Incessant Divagation

“YES, I WANT PIE WITH THAT” 

by Rick Jones, Husband of the Minister's Wife

When it comes to Thanksgiving dinner, Lois and I have a traditional division of duties. Lois does most of the food preparation. I do most of the food consumption.

Of course, she also eats. So it seems fair that I also help fix the meal. We make our own stuffing, which means that I get to chop up the bread, celery, and onions. We used to get a 24 pound turkey, but now that our household has less folks in it, Lois has [with regrets] scaled back to a 17 pound bird. But she still prepares as much stuffing as she used to, which means that we have plenty of stuffing plus lots of leftover dressing. The difference between stuffing and dressing, by the way, is that stuffing was actually stuffed into the turkey, and dressing was cooked separately. I don't know if any real chefs agree with that definition, but it's our kitchen, our rules.

Other than chopping stuff for stuffing, opening cans, and lifting the bird into and out of the oven, I don't get to help much. The food turns out better that way. My mother taught me to cook a few basic dishes, but they are very basic. Whenever I try to get creative, it leads to comments like “What did you put in this?”, “Does this food have a name?”, and “How can something be raw on the outside but burned on the inside?”. Our boys once wrote up a recipe card for me which had just four lines:

 “Quick and Easy Pizza”

www.dominos.com

www.papajohns.com

www.pizzahut.com

I have one recipe which results in a mixture of ground beef, canned corn, canned peas, and instant potatoes. Some people call it “shepherd's pie”, but I think that might be an insult to shepherds. We call it “That Stuff”. The first time I served it, the boys were raising the usual objections. I hadn't thought of a name for it yet, so I raised my voice and said, “Just pipe down and EAT THAT STUFF!”

“That stuff” is not on our Thanksgiving menu. We have real whipped potatoes [that's my other job: peeling potatoes] with lots and lots of gravy.

There's more to the menu, but suffice it to say that the post-Thanksgiving challenge is to finish all the leftovers before December begins. It's not an easy task, but every year I volunteer to lead by example.
I also observe the post-Thanksgiving tradition called “pretend that the bathroom scale does not exist”.

I do like watching football on Thanksgiving, but we leave the TV off during the main meal. This year, that definitely won't be a hardship. I've looked at the match-ups scheduled for the day, and at least four of the six teams involved are playing like a bunch of turkeys.

Incessant Divagation

“SOON WE'LL BE GOBBLING THE GOBBLER” 

by Rick Jones, Husband of the Minister's Wife

I feel a bit hypocritical mentioning the word “Christmas” in this article. It's not because some folks consider it a politically incorrect term – freedom of speech, despite the squawking of the Thought Police, basically means that I have the right to say what I want to say, not that they have the right to hear only what they want to hear. And freedom of religion doesn't guarantee freedom from hearing about religion.

But I have a general policy of not focusing attention on Christmas until after Thanksgiving is done. I'm bothered by Christmas-themed commercials appearing at the beginning of November. These days, two signs that Thanksgiving is approaching are [1] Christmas merchandise floods the stores and [2] Halloween candy is on sale at 75% off. I used to like that second sign, but that was before I became diabetic. And it may be one reason why I became diabetic. When I was a kid, I didn't go trick-or-treating with a little plastic pumpkin-shaped pail. I used a big paper grocery sack, and stayed out until it was about 2/3 filled. If necessary, I'd go back home and set out again in a second costume. Later that night I observed the “fall asleep while eating candy from the bag by my bed” tradition. That was followed by the “wake up thinking I'm going to throw up” tradition the following morning, at which time I swore to myself that I'd never indulge in such gluttony again. And. I always kept that promise . . . until the following October . . .

I also remember Thanksgiving Day parades where the very last float featured jolly old Saint Nicholas, who was enough of a gentleman to give Tom Turkey and the Pilgrims time to shine before making an appearance. Now, he invades the scene so quickly you can barely find a pumpkin pie for all the candy cane displays. The Great Pumpkin and Santa Claus are warring like Coke and Pepsi; Tom Turkey gets trampled in the frenzy.

The Cola Wars are a fitting analogy for the Thanksgiving situation. I don't care for Halloween any more, so it's Pepsi. I like Christmas, and it's still the more popular holiday of the two, so it's Coke. But Thanksgiving is like a third brand, let's say Royal Crown [better known as “RC”]: It can't garner as much shelf space, but I prefer it to the “big boys”.

There is a quality to Thanksgiving that isn't emphasized in the other two holidays. All three talk about receiving great bounty – that is, getting stuff. All three feature food – that is, getting stuffed. And none of them give more than a token nod to eating responsibly [which is why I hate seeing the scale at the doctor's office in January]. But Thanksgiving, well, it still has the emphasis on GIVING THANKS. On viewing bounty as a blessing, not an entitlement. On expressing not only gladness, but gratitude. On acknowledging the Giver, not just the gifts. So far, that hasn't been lost in all the “extras” attached to the day. We've all heard the fuss about whether or not to say “Merry Christmas” or “Season's Greetings”, but I am bothered when people refer to Thanksgiving as “Turkey Day” – 

Not that I aggressively campaign to keep Thanksgiving “pure”. I enjoy watching football while going back for thirds [or fourths] on turkey – and I'm thankful that our Founding Fathers didn't ratify Ben Franklin's suggestion that our national bird should be the turkey instead of the bald eagle. Then turkeys may have become a protected species and eating them would be illegal. It does seem a bit ironic that in the United States we can kill and eat all the turkeys we want to, and there are plenty if them. But the bald eagle, with official protection from the federal government, was close to dying out in the continental U. S. in the 1950s. Not that the Pilgrims ate much turkey. The first-hand accounts of early Thanksgiving meals include menu items like roasted carrier pigeon and smoked eel. I think I prefer the holiday mascot being Tom Turkey rather than Edgar Eel.