We had a very nice, low key Thanksgiving. But, it wasn’t our best communicated, and certainly not the most traditional.
I’ve been working a ton of hours. A couple of months ago I took on a new job and just haven’t quite gotten my arms around it yet, so I’m not home as much as I’d like to be. Couple the long hours with the fact that this was the first year in many that I’m not eating meat meant I wasn’t exactly in the mood for cooking the whole bird and all its rituals. (I’m not sure my dad remembered this when he accepted my Thanksgiving invitation.) However, in the spirit of the season, I thought it would be nice if everyone else enjoyed the tradition.
Time kept passing, and I just couldn’t get my act together to plan the meal. I have several friends who have had a “Whole Foods Thanksgiving.” Meaning, the grocery store fixes everything and you just reheat! People have said it’s delicious, and this sounded fabulous to me. But my mom didn’t seem so convinced. When I told her I was going to do this, she said, “okay,” as if that word had three syllables. And then the next day she bought a turkey. She said she was going to cook it and bring it up on Thanksgiving. That was fine. I just figured I would do the trimmings as we always do. I told her to bring it up and we would cook it that day.
The week passes, and then the day before Thanksgiving she asked, “what can I bring?” I said, “the bird is plenty!” She seemed a bit confused at my ignorance and said, “oh, honey, I thawed that bird a week ago and we had to eat it. We’ve been eating it for days now and are both tired of turkey.” I do remember that she mentioned cooking a turkey, but I didn’t put two and two together that she had cooked THAT bird. Oh well, too late for Whole Foods…chef’s choice now…and I pick squash lasagna. (My brother Mike called out of concern and said if I just put some sausage in it it would be fine.)
Then I noticed my dad’s Facebook status “Anybody ever heard of squash lasagna? That's for dinner and I can't wait to try it out after six glasses of vino..............” Hmm, perhaps he wasn’t so sick of turkey. Oh well, it wasn’t traditional, but it was a nice day. Jackie came over too, so it was just the seven of us, a relatively small Averill gathering, but we topped it off with football and desserts, so I think it rounded to a full day.
