Thanksgiving Is a Time for Loved Ones and a Tom to Behold

Just the other night I enjoyed a final gastronomic reminder of Thanksgiving. It was turkey soup, with barley and vegetables in the stock simmered up from the bones. It made a fine dinner, along with warm sourdough bread.

I think that one of the best things about Thanksgiving, which happens to be, on balance, my favorite holiday because it is a quiet and unassuming day among family and friends, is that it lasts longer around our house than any other holiday. The reason for Thanksgiving’s staying power is the turkey leftovers, stretched over several days. I always buy a fine fat Tom weighing in at no less than 20 pounds, unstuffed. This is nearly all we can get into our oven and still close the door.

That’s the way I like it--an oven literally filled with turkey, more than any of our guests can possibly eat at one sitting. It gives me a warm, affluent feeling, like lots of money in the bank. I know there are going to be leftovers.

Some of you may remember that I am the turkey cook in our home. All of the children expect me to roast the turkey. My wife and the others can cook whatever pleases them for our Thanksgiving get-together. But I cook the turkey. It’s a longtime family tradition. I’ve been at it so long now that I kind of forget how it started. I think it had something to do with my children’s mother having difficulty in stuffing and lifting a heavy turkey.

All of our turkeys have been heavy as far back as I can remember. We always have had 10 to 18 people for Thanksgiving dinner. In addition to our own children, there were friends with their children and always one or more lonely older people who had lost their spouses. My late wife began the tradition of inviting family and friends and having me roast the turkey, and my present wife has continued it. It’s that kind of continuity that makes Thanksgiving such a satisfying holiday for me.

Now there are grandchildren and relatives of our married children, all of whom make for a rather large extended family, one a 20-pound plus turkey would never feed. Fortunately, in one way at least, since our combined children have grown up we have not had the entire family together at one time. They have scattered and produced children in faraway places. Although the telephone brings us closer on Thanksgiving day, the festal board is kept to manageable size.

On this last Thanksgiving I compared long-distance notes on turkey cooking with two daughters, who had been taught my way of turkey roasting. I stoutly refuse to buy self-basting birds, with whatever greasy stuff they have injected into them; I never encase my birds in cheesecloth or paper sacks. My roasting method is pleasantly labor intensive, in that I frequently baste the big bird personally, hauling it partway from the oven and removing the aluminum foil with which I’ve lightly covered it. This is a delightful process. I always manage to squirt some juice accidentally from the basting syringe into the oven, where it spits and sizzles, filling the house with a mouth-watering aroma.

The result of frequent bastings, some with added wine and not infrequently Vermouth and olive oil or butter, and a little more water, too, in the bottom of the pan when needed, results in a moist, toothsome bird, as golden brown as an old oaken chest.

Our turkey this year was a cholesterol treat, in that I added delicious greasy sausage to its stuffing, along with the usual chopped walnuts for crunch and celery and onions. I also stewed up a rich gravy made from the stock of the neck and innards, simmered with celery and carrots.

But I digress into a cooking lesson, when what I intended to elaborate on was why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I feel that way in part because it lacks the commercialism that has almost scuttled Christmas as a religious holiday. I feel as I do about Thanksgiving because it is a time of remembering our blessings and of being thankful for living relatives and friends, and also those who are no longer with us. I am thankful that they were once among us, and this is thankful sadness, reminding we the living to be full of thanks for still being around with our loved ones.

I always try to express thoughts such as these in one of those awkward, bumbling graces I offer. I’m reconciled now to never managing to give a smoothly spoken, ungarbled grace of thankfulness. All my Thanksgiving graces come out graceless. Perhaps God doesn’t mind too much. But I do. I once tried writing down a grace and memorizing it. It was the worst one ever. I forgot my lines and was forced to wing it.

I’ve been winging clumsy graces ever since. My turkey is lots better. Nobody laughs behind my back about it.