BRATTLEBORO — Thanksgiving is a holiday almost totally given over to the eating of food. There are no presents, few songs, and decoration is usually limited to hanging three cobs of Indian corn on the front door.
But our tables are transformed into groaning boards, in more ways than one. Occasionally, we speak a word or two of actual thanks at the beginning or end of the meal, but most of our energy goes into digestion.
The world of food does not need another column about roasted cranberry sauce or brussel sprouts gratin or praline pumpkin pie. Basically, the same Thanksgiving menu is repeated thousand-fold across the state: turkey, vast quantities of gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, a green vegetable, cranberry, and pie.
I have almost given up trying to slip something new into the menu. The comfort of eating the same foods year after year provides great pleasure and balances the sometimes-difficult company we find around the table. At Thanksgiving, we put aside the past, wholeheartedly embrace our families and friends, and with them share this most American of holidays.
Memories of Thanksgiving are filled with such meals, some more successful than others. Maybe there was that one friend who drank too much and started pontificating loudly about his ex-wife. Or the fancy pumpkin pudding that didn't set. Or the grown-up daughter who brought her iPhone to the table and spent more time texting than talking.
We take a deep breath and just whip more cream to cover up the seeping custard and change the conversation to sports. (What about those Red Sox?) Navigating both the culinary and relationship mishaps of holidays is a great challenge.
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One of the great excitements of my own childhood was packing ourselves into the Ford wagon, dogs and all, and making the long drive from Vermont to New Jersey, where the more suburban members of our family lived, a suburbia my parents had gladly fled.
Great-aunt Anne had a huge looming house in Jersey that was downright scary to my little-girl self: dimly lit and easy to get lost in, with many dark stairways, long and narrow hallways, and the pervasive smell of camphor.
Then there was the ghostly presence of my great-nephew Donald, who lived in a small room above the kitchen. He had some kind of severe back deformity and perhaps other disabilities, but none of his challenges was ever talked about. He rarely left his room, and my great-aunt would take him his meals on a tray.
The grownups would sit around the living room drinking Manhattans and making grownup conversation. My brother and I were relegated to the grounds, where I would wander among the shrubs until we were called in for dinner.
One year, Aunt Anne, who was a terrible cook, forgot to take the bag of innards out of the turkey, and the kitchen filled with the smell of roasting plastic.
The ramifications of this disaster could have been epic, but we all laughed at the mishap, dispensed with the turkey altogether, and made a meal out of the side dishes. Everyone momentarily forgot their troubles.
Perhaps even Aunt Anne.
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Gradually, my own mother began having Thanksgiving at our home in Vermont. She loved a holiday and spent days ironing oversized, heavy-linen tablecloths and napkins, polishing silver, and washing the china and crystal glasses.
She would tart up the menu with dishes like little creamed white onions and homemade cranberry sauce, although we always had to have that wonderful canned cranberry sauce sitting on a plate with those rings of ridges molded into sides. Such lovely perfect slices it made.
My personal favorite was the canned fruit cocktail, served in cut-glass dishes that must have made my mother feel elegant, even in her modest Vermont house that, as it turned out, was soon to be repossessed. I would fight to be the one to top each serving with a bright red maraschino cherry, the same kind found in my parents' Manhattans.
Do they even let children eat maraschino cherries any more? I loved them, especially the ones left behind in the Manhattan glasses.
Uncharacteristically flouting convention, my mother cooked a ham one year. After what may have been a few too many of those Manhattans, she went to pull out the oven rack to baste the ham, and the entire pan flew out and ended upside-down on the floor.
This catastrophe delighted our Dalmatians but, luckily, the kitchen was closed off from the dining room. The ham was retrieved and wiped off, as were the dogs, and the whole thing plopped back in the oven. No one was the wiser, and disaster was again averted.
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My own experience with Thanksgiving disasters usually centers around my desire to produce a culinary masterpiece instead of just sticking with the tried and true.
One year I followed a complicated recipe for pumpkin cake. No mere pumpkin pie at my table! I roasted pumpkins, puréed the flesh, strained it, and toasted spices. I whipped, creamed, folded, and baked, then left the cake to cool overnight.
The next day, I found it had transformed into something that had the consistency of very old Jell-O.
Luckily, I was able to make a dawn trip to the store for a can of Libby's pie filling and a pre-made pie crust. I transferred the crust to my own pan (oh, please don't tell on me) and made the pie I should have stuck with at the start. The “cake” went into the garbage.
I cringe remembering a holiday in the '80s when I decided to make panade, a fancy, thick French soup that was baked in tiny individual sugar pumpkins. First of all, who really wants soup at Thanksgiving, anyway? But I wanted to make panade - and make it I did.
The recipe called for cutting the top off each pumpkin and then scooping out most of the flesh. I quickly discovered that the average human hand is way too big for this task, but I scraped away with a grapefruit spoon for about an hour, cursing like a sailor. It took days for my fingers to recover.
The soup involved combining a lot of expensive Fontina cheese, cream, egg yolks, bread crumbs, the pumpkin flesh, and chicken stock, pouring the ingredients back into the adorable little pumpkins, and baking them in the oven. When the timer went off, I opened the oven to discover that the pumpkins had split open and the filling had spilled over the baking sheet, resulting in one large homogenous and extremely unattractive puddle of pumpkin skins and burnt bread.
So much for la cuisine. I should have stuck with the basics.
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That is what people want at Thanksgiving - the basics. They want simple, comfortable food and forgiving company. Food is the glue that binds people together, and good, undemanding food can sometimes even patch up a few cracks or two. So if Uncle John launches into his repertoire of dirty jokes again in front of your 8-year-old, just hand him the gravy.
And for the cook, who is usually exhausted even without kitchen disasters, I suggest this straightforward soup for the day after Thanksgiving. This recipe, which makes four cups, uses up all the leftover celery and stock, is very easy to make, and it will satisfy the post-holiday desire for clarity and virtue after the excesses of that groaning board.
Simple Celery Soup
Melt in a medium-heavy saucepan over medium heat:
¶1 tablespoon butter, unsalted
Cook until soft, about 5 minutes:
¶1 small onion, diced
¶1 garlic clove, minced
Add:
¶1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
¶4 cups celery, diced
¶1 medium potato, peeled and diced
¶4 cups of chicken or vegetable stock (or water, for the truly Spartan)
Bring to a gentle boil, lower the heat to a simmer, and cook, uncovered, until the celery and potato are soft, about 15 minutes.
Remove from the heat, then purée with an immersion blender. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve.