Thanksgiving’s my favorite holiday. It’s not just because my ancestors came over to North America on the Mayflower. It’s a day that gives me the opportunity to play in the kitchen. Now that we live on the West Coast, traveling to see my family isn’t in the cards. Luckily, we have dinner with some of our Friday night friends. It’s a potluck on steroids. Our host makes the turkey, and the rest of us contribute the trimmings. Julian usually makes key lime pie, using the recipe from Mangrove Mama’s restaurant in the Florida Keys. This year my contribution will be two cranberry sauces, raw and cooked. In previous years I’ve done roasted vegetables, other side dishes, or bread.
Our dinners differ a bit from what my family does. For one thing, we eat around 6 pm. Mom is insistent on having the meal at 1 pm. This does not work well with a night owl like Julian. Eating later allows me to work at a more leisurely pace. In previous years I’ve been able to go on a bike ride after preparing the cranberry relishes. We can also watch the football games before we eat dinner, courtesy of being in the Pacific Time Zone. Our dinner offerings are a bit different from what we’d get at Mom’s as well. There are no sweet potatoes with marshmallows, although my friend Shira will make a gelatin salad she affectionately refers to as “green slime”. Wine is always on the table.
One Thanksgiving years ago sticks out in my memory. We were living in Dallas, and invited one of my postdoc officemates to dinner. Manisha was from Mumbai (Bombay), India and didn’t know from Thanksgiving. She was also vegetarian. I made my throw-everything-together dressing without meat and had some other protein alongside the turkey for her. Dallas had an ice storm that day. Since Manisha had never driven on ice or snow before, I was afraid she wouldn’t make it up the hills in our neighborhood. (Oak Cliff is one of the few neighborhoods in Dallas with anything resembling hills.) Luckily, she didn’t wrap her car around a tree. We made a pumpkin pie out of Bon Appétit magazine for dessert. Phoebe, our first Russian Blue, was just a kitten and decided that pumpkin pie would be a fine thing to eat. Fortunately, we made two pies and she only tasted one. Manisha enjoyed the unscathed pie and the concept of Thanksgiving.
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