Sweet, Sweet Thanksgiving

    Granddaughter, Anna Rose, and Uncle Warner

Our dining room table was pushed to the brink, I think, when we gathered 20 adults, children and various animals around it for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a spectacular feast with a variety of appealing dishes that would have rated high marks even from the testy food critics at the New York Times.
by Charlie Leck

Though we led with a big, free-ranging and organic roast turkey at our Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, it was surrounded by so many wonderful accompanying dishes that even Mark Bittman of the New York Times would have approved. (See his column of 20 November 2012: All Hail the Sweet Potato.) Indeed, as Bittman promised, the sweet potatoes were delicious and surprising.

Bittman, a brilliant food blogger and an extraordinary cook, thinks that the turkey is generally a waste of time…

“At the hands of all but the most experienced, careful or lucky cooks, the more than 700 million pounds of turkey we’ll buy this week will wind up with breast meat that’s cottony-dry and leg meat that is underdone, tough, stringy or all three…

“It’s not entirely the turkey’s fault; when you think about it, few holidays are really culinary [1], and in general Thanksgiving is a celebratory feast that has little to do with the harvest or the brilliance of the food but rather family and memories and, usually, obligations.

The Thanksgiving Sweet Potato
And, he thinks the sweet potato is the savior of this holiday dinner so boldly headlined by the turkey (his column so deeply impressed me that I gave extra-careful attention to my sweet potato this year and I found it an absolutely wonderful and compelling experience)…

“If you bake a sweet potato properly – in its skin, with a few holes poked in it (they’ve been known to explode, in a messy but not dangerous sense) – you will get a combination of textures that no other food can offer, and with no added ingredients: sweet stickiness from the caramelizing liquid that oozes from the inside out; a little bit of crunchy chewiness, from the parts of the skin that this liquid helps brown; a soft, velvety yet slightly leathery skin, perfectly edible; and, of course, the meltingly tender, ultra-luxurious flesh, which can range from creamy white to familiar orange to deep red and even purple, and is perhaps best enjoyed with a sprinkle of salt.

“I’m not one to extol the nutritional benefits of one plant over another — we should be eating more of all of them, and less of tortured, chemically enhanced birds — but sweet potatoes are almost unfairly potent, especially when it comes to beta-carotene (happily, made more bio-available when eaten with a little fat), fiber and a host of micronutrients, including not only common ones but those whose benefits are still being explored. If that alone isn’t a reason to eat them, it’s a reason to consider eating them instead of a bag of pretzels when you’re craving starch, or a handful of cookies when you’re craving sweets.

“The sweet potato, of course, is not only fit for baking: it can be grated and stir-fried; sliced and steamed, sautéed, broiled or roasted; wrapped in foil and baked in a fire; fried or, even better, cut into “fries” and baked with a little oil until crisp (or included in tempura); made into soup, a pasta sauce, a filling for ravioli or pie; used as a thickener; dried and eaten as a snack; reheated and drizzled with olive oil; braised in curries or soy-based dishes or European-style stews. Turkey, actually, is not nearly as versatile.”

Well, I gave it up for Mr. Bittman and even tried to propose a toast to him, but it was immediately taken up as some sort of joke by the diners and they laughed the toast and me off before I could even commence. So instead I proposed some sort of delight in the year past and gave thanks for it and offered the hope that the coming year would be as successful and happy.

    The glorious sweet potato!

But I kept giving eye to a remarkable standing rib roast that my NYC daughter had spent a great deal of time preparing on Thanksgiving morning and presented at just the exactly right moment when the Thanksgiving dinner commenced. It had been roasted at a very high temperature for a very short time and then allowed to come to perfection in a closed but tightly sealed oven for the next two hours or so. She had also rubbed it affectionately and thoroughly in a concoction she had invented that morning right in our own kitchen from ingredients she stumbled upon in the pantry.

So, with the help of some remarkable wine recommended by my favorite wine seller up in town, the sweet potatoes and the boufe magnifique were my personal winners at the table yesterday; but, perhaps, they had been aided by the wondrous beet salad and the carefully constructed green lettuce salad that joined them on our table. Bittman, as he usually is, was correct about the turkey. It is a necessary part of the Thanksgiving dinner, but, my, it is certainly not to be considered the star of the table’s list of players.

Follow it all with more wine and the taste sensations drawn from the Apple Crisp and the Pumpkin Pie and you know that Thanksgiving has again been more than simply wonderful.

One wonders, however, how any Thanksgiving dinner, surrounded by such happiness and love could ever be anything other than wonderful!

_________________________

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Happy Thanksgiving!

The grandkids, growing up so quickly, send email photographs to grandpa and
grandma, keeping us up-to-date. This is one from early this autumn.

Thanks to Thee from Whom all blessings flow.
by Charlie Leck

It’s early in the morning on the day before Thanksgiving and it’s cold in Minnesota. I awoke this morning with a great sense of anticipation. A couple of the grandkids arrive today.

The weather report, very Minnesota-like, isn’t too chummy! Drizzle will arrive this morning and then temperatures will drop, making it a freezing rain that will eventually turn to snow. A driver’s nightmare, you know – snow on top of ice!

The grandkids, their mom and dad, and their dog, Lucy, are making their way up here from the east, driving northwest across Wisconsin. They spent the night in one of those Wisconsin Dells water-park hotels last night. They’ll drive, I hope, ever so carefully.

We’ve a big weekend planned, so my blog will likely be unattended for the holiday weekend (unless I post a few photographs of the family activities). Dinner for tomorrow is moving along nicely. All the shopping is done. The turkey is in the refrigerator and so is a leg of lamb and a wonderful looking salmon that is curing and almost ready to be sliced paper-thinly as lox. A couple of the kids will be missing, but 66.6666 percent isn’t bad.

No offense to our children, but it’s the grandkids I get excited to see. It’s so much fun to see how they grow and change over several months. Photographs that arrived by email this late summer and early autumn showed such growth and change. Oh, my!

From our Minnesota home to you, wherever you are reading, is sent this wish that you will have a very blessed Thanksgiving Day. Happy Thanksgiving! Be grateful, but never be satisfied. Our world is in need of so much more care and love.

And to the Great Force that gives us life and all the blessings that come with it, I am humbly grateful and ask only for the time to watch these grandchildren become adults; but, but – don’t get me wrong – Thine own will be done, of course!

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Thank Goodness

Is Thanksgiving a great holiday, or what?
by Charlie Leck

Almost everyone we know across this nation considers Thanksgiving Day his or her favorite holiday. We're with them. We think Thanksgiving is the only holiday to which we actually look forward. If we were to ask all these folks the reason for this, their answers would be pretty much the same as ours. Thanksgiving Day is laid back and it's all about family and very close friends. There is no pressure to come up with gifts. Just relax and enjoy the day. Granted, there is lots of work involved. It's not easy to lay out a feast for a dozen or more people.

We're going through the pre-Thanksgiving period right now and it is pressure packed. Our list is long. Get the yard looking as good as possible. Clean the entire house top to bottom. Take the shopping list to the grocery store (boy, is this a job). Line up the perfect wine and an acceptable beer. Figure out the seating arrangements. Around here, it's the woman of the household who goes nuts getting everything ready. She truly loves Thanksgiving and she gets very excited about seeing family and friends, but she puts enormous pressure on herself to make everything just perfect. It was pretty intense this past weekend. We think the vacuum cleaner motor must have been worn out. It was running constantly. The whip the mighty woman carried was cracking pretty loudly. It kept us jumping – at least as well as an over-weight, old-timer can jump.

On Thursday it will all be worth it. Grandkids will show up with shiny, beautiful faces. Daughters and deeply loved and appreciated sons-in-law will be on hand. A few friends will be here, too.

And, as we gather at the table, anxious to dig in to the incredible feast prepared by many people, we will bring everything to a halt. We won't ask for time to pray; however, we will suggest we all spend a brief moment thinking about something very specific.

Dear, departed Grandpa Wakefield always had thanksgiving dinner at his lovely farm house. There would be 20 to 30 gathered. Grandpa would always bring everyone to a stop at one point during the day and ask that each person say something special in accordance with his instruction. One year it was: "Express what you are most thankful for about this past year." Another year it was: "What are your goals for the coming year?"

All the diners were always embarrassed and it was difficult to get the expressions from the gathered crowd; but one by one each of us would respond to Grandpa's request and it was always touching and wonderful. It was also the moment each of us always remembered about our Thanksgiving Day.

Since Grandpa died, we've tried to pick up this tradition, but we don't have his "balls" about it. Grandpa never got embarrassed. He was totally sincere and he expected people to respond sincerely. Grandpa Wakefield made Thanksgiving wonderful for us and we will always remember this wonderful thing about him.

In Grandpa's spirit this year, we'll ask everyone to think about him and all our memories of him and to say something about what they remember most about him. This is the first time we've given gatherers an advanced warning.

We hope you have a wonderful and happy Thanksgiving Day!