Savoring Holiday’s Many Styles

A few relatives are coming up from Los Angeles, the teenage kids will be home for dinner for the first time in two months, and the turkey is turning a golden brown right about now.

It’s Thanksgiving. A typical, um, boring Thanksgiving.

Oh, maybe not that boring--particularly if Uncle Herb can’t digest the cranberry sauce again. But for most folks, it’s pretty mundane stuff.

Just compare your Thanksgiving to that of the 43-guest Thanksgiving-wedding weekend the Feingold family of Ventura is up against. Or the 13th annual Thanksgiving at the beach planned by Ventura’s Kris Pustina-Haldane and her family and friends.

Or how about that of the Simonds family of Ojai, who are out in the desert riding motorcycles? Then there is professional chef Neal Rosenthal, who for the first time in a couple of decades is having an exceedingly odd Thanksgiving--at least for him. Instead of feeding hordes from a restaurant kitchen or catering business, he will spend the holiday at home with family.

Carving Out a Cozy Spot on the Beach

Pustina-Haldane and her family are kind of like postal workers when it comes to celebrating Thanksgiving. They don’t let the elements keep them from their appointed rounds.

“We’ve had rain where we’ve been ankle deep in mud,” said Pustina-Haldane, owner of Franky’s Restaurant in Ventura. “We had terrible wind one year where it did nothing but blow, like that prairie wind of the Old West where people would be driven insane.”

This is not the stuff of Thanksgiving in a cozy cottage, but rather Thanksgiving at Leo Carrillo State Beach, along the Pacific Coast Highway at the Los Angeles County border.

Pustina-Haldane and her husband Bill Haldane have been bringing their son, daughter, friends and turkey to the beach since the family moved from Missouri to Ventura 13 years ago.

“It started when my son was 10 and we weren’t going to be able to get together with all of the family,” Pustina-Haldane said. “Two of his friends from a divorced family were going to spend Thanksgiving with us and we decided to go camping at Leo Carrillo because they could go surfing there.”

The next year more guests joined in.

“We gathered a bunch of strays--people whose families were too far away, kids from divorced families,” Pustina-Haldane said. “Over the last five years we’ve had three families and sundry other orphans. We usually smoke one turkey, roast one and we have friends from Louisiana who deep-fry a turkey.”

The group, which this year will number about 13, also prepares yams, mashed potatoes and stuffing on a set of camp stoves. But aside from the stoves, there are few reminders of home.

“No phones, no TVs, no distractions of any kind,” said Pustina-Haldane. The only comfort of home she misses, she said, is the kitchen.

“When it comes to clean up, you wish you could go to the kitchen or the dishwasher instead of hauling buckets of water and heating the water,” she said. “The first couple of years we took down good plates. Now it’s paper plates, but we do use good silverware.”

Beyond the Call--Feast for 43, Then a Wedding

Party planning has become so detailed and hectic for Ruthann Feingold that she now has lists to keep track of her lists. Her brother has suggested that when the weekend is over, she look for a job planning events for a Fortune 500 company.

Thanksgiving for 43 guests would be one thing, but following that with a wedding two days later is above and beyond the call of motherly duty.

“My daughter, Ellyn, is getting married on Saturday,” Feingold said. “We picked this weekend to have the wedding because all of my family and my husband’s family are in New York, Delaware, New Jersey and Georgia. We decided if we ever were going to get folks out here for the wedding, it would have to be over the holiday weekend.”

It’s been more like a weeklong holiday for Feingold.

The first guests arrived Tuesday evening. Her husband’s side of the family, surged on Wednesday. In all, Feingold last night expected to serve dinner to 22 guests at her home.

“I have had a lot of help,” Feingold said last week. “I made meatballs about two weeks ago and put them in the freezer. I bought some Price Club lasagna and put it in a friend’s freezer, and another friend is making chicken Parmesan. All I have to do is boil the pasta and make the salad.”

Feingold is leaving the Thanksgiving meal to the Ojai Valley Inn, where the family has made reservations for all its guests. The Mandalay Beach Resort in Oxnard has the honors of hosting the wedding and dinner party.

“Everybody wanted to know what they should wear in California,” Feingold said. “I told them I don’t know, but whatever they wear it should have an elastic waist.”

Coordinating Thanksgiving and a wedding has required much time and detail.

“It’s like being in school, writing a term paper, doing all the research, putting information on index cards and then just wanting to hand it in,” Feingold said. “That’s where I’m at in my head; I just want to hand it in.”

Dirt Bikes and Green Beans Out in the Mojave

Spenser Simonds, 16, and his younger brother Riley, 12, like to ride motorcycles. So does their father, Santa Barbara firefighter Fred Simonds.

Mom, Georgia Simonds, is more of a walker than a rider, but if the family enjoys the hobby, she’ll go along with it.

She’ll go with it all the way out to the Mojave Desert, which is where the Simonds of Ojai are spending their Thanksgiving with three other families of young and old dirt-bike enthusiasts.

“My husband and I are lucky,” Georgia Simonds said. “We have families who are supportive about us not showing up for Thanksgiving dinner.”

The Simonds’ dinner, and that of the approximately 16 people in their party, was brought by trailer out to the desert behind four motor homes--two owned, two rented for the three-day vacation.

“We’ll posse around and set up a wagon train,” Simonds said several days before taking off. “We’ll all be cooking together. We’ll trailer two barbecues and two big turkeys. I plan on making a mashed-potato casserole dish before we go and heat it up on the motor home stove. We’ll probably do some kind of traditional green beans with onion rings on top.”

For after-dinner entertainment, Simonds said, the group will plug in the motor home VCRs and watch tapes of the kids riding their motorcycles. Some of the teenagers compete in dirt-bike competitions around the area and like to analyze their style.

“My husband and I feel like we’re creating our own memories within our immediate family,” Simonds said. “We choose to take on the interests of our children so we can enjoy time with them.”

And the Simonds’ Christmas plans? Probably something on the order of snowboarding, Riley’s favorite pastime.

He’ll be Cooking for 3 Instead of 300

Last year about this time Neal Rosenthal, executive chef at Petrucci’s Bistro in Oxnard, was on a flight to Miami guessing the material of the stewardess’ necklace.

“It was made out of turkey neck bones,” he said. “I was the only one who knew because I’m a chef.”

Rosenthal was headed to Florida to see his parents. His father had had an aneurysm, and no one knew if he would survive, Rosenthal said. He did, and soon will celebrate his 80th birthday.

The 32-hour Thanksgiving visit was just one in a series of about 20 Thanksgivings that Rosenthal has spent away from home. Each year since 1973 he has worked Thanksgiving at a restaurant or as a caterer.

Unless there is a catering emergency, today will mark the first time that he, his wife Sharon Andre-Rosenthal (executive pastry chef at El Encanto Hotel in Santa Barbara) and their son Josh, 14, will have a traditional Thanksgiving.

“It should be pretty hysterical. We’re such a dysfunctional family when it comes to these things,” Rosenthal said. “It’s been so long, we don’t know how to do it.”

Rosenthal’s Thanksgivings past have included dinner for 400 at the Port Royale restaurant in Port Hueneme where he was maitre d’; dinner for about 500 at the North Ranch Country Club, where he was food and beverage director; dinner at Eatz, his former establishment in Westlake Village; and numerous catering jobs.

And there were the Thanksgiving dinners in 1985 and 1986 at the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Barbara, with three seatings of 250 people each.

“Basically we would greet them, seat them and meat them,” said Rosenthal, who as maitre d’ was one of the lucky ones who got to carve turkeys at the guests’ tables.

Rosenthal said working Thanksgivings has been pleasant, but he is looking forward to being at home. “It’s going to be Josh and me preparing dinner,” Rosenthal said. “Sharon is bringing dessert.”