Holiday success recipe: Wing it

I love the idea of Thanksgiving, the holiday of my memory: The house full of relatives, the sweet smells wafting from the steamy kitchen, the laughter from the women preparing dinner, the shouts of the men watching football on TV.

But Thanksgiving as a grown-up, here in Los Angeles, is a different thing. So many of us are settlers, it’s hard to re-create family traditions when you’re missing your extended family.

I refuse to let the holiday become little more than the opening act to the Christmas season, the run-up to weeks of nonstop buying. But I’m a bad cook, and I hate shopping. So what’s left for Thanksgiving week?

On Sunday, my brother called to say he might drive down with his family -- wife and three boys under 10 -- from Northern California. We try to get our families together for Thanksgiving each year, even though that means one family will spend 15 hours on the road and three days crammed into a single bedroom.

For us, that’s a better alternative than cooking a Thanksgiving meal alone.

I think about jazzing up dinner this time and check The Times for recipes. I make a mental note to start a shopping list: Mint for the lima beans, walnuts for the stuffing and chanterelle mushrooms for the savory bread pudding. A gourmet Thanksgiving. Yeah, right.

On Monday, I was up at dawn to beat the trash man and dig out the circulars from Sunday’s newspapers. I’d need a few new towels and a comforter for the bed where my visiting nephews would sleep. Almost every store had a sale on linens. Lots of visiting families.

At the deserted Northridge mall, I passed a young blond woman striding through Macy’s, narrating her holiday preparations into her cellphone headset. “I’ve got to do something with the turkey,” she said. “I think I’m going to try that brine thing everybody’s talking about.”

I add “that brine thing” to my mental shopping list.

At the market, I studied the ingredients on the brine-thing package -- salt, salt and more salt. I could feel my blood pressure rise as I read the label. I put the package back.

On Tuesday, my brother called back. They’re not coming. Too many logistical problems. I’m half disappointed and half relieved. Scratch the gourmet Thanksgiving.

He admitted he has been desperate to avoid “the whole Thanksgiving dinner preparation ordeal.” I suggested they eat out instead, then told the story of the Thanksgiving my family wound up eating at Sizzler because we hadn’t made reservations at a better restaurant.

I’d thought restaurants would be empty on Thanksgiving; that everyone would be enjoying home-cooked meals with their families. Back in Ohio, where I’m from, eating Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant would be heresy. Here, it seems festive rather than pathetic.

On Wednesday I spent almost four hours stuck in crawling traffic. Freeways, surface streets, canyon roads . . . no reprieve. On the radio, the DJ was wishing listeners a pleasant Thanksgiving Eve.

My oldest daughter pulled in from her seven-hour drive from Northern California. I fixed her a bowl of Kraft macaroni and cheese, then she fell asleep on the couch with the dog, watching “Project Runway” on TV.

I headed for the grocery store at 10 p.m. -- my third trip this Thanksgiving season. This time, I took a list.

The store was almost empty, except for a few desperate, exhausted last-minute shoppers like me. I spotted a lone man contemplating a table of pies and bit my tongue. Skip the mincemeat, I wanted to tell him, and bring a bottle of wine to dinner instead.

At home, as I drifted off to sleep, I heard my cellphone ring. For once, I didn’t budge to answer it. All three of my daughters were home with me.

On Thursday morning my brother called again. His family was invited to a friend’s house for dinner. He has to bring a dish. He wants my recipe for greens. He would say I’m not a bad cook. I just live with too many picky eaters. I cook with gusto, even if the end product doesn’t match the promise of the recipe.

I decided to keep it simple this Thanksgiving. No savory bread pudding or walnuts in the stuffing, just turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, candied yams and broccoli.

It was a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner; never mind that I forgot to put out the canned cranberry sauce this year again. And at the end of the day, the man I love was snoring on the couch, “watching” the football game on TV, and my daughters were laughing in the kitchen “helping” me clean up after the meal.

And no one was asking me to get up before dawn Friday to join the throngs of early morning shoppers, fighting over the best pre-Christmas deals at the mall.

That was plenty to be thankful for.

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sandy.banks@latimes.com