okay.” 

She handed me a vegetable peeler.  “Potatoes.  And then figure out how you want your portabellos done.”

And so, the two of us spent the day over bubbling pots to produce a really quite delicious meal for the two of us.  We lit candles, set the table, and opened the bottle of wine I brought.  We barely made a dent in all the food; I think I took at least a third of it, plus an entire pie, home with me.  I don’t even remember, at this point, everything that we made.  I just remember feeling wanted and loved for the first time in a while.  The year’s money troubles, the dying gasps of my relationship that I will admit now I was sensing, the uncertainty of the future were forgotten for that one night.  I returned home rejuvenated as if I had spent the night at a spa.

Thank you, Mom.

Thanksgiving Leftovers, 2005

I’m already regretting this theme.  There’s so many other things I’d rather write about this morning than rehash old Thanksgiving dinners.  There’s the performance we did yesterday at a retirement home that went so well; there’s the hour I spent being lost in Folsom, desperately needing to pee; there’s the discovery I made that Goblin peed on a bunch of fabric that I had stupidly carelessly left out, though he mercifully left my projects alone.

But no, I’m on a track here.

2005 was the last holiday season with Mark.  I was in the middle of a show which ran over Thanksgiving weekend, so we decided to not go far and designated the day “movie day”.  Not wanting to waste an opportunity to cook a grand meal, I set about preparing enough food for a family of six for us to much on over the course of the day.

I had experimented with Tofurkey over the years (I’d made it twice), and decided it was worth neither to money nor the effort.  I decided, instead, to take a cue from my many vegetarian cookbooks and make my own main course.  I opted for a lentil nut loaf because it had its own built in gravy recipe.  For sides, I planned on carrot soup, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes – all things Mark loved.  I’m sure there was a green vegetable in there, somewhere, but heck if I remember what it was.  For dessert, I made a chocolate covered pumpkin pie.

The lentil loaf was a combination of lentils, celery, onion, carrots, and hazelnuts.  There were three vegetables Mark would not touch: celery, bell peppers, and green beans.  I could get away with celery if I diced it into pulp.  As I looked at the recipe, I decided that omitting the celery would cause a substantial flavor drop, so I decided to leave it in and start chopping.

Mark was quite the night owl, and in the last couple years that we were together that behavior intensified.  He would stay up until 2, 3, 4, sometimes 5 in the morning, then get up for work at six.  By the weekend he was, I’m sure, exhausted, and would sleep until mid to late afternoon.  If I really wanted to analyze this behavior, I could perhaps see it as a pretty good method of spending as little time as possible with me.  But, that’s a third rail I don’t particularly want to touch right now.  Suffice it to say that I had set myself to get up at six to start cooking and he was just coming to bed.  We exchanged places like two Industrial Revolution factory workers.

My kitchen is tiny.  You cannot have the refrigerator and the dishwasher open at the same time; you have to stand to one side to open the oven; two people in it at the same time (never mind, two people and three cats) is a recipe for disaster.  Therefore, cooking a large meal must be done in stages, with copious amounts of dishwashing in between.  I had set up a plan the night before: it was essentially the meal in reverse.  Pie, then sweet potatoes, then lentil loaf, then stuffing, then mashed potatoes, then soup.  For anyone who has cooked a big dinner efficiently, you are well aware of the various kitchen gadgets (food processors, blenders, egg beaters) that are used.  All of these make noise.  The fact that there was now someone sleeping just a room required a massive restructure of my plan of attack: I now had to plan to have everything ready at more or less the same time and avoid making noise as long as possible.  I do so enjoy a challenge.

It boiled down to getting everything done to the point that it needed to be thrown in the blender, or beaten, or processed.  This meant, of course, that I had about 10 pots spread over the stove a counter (which then meant I had NO space left for anything else). I made it until two in the afternoon.  At that point I decided that eight hours was sufficient sleep time and started up the blender.

Since this dinner, I have acquired an immersion blender, and every time I use it I remember this dinner and think how much easier everything would have been with this wonderful kitchen gadget.  Part of it , I think, was due to the fact that my blender sucked.  It overheated at the blink of an eye, the motor jammed, and it did not have enough power to get everything blended to a creamy finish.  It was also incredibly inconsistent in its persnickety-ness.  Some days it would work like a charm on a dish, and other days it would be an exercise in frustration.  I hated it.  The fact that three quarters of my meal involved using a blender was not something I had been looking forward to.  I started with the chopping of the nuts for the lentil loaf, and then the chopping of the vegetables and lentils to finish the recipe as it still needed to bake.  The machine was going to be temperamental.  As I scraped the mixture into a bowl to finish seasoning, I rewrote my plan to use the egg beaters on as many dishes as possible.  This meant that only the carrot soup and the gravy needed to go in the blender; it also meant that I would be rewashing two devices several times, instead of just one.

Mark emerged from the bedroom around 4, just as I was finishing up the soup.  The lentil loaf was baking in the oven, and everything else was waiting to be reheated.  I served up the soup and we sat down to eat and watch the first selection of our “movie day”.

I didn’t make it to the pie.  By eight o’clock, I was falling asleep.  I had tasted everything I made, and decided the lentil loaf tasted too much like the stuffing, and it made GALLONS of gravy (which isn’t a bad thing, necessarily).  It was good, but having stuffing alongside was a bit overkill.  It went great with cranberry sauce.  At ten (I had so thoroughly fallen asleep during the last movie, I could not remember any of the plot)Mark retrieved the pie and whipped cream from the fridge and sat down to dig into it.  I gave up and went to bed.

“Dinner was great,” he said as I stumbled off to the bedroom.  I crawled into bed, aware that all that would great me in the morning were the mound of dishes I hadn’t finished before we started eating.  I was right.

Thanksgiving Leftovers, 2006: The Dinner

The table looked amazing.  It was practically groaning under all of the dishes.  Steam curled out the dishes.  We sat down with anticipation and began to pass dishes.  Without preamble, we tucked in.

Cathy and Jason are too polite to say, but amongst the hosts we’re pretty much in agreement.  Here’s what was great: Cathy’s salad (spinach with apples, celery, and bleu cheese, topped with a light vinaigrette), her quick breads (a molasses and an amazing orange cornbread), the stuffing, squash, potatoes, and asparagus.  My eggplant, after being made on Tuesday, transported one hundred miles and reheated two days letter, were the consistency of shoe leather.  My mom and Margaret both regretfully agreed that the turkey was “the worst I ever made” and “just not very good.” 

In any case, there was certainly more than enough food, and we all pushed back from the table, satiated.  “How are we going to wash all these dishes?” Margaret asked.  We looked at each other.  The plumbing to the kitchen sink was still in pieces; all that was catching the water coming out of the drain was a bucket.

“We could take them out to the garden and hose them off in the bathtub,” my mom suggested.

I looked at her.  “You have a bathtub in the garden?”

“Gopher problem.”

“We could scrape them into the trash and use the sink in your room.”  My mom’s “room” – read office – was formerly an artist’s studio (I counted over twenty windows in it one day), and as such was equipped with a slop sink.

We put this plan in action.  Within five minutes, we realized that we had made a horrible mistake.  By the third plate, the sink began to back up.  “It’s on the same plumbing line!” Evan exclaimed. 

Well, that tore it.  We piled all the dishes into the sink and moved into the living room.

Cathy and Jason brought Cranium, and we settled into play, splitting into two teams.  I’d never played the game, but I rather liked the charades/Pictionary/Trivial Pursuit combo.  We settled in for the evening with some port and pie (on paper plates!).

Roto-rooter was called the next day.  He snaked the drain for 1/2 an hour and could not get it clear.  “You have a broken pipe somewhere,” was the diagnosis.  It took a week to get the pipe pulled, matched, and replaced (and involved ripping the side of the house off).

I’m sure my mom would disagree, since I didn’t have to deal with all the headaches that followed, but I will always remember that evening as one of the best Thanksgivings.  I look upon all the “catastrophic” disasters as proof that, despite everything, the food takes a back seat to the company.

Thanksgiving Leftovers, 2006: The Preparation

I thought I would spend the next week sharing my memories of some Thanksgiving pasts.  There is a purpose to this, one that is hopefully therapeutic for me.  This will be the second Thanksgiving in a row that I’m facing after having lost someone important in my life in the previous year.  So I look back in an effort to move forward.  This first post turned into a monster, so I decided to split it in half.  I present, here, part I.  It is a series of events that feel germane to a badly written sitcom, but I swear they’re true.

Last year was my first holiday season after Mark left me.  We always celebrated our ”anniversary” on November 21st which, of course, meant that it often fell around Thanksgiving.  Realizing that I would likely be feeling depressed and lonely, I actively arranged someplace to be for the day of thanks.  This involved a certain amount of somersaulting because my original plan involved spending it with my mom.  I love my mother dearly, but it can be very difficult to “make plans” with her.  Her household tends to operate on a certain amount of spur of the moment mentality.  I, however, am a planner, and particularly last year, wanted to know, for sure, that I would not be alone that Thursday.  So, I called on my friend and former roommate Cathy.  If my mom was unavailable, I would spend the day with her husband, Jason,  and her.  As it turned out, my mom decided to host the dinner and Cathy and Jason would join us.

My company gives away turkeys to all employees for Thanksgiving.  Or rather, they give certificates that can be exchanged for a turkey.  We stopped being able to buy frozen turkeys directly from a grocery store because they couldn’t accommodate such a large order so close to Thanksgiving.  I was not sad about this – by the time 50 frozen turkeys had spent the day defrosting on our operations department carpet, the entire office smelled like a butcher’s counter.  And, inevitably, someone always forgot to pick up their bird, which involved trying to find space in the company fridge for it.  The exception was the last year we did actual birds – people took more than one and so we ended up short.  That was the last straw and we moved over to certificates the next year. Since I’m a vegetarian, I often don’t take mine, but this year I sent my certificate to my mom.  If I was “forcing” her to host, I might as well help provide the main course.

The three households planned the menu via email.  My mom, who’s not quite a technology virgin, was delighted with the ease of the process.  A couple emails in which we cc’d everyone, and the menu was set and we all knew what we were responsible for.  I was responsible for the veggie main course; Cathy and Jason were bringing a salad and some baked goodies (she is an amazing baker).  I also suggested that they bring some wine as they’re more wine literate than I am, and the last time I looked at the wine rack at my mom’s there was something growing on it.  My mom would provide the rest.

I drove over Wednesday evening with my quinoa stuffed eggplant and found the prep work well under way.  When I expressed my amazement (the stock was done, the bird was brining, the pumpkin pies were finished), my mom replied, “I’m retired now! I didn’t have to work today.”  Of course.

Thanksgiving arrived.  I wandered out to the kitchen to find mounds of celery and onion waiting to be added to the stuffing and the bird wide open ready to be, well, stuffed.  “Did I tell you about the turkey?” my mom asked as I poured a cup of coffee and snagged a chestnut out of the bowl. 

I eyed the bird and took a small sip of coffee.  My heart began to race instantly – my mom is quite fond of strong coffee.  “What about the turkey?”

“Well I went to Safeway, and they didn’t have the brand that the certificate was for.”

Oh god, I thought.  Please tell me she didn’t buy a turkey.  “OK, but the store’s supposed to let you swap out for a different brand if they don’t carry it.”

She began emptying stuffing mixture into two bowls.  “Right.  So I went to Linardi’s and they didn’t have it either.  So I looked through the fresh turkeys and found one for 17.99 pounds and convinced the checker to accept the certificate for it.  After all, it was under 18 pounds.”

I stared at her.  “But, the certificate was only good for frozen turkeys.”

“It doesn’t say anywhere on that piece of paper that it is only good for a frozen turkey.  It says it’s only good for a turkey up to 18 pounds.”  She dropped two sticks of margarine into a pan of turkey stock.

“Wow.”  I snagged another chestnut, amazed yet again at how well my mom is able to negotiate bulldoze wheedle the unsuspecting public.  “Linardi’s is going to be pissed when they only get reimbursed for the cost of a frozen bird.”

She handed me a bowl.  “That’s not my problem.  Here’s some vegetable stock; start mixing your stuffing.”

I must pause here to wax rapturous over my mother’s stuffing.  It is this fabulous mixture of sweet and savory, crunchy and chewy.  It has the basic celery and onion, but she also throws in roasted chestnuts, sauteed mushrooms, and dried cranberries.  Then she douses it with sage, oregano, and thyme.  I can eat the stuff by the plateful!  It is always the first leftover to disappear.

Since becoming a vegetarian 13 years ago, I have spent only a few Thanksgivings with my mom (this has less to do with my eating habits and more to do with our schedules).  She always buys extra stuffing mix and has a veggie stuffing made.  Last year I made it, imitating her to the best of my ability, as she stuffed the bird.  By 10, it was in the oven, which was doing its best to smoke us out of the kitchen.  Cathy and Jason were coming sometime between 2 & 4.  Dinner was on course.  We set ourselves to the tasks of the remaining side dishes.

At two o’clock my step-brother, Evan, arrived.  My mom began to diligently check the turkey.  She changed thermometers and checked again  And again with a third.  My step-mother, Margaret, turned to me.  “When are Cathy and Jason arriving?” she asked. 

“Sometime between two and four – probably closer to four,” I replied as my mom dug through the drawers for another thermometer.

“Two and four?” Margaret exclaimed.

I muttered something about that being the time frame I was given.  Evan sat down at the counter.  “You can make clam dip, Mom.  It’s not Thanksgiving without clam dip.”

As Margaret began to gather the ingredients for the bi-valve concoction her entire family loves, my mom pulled The Joy of Cooking out, checked it, pulled the original edition out, consulted it, and visibly began checking her math.  She looked at the clock and shrugged.

“Problem?” I asked.

“Turkey’s cooking slow,” she said.  “But we should still be in our estimated time.”

At some point, I was put in charge of the mashed potatoes.  I should mention at this point that I live in a fairly modern complex.  Read: my plumbing works and is of this century.  Mom and Margaret live in a funky, old ranch house that is pushing the century mark.  It is falling down about their ears a bit, and minor “repairs” tend to lead to substantial remodels.  The kitchen is really awkward in many ways, particularly for multiple people, and for cooking large meals.  As an added bonus, it is often the warmest room in a house that averages 63 degrees, so people are always congregating in it.

So, back to the potatoes.  I grabbed the vegetable peeler, and without question began peeling the potatoes into the sink.  When I finished, I whisked them down the garbage disposal and turned to the next task.

Within 20 minutes, the opposite side of the sink began to back up.  I didn’t think too much of this; I ran the garbage disposal for a few more minutes, assuming it would grind up whatever was causing the back up.  I was wrong.  Not only did it not grind up the clog, it increased the water level on the clogged side.  “Um, guys,” I said.  “We seem to have a bit of a problem.”

Margaret looked over my shoulder.  “What did you do?” she asked.

“I peeled potatoes.”

“Into the sink?!”

“Yes, into the sink.  I do it all the time at home.” 

Evan left the kitchen, returning with a plunger.  “This should clear it.”  He plunged.  He reached into the disposal (and came up empty).  He plunged some more.  “Hmmm,” he muttered and stuck his head under the sink (my mom, due to the incredibly awkward set up of the kitchen has been trapped in the pantry with the oven since I first noticed the clog).  Evan got up and left again (my mom took the opportunity to escape the pantry), returning with his tools and a plumber’s snake.  He undid the trap (also empty) and began to run the snake through the drain.  Several times.  When he tried to put the trap back together two problems emerged.  The first was that the washer snapped; the second was that the pipe into the wall had been cross-threaded, and he could not get it to seal.  Oh, and the sink was still clogged.  Realizing that nothing was going to get fixed that day, he stuck a bucket under the drain.  It was now four.  My mom declared victory on the turkey and pulled it out of the oven.  “Where are your friends?” Evan asked. 

At that point I placed a phone call.    I got her voice-mail, which I took to be a good sign.  “I think they’re on their way,” I announced.  Meanwhile, Mom had four meat thermometers in the turkey and was taking comparative readings.  She sighed.  “I don’t know.  It says it’s done.  It just took really long.”  We began to put everything that needed to be heated into the now empty oven, and quickly ran out of room.  With at least four more side dishes the warm, we were faced with a logistical problem.  Fortunately, there were two other ovens on the property: one in Evan’s apartment, and one in the guest house they rented to a retired math teacher (he was elsewhere).  We decided to divide and conquer.  Within five minutes, all three ovens were filled to capacity.

Margaret pulled a third cookbook out and consulted it.  “Big birds always take a while,” she said sagely.  Mom glared at her.

At that point the doorbell rang.  Saved by the bell.  I threw open the door.  “Hi! Traffic?”

Jason looked taken aback.  Cathy said, “Well, not exactly.” 

“Oh well, you’re here now.  Ignore the voice-mail I left you.  The turkey’s out.”  I didn’t quite drag them into the kitchen.  “They’re here!” I announced.  If you’re reading this and thinking, She’s a might bit twitchy, well, you’d be right.  Extended periods of exposure to the “Mom and Margaret” dynamic cause that reaction in me. In many instances it’s unfair, but such is life.

Introductions were made, Jason was given a tour of the house (and had clam dip forced on him), wine was poured as we waited for the remaining dishes to reheat.  After such an eventful morning, our dinner appeared to be off to a good start.  Dishes began to appear on the table from the various ovens.  The turkey was destuffed and the slicing began. 

“I think we are ready to eat.”

The Countdown Begins

I always look forward to Wednesday’s paper because of the Taste section.  Looking over the recipes and suggestions today, I realized that Thanksgiving is only eight days away.  Before you make some sort of comment about the box I’ve been living in, let me explain my apparent cluelessness about the upcoming day of ingestion (or indigestion).  Thanksgiving, as a vegetarian, as a very odd holiday.  So much of it is centered around a bird that’s stupid enough to drown in rain, a bird that we don’t eat.  The weeks of preparation and anticipation are somewhat lost on us.  Yes, it is a family day.  I have often felt, though, that being a veggie at a “traditional” Thanksgiving dinner is a bit of an imposition.  “This is like cooking Kosher!” my mom has, on more than one occasion, exclaimed as she juggles turkey stuffing and veggie-friendly stuffing, and crams whatever vegetarian main course I’ve provided into an already over-crowded oven.

I have hosted my own Thanksgiving dinner, once.  I participated in the days of planning, shopping, chopping.  Since I love cooking, I had a blast, though the fact that my kitchen is minuscule created some planning headaches.  In the end, though, I couldn’t help feeling that my guests were missing their beloved bird.  And before you ask, no, I did NOT serve them Tofurkey.  I braised a bunch of vegetables and served them over sliced portabellos, which allowed me do some some of the traditional sides (twice baked potatoes, yams, broccoli), and of course, the requisite pumpkin pie.  There was definitely more than enough food.  But there was something about the allure of that bird….

So as we enter into the week that heralds the start of the holiday season, and turkeys begin to lose to lose their heads (not that they have much of one to begin with), I send my respect to those who are just now starting the massive job of preparing your meal.  I will be joining friends this year in what will be, I’m sure, a wonderful and anything but traditional Thanksgiving meal, turkey or no turkey.  So, fear not, Mom, the Kosher cooking can wait until next year.  Cheers!