Have Roasting Pan; Will Travel

I know I am not the only one asking how in the world it got to be Thanksgiving already. Every year it takes me by surprise, especially the leaves. Growing up in Illinois the beautiful fall foliage was mostly a thing of distant memories and cold wet biting winds were bearing down on us from Lake Michigan come Thanksgiving Day. 

Not here in San Anselmo, where every tree is simply bursting with color at every turn on the road almost into December. Thank you to every single person who planted the maples, the pistachios, the aspens, the oaks and really every tree that shouts out loud this time of  year.

For many years, I waxed nostalgic on my memories of holidays in the mid-west, where the seasons were stronger and harder and sometimes even meaner. “We don’t have seasons here!” I would declare pompously. But over ten years of easy gentle weather has settled into my bones and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Give me summers that start in April and last through October, and winters that bring good hard rains but rarely lightning and especially not snow to shovel or mush through, and the week in January that always comes with its 80 degrees and nothing but sunshine -- now that is a magical experience to cherish.

You can take the girl out of the mid-west, but whatever you do, do not take away my classic Thanksgiving. No matter where I am, and for years it has been at home surrounded by family and friends, it simply isn’t Thanksgiving without all the classics I grew up with. My mother learned them from her mother and likely she learned them from hers and I am teaching them to our daughter.

I brined a turkey once and promise to never do it again. A good bird doesn’t need soaking; a good bird roasts perfectly on its own. I used to get my turkey from Sam the Butcher in Ross before the flood took it to the bones and turned it into an art gallery. Now, I head over to Woodlands Market and have a choice between a Willy Bird or Deistel and I flip-flop between the two every year and they both come out great. 

This year, we're driving up to visit family in Oregon and the roasting pan is traveling with us. With a minimum headcount of twenty, the table will likely be filled with all sorts of contributions, which is all well and good for most, but not for me. 

I have absolutely no interest in eating stuffing that has sausage or, god forbid, oysters at the great feast. Any other night, sure (well, probably not the oysters), but not on this night. On this night, I will be sautéeing the celery and onions, mixing in the poultry seasoning, dried white bread and homemade broth and stuffing a bird of our own. Something I didn’t learn until recreating my first Thanksgiving was that no matter how big the turkey (and ours is usually 22+ pounds), there isn’t a whole lot of room for stuffing, so an added pan greased thick with butter makes for a halfway decent stand-in.

Another classic is mashed potatoes with real milk and real butter. One year my sister, who has always struggled with her weight, asked my mother to use skim milk. You would have thought she asked her to chop off her right arm. 

“This is MY Thanksgiving and MY kitchen,” she said, staring down my sister worse than I have ever seen. “The time for dieting is not today.” It never came up again. 

We always had peas and corn on the table, and always way too many peas and hardly ever enough corn. A favorite memory of mine was the year my mother handed my brother the peas in a beautiful large antique china bowl she inherited from her parents. All was fine from the kitchen to the dining room, but then inches from the table the bowl decided to give out with one crack and peas went everywhere. At this point we may have wished that our mother wasn’t such a good cook, because perfectly cooked peas roll like metal ball bearings, whereas over done ones might have suctioned-cupped to the table. We were still finding peas at Christmas, which only brought fits of giggles, so it really wasn’t a tragedy or too terribly gross. The ones we found at Easter were gross. Believe it or not, it isn’t because of this that peas are not on our repertoire; I just don’t like them.

Gravy. Gravy was never an issue for me until about twelve years ago. Actually as a child I didn’t like it for quite some time, but thankfully I grew out of that phase!

Before I learned how to cook, and while my husband and I were just settling in to living together, we invited ourselves up to Oregon to be with his sister and her family. We took the 14-hour, which means 17 hours in Amtrak time, train up (never again) and arrived just in time to make a lemon meringue pie, but not much else. I watched and helped where I could around the kitchen and then loaded the table with everything that came out of it. During all of this I noticed  that an incredibly small amount of gravy was being spooned into an even smaller pitcher. That was when my worries began. 

We, about 15 of us, all sat down and started passing and talking and tasting before grace. The gravy had been set across from me, but just far enough away that I couldn’t reach it, and I didn't have any food on my plate at the start, so all I could do was watch the pitcher travel down one long side of the table and back down the other.

What finally arrived in front of me was a thin lining along the walls of the pitcher and on my plate was overcooked dry-sliced turkey that desperately needed something to help wash it down. Now, remember, I was new here and still putting on my best front. If I had been at home I would have popped up and refilled the pitcher, but I couldn’t do that here, not because of manners rather because I knew that there wasn’t anything left in the gravy pan to add to the sad sorry pitcher in my hands. I looked forlornly at my some-day husband, who knew by the look in my eyes that this was not a good situation, but all we could do was smile while I added a few measly drops to my plate.

I survived that Thanksgiving and made sure to take vigilant notes while watching my mother cook Christmas dinner a month later in Illinois, which happens to be the exact same menu as Thanksgiving. I still have those notes and use them religiously every year. I keep them sealed in a Ziploc bag inside William Sonoma’s Thanksgiving cookbook, which backs up my family classics with specific measurements rather than the pinches and fistful estimates from yester-year. To this day I make, at the very least, three times as much gravy as we’ll ever need, just the opposite of a child born in the depression who saves every penny.

My mother passed away a year and a half later and I found myself cooking my first Thanksgiving dinner (with her notes and William’s help) up at our family cabin in Tahoe that same year. No running water, no mom, and lots of help, just not when it was time to get the turkey ready for the oven. Everyone but my nephew and step-son had wandered off into the woods for a hike or something.  I wanted to cry and I wanted to call my mom. 

But, damn it, I was a grown-up now with a daughter of my own, so I wiped my tears and somehow the three of us managed to join forces and with distilled store-bought water we washed the bird, trussed it when it was full of stuffing, and got it into the apartment-sized oven with centimeters to spare. It turned out to be the best bonding experience and one I will remember for the rest of my life.

We are going up to Oregon again this year and I just learned that friends will be bringing two turkeys from their house for the meal.  As wonderful as that is, I had to write an email asking if it would be OK if I cooked our own bird and used my daughter as the scapegoat (sorry Ella!). Thankfully, the sisters-in-law no longer need me to be on my best behavior. And they are happy to have me cook to my heart’s content. 

So, the roasting pan is traveling in the back of the Volvo on the drive up and seeing as how there will be no less than five 20-somethings, who eat like starving Armenians, three turkeys will not go to waste; nor will my mashed potatoes, corn, and gallons of gravy.

Have roasting pan; will travel.

Gobble, gobble!