Let's Talk: Take It Easy--It's Just Thanksgiving
11 Comments
It started about a month ago. No, maybe two months ago. You know the way Christmas creeps earlier every year? Bruce and I actually saw Christmas ornaments on sale at a chain store in mid-September.
But no, I'm not talking about Christmas. That's a done deal. It's been creeping forward since I was a kid. I'm talking about Thanksgiving.
And not the holiday. The storm.
At first, it's a pleasant flurry. How to put back enough stock for your Thanksgiving table. Yams or potatoes--how to choose that essential Thanksgiving side dish.
Then it starts to howl. This year, roast your turkey at 200F (93C). (They neglect to tell you in the headline that the method takes ten to twelve hours, so you better find the masochism setting on your alarm clock.) Thawing your turkey with ace bandages. (No joke.)
Finally, it morphs into an outright blizzard. Until I'm reading enough tweets and blog posts and articles that even I'm starting to get a little nervous. And I'm a food writer. Married to a chef.
How to chew your own wood pulp to make Thanksgiving invitations.
OK, I'm kidding about that last. But still.
I'm a professional. I'm supposed to keep up. But I wonder how it feels when you're not in the business.
Sometimes, I fear we've reached a point where the non-restaurant food industry runs on shame and sadism. You're not doing it right. You're not doing enough. You darn well better start trying to be up to par.
Look, it's just Thanksgiving. It's not about the meal. It's about the thanks. That's the point: family, friends, around a table, more conversation and laughter than stress and insanity. In fact, I would argue that this is the one meal a year when you don't need to impress anyone. You need to have a glass of wine and chill out.
At the risk of offending my fellow foodie friends, let me try to take the bubble off the boil with three suggestions.
1. If making all that food stresses you out, buy parts of it--and buy the best you can comfortably afford. Thanksgiving is probably not the day to become a full-fledged locavore. And if you're not up to roasting the bird, buy a preroasted turkey. Try to get an organic one. I'm in Austin right now and I was in one upscale supermarket that offered roasted heritage birds for pre-order. Pretty nice, that. Or have a bakery make the rolls. Shoot, have a bakery make the pie. Maybe not the bakery in your local grocery store. If your budget allows it, go up a level, to a small local bakery where they're actually baking the pies. Or search out people online who bake pies and rolls in their homes at this time of year to sell to customers who place orders.
2. Don't get locked into a turkey. One way to step back from the frisson of shame and sadism that runs behind, under, and around the professional food business is to forego the traditional menu entirely. Make a ham. Have a pork loin roast. Grill some steaks. Make a slow cooker stew. Have a nice mac-and-cheese with some vinegary salads on the side (green beans in vinaigrette, a cabbage slaw, some sliced tomatoes). If you step back from the incessant, you'll find that you can slow up and be thoughtful. Which is the point, after all.
3. Bring back the dinner party. Not at Thanksgiving but for the rest of the year. Invite friends over, cook up a storm, impress the heck out of them--on the third Saturday of January. If you have more dinner parties, you'll find that the food you serve on the holidays will be far less important. The meal will be less about impressing people--you've done that earlier in the year--and more about enjoying your company.
Most importantly, even if you go whole hog, be thankful in ways meaningful to you.
And say it. Because that's the hard part, right? Maybe that's why we get wrapped up in the food: to avoid harder, more important things. Being thankful--and being thankful out loud--is the meat of the matter. Tell your spouse, your friends, your family that you're thankful for them, that you love them, that your life is better because they're in it, that your life is possible because they're in it. Look them right in the eye and say it.
That's much harder than making dinner. And much more rewarding. Not to mention much, much more healing for the soul.
Reader Comments (11)
FROM BRUCE
And if I might add something: a turkey is one of the easiest dishes in the world to cook. Easier than a stew, a casserole, or even a roast beef. Why? To quote Crystal Allen (played by Joan Crawford) in THE WOMEN: "If you throw a cold lamb chop in a oven, what's to keep it from getting cooked?" A turkey is just that easy. Sure you can brine it, rub it, truss it, stuff it, and do God knows what else to it; but the point of a turkey is that you don't have to do anything but shove it in the oven until it's done. Don't even bother to baste it. It'll crisp just fine--and opening the oven all those times will only make it take longer to cook. A turkey is also one of the few things you can even pop in the oven frozen. Just add 50% more time to cook it. Enjoy your family and friends and be thankful you're all together.
Thanks for this post -- a good reminder of the purpose of the holiday. For the first time in my adult life, we are not traveling or hosting a crowd for this holiday and we are really looking forward to a quiet family day. Our 3 kids created the menu -- kale salad with squash, roasted turkey, mashed potatoes [new easy micro method, thank you!], sauteed green beans, pumpkin muffins, cranberry sauce. For dessert, butterscotch pudding. They seem much more excited about Thanksgiving, and have been planning the table decorations, etc. Happy we can make some of it ahead, and lean on your big book for the guidance on the turkey and dessert! Much to be grateful for, and glad to take the time to soak that in. Enjoy your holiday!
You always make me proud, but a t this moment I am bursting with pride and love for you two!!!!
Such good advice for this time of year! I'm a planner, so I've had my lists and schedules ready for a few weeks, and I'm hoping nearly everything can be prepared in advance, so I can enjoy the day with family and friends.
Thanksgiving was always a favorite holiday of mine, but it has special meaning for me now...four years ago this month was when we got the "all clear" news from my husband's cancer treatment. After nearly a year of hell, we had something to really be thankful about! We will always be thankful for what we have, and who we have to share it with.
Thanks for this. I love to cook, and I love an excuse to splash out and cook a big, festive meal--but sometimes I let my perfectionist tendencies get the better of me, turning me into a cranky mess along the way. I'm going to read this as many times as it takes in the next few days to keep me calm and appreciating the joys of my favorite holiday.
Happy Thanksgiving Mark and Bruce. My family and I are thankful for the two of you, the recipes that you share, the cookbooks that you've written and those that are yet to come, and the smiles that you bring on your blog entries. Enjoy the holiday!
Wonderful message! Happy Thanksgiving, Mark and Bruce, you are very special and I'm thankful for you both.
Suzie
I loved this. Every last word. I have a "Thanksgiving Planner" on my blog that I post for Canadian Thanksgiving. I've been feeling kind of self conscious about it, though, because it's nothing fancy. The whole idea is to take the stress out so that I can enjoy the day. So, thank you for this, it's a great reminder that food needs to have heart - and how we do that is by not being stressed.
xoxoxoxo
Happy Thanksgiving!
"Sometimes, I fear we've reached a point where the non-restaurant food industry runs on shame and sadism. You're not doing it right. You're not doing enough. You darn well better start trying to be up to par."
I read a lot of cooking blogs and I'm amazed at the number of people who are afraid to try to make things for fear they can't do it "perfectly." I think a large part of this may be due to high standards set by various publications and even bloggers. I don't think it was so difficult when mom and grandma set the standards.
One of my favorite quotes: Perfectionists waste too much time trying to be perfect. Good enough is good enough.
And it is.
Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for your comments. I've found this post all over the web in the last few days--and it's been very nice. But I haven't had any internet access to this site except through my Iphone--and so haven't been able to respond to you all.
I'm so thankful for your words here. They mean a great deal to me. 'Tis the season--yes, to eat too much, but also to realize that food is not the beginning and end of the known universe.
M.
(Hey, I'd love to crosspromote any sites you might have here. Look how Celia does it in the comments above--she puts her blog right in her name for the comments. Please feel free to follow her lead!)
Beautifully written and expressed- wish I could have pointed this out to a few people a week ago. Sound advice.
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