Thanksgiving Tips

There have been innumerable statements published about the importance of the family dinner.  As we approach the one American holiday centered solely around a meal and one of the only true feast days left in our culture, here are a few ideas for making your Thanksgiving holiday delicious and memorable. As far as I'm concerned, the first three are year-round rules, the rest are tips.

1. Instead of pepper, use grains of paradise on any dish containing potatoes. It really highlights the earthy flavor. Buy grains of paradise from any spice shop, and grind in a clean (preferably spice dedicated) coffee grinder, or an empty reusable pepper grinder.

2. Marshmallows are not for dinner. Save them for dessert.  For sweet potatoes/yams, try roasting with butter, vanilla extract, and cardamom alongside acorn squash rings.  You'll still get some sweetness, without resorting to puffed sugar.

3. Brussels sprouts should not be steamed or boiled. EVER. The punishment for this sin is your children's lifelong aversion to this versatile veggie. Roast, sauté, or braise.  These methods will brown and bring out the non-bitter flavors you didn't know Brussels had. My favorite is braising: you get the high heat of sautéing plus extra tenderness and flavor by way of the braising liquid, which also become a light sauce.

4. Pre-plan how to use your leftovers as a part of your overall meal planning.  You won't have to think about it later, and you ensure no food goes to waste.

5. Experiment with new ingredients: put chestnuts in your stuffing, substitute parsnips for carrots for an earthier flavor, get a whole goose instead of a turkey breast.  Try out new side dishes like lentils or make mincemeat pie instead of pecan.  Traditions have to get made some time, so make your holiday unique. And if you've never contributed by making something then this year step up, buy some salad mix and make a vinaigrette from scratch.

6. Set goals with your family and friends: "This year let's make stuffing from scratch." or "Let's have every dish showcase a New World ingredient." or "No traditional T-Day dishes allowed."

7. Make your motto for Thanksgiving "The More the Merrier."  T-Day was just a present-less Christmas for me growing up, until my family started spending the holiday with friends of my aunt.  It's the perfect holiday to open your family circle and celebrate with friends, old and new.

8. If you want traditional ingredients without quite so many pies, roast pecans (or candy them), pumpkin, and sweet potatoes; and bake your apples. Sweet potatoes and apples sauté together nicely.

9. Consider serving your meal in courses, clearing the salad(s) before loading the table with the turkey, dressing, etc. in order to free up some space while passing dishes.

10. Screw popular health warnings. It's called stuffing for a reason. Just make sure everything gets completely cooked.

I already celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving this year. But I'm available in November if anybody in a 200 mile radius of Atlanta has an extra place at their table. Or, if you're willing to come to me, I'd cook for you. Provided you like Brussels sprouts and lentils. 

I Am More Than My Emoticon: Or Why I Hate Happiness

The other day, I wrote on Facebook:

"So incredibly tired of happiness being touted as the natural state in life, as fundamental to your spirituality, as being indiscernible from joy. What I find to be true, in almost every case, is that Happiness seems to come from focusing only on positive things, effectively denying, or at least ignoring, the bad in life. Unquestioning positivity whitewashes, refuses to acknowledge, and does NOT prepare you for terrible, difficult, grey, doubt-ridden situations. This form of happiness also denies empathy, feeling the pain of others, simply because THAT'S NOT HAPPY. Well, I am not a happy person. I worry that my friends will make good decisions. I wrestle with doubt. I sorrow with those experiencing loss. And, from time to time, I suffer. I acknowledge suffering as a fundamental human condition. Which requires hope and love to keep from becoming despair. I learn to cope; I learn joy. And while you tell me to smile more, I hope your Happiness can stand up to the pain of living. But if not, I'll be waiting with a shoulder you can cry on."

Since posting and reading the responses, I feel a need to unpack my position a bit more. Because of my belief in the perniciousness of Modern America's Portrayal of What Happiness Should Be™, I find I react very strongly to the suggestion that MAPWHSB™ is one of the most desirable states that you can strive for. Which is not to say I hate happiness. But the plastic, consumer-friendly version has got to go. And I think I make a decent, concise case for that in my FB post.

What I didn't go into then was the underlying problem, which is more about emoticons and ebooks than about a particular emotion or state of being. The problem is both one of attention span and language.

CHALLENGE: Find a single internet post by someone under forty (yes, I am including myself in this) that describes the poster's emotional state as something other than: Happy (MAPWHSB™), Sad, Angry, or Bored. (We're going to say that confusion is the 'sometimes Y' of emotions, as it is often an intellectual state.)

You may find what at first appear to be variations, but are really just a clever use of synonyms. For example: "Feeling blessed!!!!!!!!" is a religious way of saying "MAPWHSB™!!!!!!!!" Which is not to say that acknowledging blessings is any worse than being happy, but this statement is just a repackaging of the same idea. Upset is a synonym for Sad and/or Angry. And with very few exceptions, that is the sum total of society's ability to describe emotional states in depth.

In a society driven by our neuroses, where virtually everyone has been in therapy at least once, how have we lost our ability to name, and thus understand, our emotions? ill tell u. We live in a world of instant gratification. But that isn't the problem. Instant gratification is wanting to read Bram Stoker's Dracula and downloading it to your Hitchhiker's Guide without having to leave the couch. The problem is the rate at which we want to be gratified. Instant per Instant gratification if you will. Each moment must be something new and pleasing, and it isn't the fault of text messaging or the internet or television. It's our fault, the Matrix just makes it easier. Just like fast food makes it easier to get fat.

But impulse control simply blazes the trail to where the root of the problem lies: reducing everything to a sound bite. Because sound bites boil down:

"In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.
It wearies me, you say it wearies you,
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,

What stuff 'tis made from, whereof it is born,
I am to learn;
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me
That I have much ado to know myself."
to:

:(

I don't think internet communication is destroying the English language; I think our lack of patience is. Because how can we know when we feel melancholic, serene, piteous, chagrinned, smug, impertinent, disgraced, bewildered, entranced, irked, sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, enraptured, or even contented, if our working vocabulary only allows for four emotions? And if we aren't comfortable enough with the definitions to use such words in our spoken conversation, why would we choose a state of being more complex than MAPWHSB™on which to pin all our desire?

I have a melancholic temperament and I strive to be serene and content. I simply don't have the emotional energy for MAPWHSB™.