My LIttle Duckling

We are preparing to go to see Emily for Thanksgiving, and I am really looking forward to the trip, although it will be a long one. This will be one of the only times since we have lived at 1020 South Barrett that we have not been in our home for Thanksgiving, which is my favorite holiday, and I don't know how that will feel. We plan to take to Savannah the necessities for cooking dinner, because Emily lives in a wonderful apartment with a very modern kitchen, and she has a plethora of cooking vessels and utensils. We should have no trouble brining a turkey breast and making it delectable. However, it will seem strange to cook for just three. I don't know if I can do it.

The largest holiday crowd I ever cooked for was 20, which was a Christmas Day feast combining Don's family and ours, complete with children under the age of reason. Emily, who was under 10 at the time, and I made iced sugar cookie place cards for everyone, and putting together three dining areas exercised our interior architecture creativity, but it was a really fun time, albeit stressful. I remember drinking a lot of wine while I was cooking.

I also remember another holiday dinner; Max was enamored of someone's - maybe Tyler Florence's - method of cooking a turkey with stuffing. The chef suggested shoving the stuffing between the bird and its skin and roasting as usual. Unfortunately, our turkey was one with a pop-up button, and it popped up but wasn't ready. The turkey was pretty much raw on the inside. We have rarely deviated from our tried-and-true turkey cooking since then. What made it worse was that we had guests, and we then had to wait another two hours to eat. By that time, the only thing that looked good was the white wine, and so we drank it all. Who remembers whether the turkey was done after that?

My favorite dish was the butternut squash/parsnip yin and yang side dish. Max made a barrier of cardboard covered with PAM covered foil, curved it in the proper shape, and placed it in a casserole dish. I then filled one side of a casserole with pureed butternut squash and the other side with pureed parsnips. It was beautiful and tasted really good.

Another thing I like is that at the end of Thanksgiving evening, sated and exhausted, I enjoy going into the living room and sitting in front of the fire to watch "Miracle on 34th Street." No matter how many times I see the movie, I tear up when Natalie Wood bounces up and down on her toes as she looks out the door to the back yard and exclaims, "There IS one! There IS one!" And I cry when Santa Claus sings to and talks with the little Dutch girl. What a sap!

So this Thanksgiving will break with a tradition regarding where we eat our turkey, and another tradition of what we do after we eat the turkey, but we will be together, we three, and we will give thanks that we can be together, that we have made it through yet another year of challenges, sadness, joy, and the unexpected, and that we are happy, healthy, and ready for what lies ahead.

Well, I think I will make iced sugar cookie place cards. Surely I can make three.