Tradition

Jevon cracking chestnuts

It seems like as soon as Thanksgiving is over, I feel as if Christmas has gotten away from me (even though it isn't here) and that I'll never get all of the gifts made and purchased. But before I do that, I want to take a minute to remember Thanksgiving.

The night before:
After pouring through cookbooks and the latest issue of Bon Apetit in search of new recipes for Thanksgiving, we eventually settle for what we always make, because we hate to break tradition and because it always tastes so good.


The house is filled with the smells of baking pumpkins and carnival squash. Then the scent of peppercorns and bay leaves being ground together in the marble mortar and pestle rushes into my nose. Fresh thyme, oregano, and sage are chopped to be added to the dry herbs and salt to marinade the locally raised turkey we will roast tomorrow. Homemade bread is rising and will be baked later. When the squash is finished, we roast some local chestnuts, and try not to cringe as they explode all over in our newly cleaned oven!


The turkey is now marinating and Jevon makes pie crusts with Missouri soft wheat flour. We argue, as usual, about the fact that he refuses to follow directions and the crust is a mushy mess. It's put in the fridge and I will have to contend with it tomorrow when I bake the pumpkin and apple pies. Finally, I whip up the cooled and pureed pumpkin with local cream and milk, local eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger and molasses brown sugar. The smells in this kitchen are so heavenly I wish I could bottle them so I could remember them forever.

Thanksgiving Day:
Turkey is in at 9:00 a.m after being rubbed liberally with butter and stuffed with aromatics: onions, sage, lemons and garlic. (I think we should rename Thanksgiving at our house and call it The Butter Festival). We pour some herbal chicken broth in the bottom of the pan. It's only the four of us today so no need to get stressed over having a meal done by a certain time. After lounging around for a bit and watching some of the Macy's Day Thanksgiving Parade--the marching band from the Sioux Falls, SD High School leads the parade so that's pretty exciting--we continue with our preparation. Onions and celery take a bath in more butter than I care to acknowledge (I can just feel my arteries clogging). Eventually we slice into the Uprise Bakery bread I picked up last week. We laugh about how much bread I bought--I acted as if we were making dinner for 15, not 4. Old habit, I guess. The bits of ciabatta, whole wheat batard and baguette wait in a large stainless steel pot until the onions and celery are ready. More fresh herbs are picked from outside and added to the stuffing and the turkey neck simmering on the stove.

A couple of hours later, the turkey is a rich golden brown and Jevon thinks it will be done sooner than we thought, so we rush to get things ready. White potatoes grown by our friend Bryce are washed and chopped. We also scrub up some of his sweet potatoes to bake along with the turkey. Cranberries, local Arkansas Black apples, molasses brown sugar, ginger and cinnamon bubble together on the stove.

Around 12 noon, the turkey's temperature seems almost where it should be, so Jevon takes it out. After examination, he finds that parts of the turkey are quite bloody, so we put it back in. We laugh because every year, we think the turkey will be done early and every year it actually takes longer than we thought.

The kids are getting antsy so they go outside and play by themselves outside (a miracle in itself), and Kai sets up a "Thanksgiving Party" in our front yard and scatters all of our gourds, mini pumpkins, etc in the front yard and hangs a red sign with a turkey on it. Jevon and the kids go across the street a bit later and watch our neighbor, Guy, plop his turkey in his deep fat turkey fryer.

It's almost 1:30 now and the kids are completely melting down because they are starving. Kai has refused snacks because he wanted to wait until lunch. Tea is begging for corn chips and I telling her to wait for the good stuff. We rush to mash the potatoes with yogurt and butter. I use the Joy of Cooking recipe for gravy this year and it calls for butter (again!) and red wine (yum!). The gravy looks thin so I have to add about double the flour, and I laugh because every year the gravy isn't thick enough. It's almost comforting that this happens every year--it's one time that I enjoy predictability.

At 2:00, it's all done (well, the turkey is still bloody but we'll eat the breast and cook the rest later, just as we always do). The table is set with our colorful Fiestaware. We take a minute to savor the smells of the turkey, baked sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry apple relish and gravy, and then light a beeswax candle.


Ten minutes later, it's over!

Later, after we recover, I make the pies.

A day of tradition that has taken so long to prepare for is over too quickly, just as it is every year.

Ten minutes later