A Thankful Feast; an incident of culinary mishap

        I think it is important to remember when we talk about the seven deadly sins that they are in fact only vices that some church decided to upgrade to sins based on their severity. That, and there used to be more than seven, when is the last time you accused someone of acedia or vainglory, or chastised anyone in despair?  I know, I know some of the seven are truly abhorrent; greed, wrath, lust, envy…bad, all bad. Pride and sloth? Well, we all have our moments of pride and honestly sloth, or the opportunity for a single moment of peace in which to practice sloth is probably my highest ambition. Which brings us to gluttony. Let’s just be completely straightforward…could we really be American, REALLY good AMERICANS, without a little gluttony? We certainly couldn’t celebrate being American at an annual feast of Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving holiday is marginally about history and patriotism and primarily about food, family, food, friends, drink, food, thankfulness and a little bit more food.

                That said, everyone cooks too much food at Thanksgiving. Especially when you have two cooks with a lot of restaurant experience. My friend Tracy and I may have actually set some sort of record for overcooking if anyone were keeping track. It was our first really grown-up Thanksgiving, you know not traveling back to our folks or someone else’s folks, but staying at our apartment and cooking for 12 people. The guests were going to be my husband Mike, myself, Tracy, her roommate Michelle, and friends Thomas, Chris, Kim, Jan, James, Buster, MaLaura and Jen. A sizable group with some big eaters Mike, Thomas, Chris and Jan (pronounced “Yon”) could probably out eat ten people all by themselves. Tracy and I felt safe planning a big menu and cooking a lot. Plus, both of our moms had recommended cooking a few extra dishes or portions in case something flopped. We were creating an entirely vegetarian meal. We had two kitchens to use. My husband Mike and I were the caretakers for our apartment building and our neighbor Patty across the hall had gone out of town for the week. We were watching her cats and plants and she had agreed to let us co-opt her kitchen during Thanksgiving. 

                The cooking went flawlessly and we had a great time cooking together. Both of us know our way around a kitchen and we had fun developing several of the recipes. The menu was glorious and included some dishes I still make 18 years later because they are amazing. Our problem was really about portioning. We mistakenly calculated an actual portion of each item for each person and then doubled it!! Let’s be clear about this…portions assume that you will have 3 to 4 items on your main course plate. Who puts less than 12 things on their plate at Thanksgiving? You see the problem? Maybe you are reading this in time to save yourself this year. Even if you create half portions of every menu item for every guest, you will STILL have leftovers. 

             The meal began with wine, a beautiful cheese plate and crudités. For the sit down, take turns saying gratitudes, hand around serving plates portion of the meal we had…wild rice stuffed squash, vegetarian stuffing with mushroom and tarragon gravy, yams baked with blueberries and mandarin oranges, mashed potatoes with carmelized onion and port gravy, green beans baked with shallots and slivered almonds, cranberry and kumquat sauce, a four cheese noodle au gratin with peas and fresh baked rolls. We intended to serve four kinds of home made pie and espressos for dessert. The pies were a (from scratch) mince with rum sauce, pumpkin, whiskey chocolate and a raspberry, loganberry and apple. Our guests were debilitatingly stuffed mid way through the main course. 

             Our dear friend Thomas invited us all into the hall to roll around and move the food in our bellies. Not for gastric comfort, but to make more room for MORE food and eventually dessert.  When we began surveying the still massive amounts of food and trying to determine storage, we realized we had to consume more to even consider storing the leftovers (in two kitchens). We made up plates to take out to the streets, we fed over twenty street dwellers. We took to the apartment building and invited neighbors, most had their own dinners, but several who were not originally from America, happily helped and were fascinated by our version of the holiday. One couple from England just could not grasp the idea of how much food was a reasonable amount to adequately “feast”.  As we loaded up their plates they kept asking in shock…"This is just ONE meal?” Eventually, we packaged up the leftovers!! After a run to the park and a vigorous snowball war, we even made room for dessert. To this day, however, I clean my entire fridge every year before Thanksgiving for the express purpose of making room for containers of leftovers.