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Pandemic thankfulness
Ah, Thanksgiving!! I love a long weekend holiday excuse to cook, bake and be with the family! Thanksgiving is the perfect holiday, as far as I’m concerned. The fall weather is usually co-operative. It’s warm enough for walks and cool enough for a bonfire. The food is plentiful, and that’s a bonus. The drinks flow, and that could go either way. At our house there’s usually musical jam sessions, lots of laughs and, occasionally, that bonfire. I am thankful for all of the good things I equate with Thanksgiving. But this year, I did miss our usual big, family get together. Mostly, the family stayed safe-inplace and sent pictures of their Turkey Day. I miss all of those hugs. I miss dealing with too many cooks in the kitchen. I miss setting up “the kids’ table”. I miss the massive mess at the end of the day, while LOML and I pour ourselves a drink and figure out how to put the house back in order. I could hardly have believed I would miss all of the noise, the mountain of shoes and jackets in the front hall, a sinkful of pots and pans, a boisterous game of UNO or Crokinole and the cider-influenced plans for the next holiday.
The problem with me and holidays, is even in Pandemic Times I cook and bake as if the whole gang were going to be here for the weekend. Usually the whole gang is here. I may have looked like I was stockpile-groceryshopping last week, but I was really just getting ready for a long weekend. Our usual holiday gathering is anywhere from 10 to 20 people, all of whom would be here for three or four days. It’s difficult to break the habit of bulk buying for a large holiday crowd. My holiday mind was telling me a dozen eggs, one package of bacon and one sleeve of English muffins would never get us through a weekend’s worth of breakfasts. In the olden days, those numbers wouldn’t have been enough for one breakfast, let alone the whole weekend’s worth. And how much turkey is enough turkey for two, perhaps four people, instead of company cooking? Surely it’s a bird the size of a small pony, right? Apparently, not. While LOML mostly defers to my impeccable judgement in the grocery store, he did raise an eyebrow when I wondered aloud if a rather large-sized turkey and a whole backup ham would be enough. He did mumble something about not really wanting to eat turkey and ham, in every possible iteration, until Christmas when I’d be in the same frame of mind. I was having trouble reverse-engineering the food problem, if reverse-engineering was what I was supposed to do. I reluctantly put the ham back in the cooler and opted for a rather small turkey. I hoped there was an app for scaling the feast “fewer guests/no guests” into less food in the cart.
I should have been be thankful I didn’t have to bake six ten-inch pies. Instead, I was shaky and stressed. My simple math skills were put to the test on Saturday morning. If I only needed to bake one pie, but my recipe for pastry was a recipe for three pies, what do I do with the other two pie shells? What about the fillings? When I finally figured out the pie dilemma (I baked three pies) I found I had another problem. If I didn’t have to give over five or six hours, of oven time to cook a turkey and a ham—basting, checking, turning, basting a bit more, adjusting racks, adjusting temperatures— and I didn’t have to peel a ten-pound bag of potatoes and a five- pound bag of carrots or find a casserole dish big enough for seven pounds of dressing, what was I going to do with all of that extra time not spent tending the holiday victuals? And this is where my actual stockpiling was a good thing, I took a deep breath and poured myself a glass of Tortured Path (from the case purchased earlier), yanked a neglected book from the shelf, got the comfy blanket out and enjoyed those extra hours.
I am flexible, if not innovative. I think I could learn to enjoy this pandemic holidaying. As it turns out, without a houseful of family to feed, the kitchen cleanup only took a half hour, instead of the usual two hours of scrubbing and scrapping, all the while promising myself I’d order in next time, I had time for another glass of Tortured Path. I didn’t think I could be thankful for a Pandemic Thanksgiving, but here I am, thankful.
Cheers for a Pandemic Christmas.
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