Then Just Keep Running

Yesterday I went shopping for Thanksgiving food. I’m afraid I was not as thankful as I should have been.

When I was a kid, Thanksgiving was not my problem. My mother cooked everything, or we ate at my grandparents’ house, and that meant the cooking was divided up among a bunch of relatives. Now, it’s all me. Shopping. Cleaning up before the meal. Cooking. Running around frantically during the meal to make sure my dad doesn’t defile anything and ruin it for everyone else. Dishes. Cleaning up after the meal. It’s a drag.

I was reluctant to cook at all this year. I don’t know if my dad would care. By Friday, he will be thinking of other things. In the past, he has suggested going out for Thanksgiving, but that’s depressing. I feel like I have to do something here at the house.

I decided to cut the menu down. My dad likes oyster dressing, which I find disgusting. I don’t know how to make oyster dressing, so I make cornbread dressing and shove oysters into it. It’s probably wrong, but he eats it. I’m all done with it. It won’t hurt him to eat normal dressing like everyone else. I’m thinking of stuffing the turkey with cornbread stuffing containing chunks of sauteed andouille.

He can’t smell anything, and that means his sense of taste is very limited. He doesn’t really taste oysters. He will enjoy my stuffing as much as he would the nasty oyster mess. He just wants oysters because his mother used to use them. Some traditions are well worth killing.

No yams this year. I used to make a dish which was basically yams mashed up with pineapples, brown sugar and spices, topped with pecans fried in brown sugar and butter. Forget that. Takes too much time.

There will be no pumpkin pies. I don’t particularly care for pumpkin pie. I don’t think anyone really likes it. Try comparing it to apple, cherry, or peach pie, and you have to admit, it comes in second every time. I’m making two pecan pies, using crusts from the store. Good enough.

Pecan prices have gone nuts, to use an appropriate adjective. I paid $18 for my pecans. There must be a blight.

My dad insists on cranberry sauce, which is a very weak dish. It’s cranberries, sugar, and water. I’m all done with it. This year, it will be relish alone. Everyone gets relish, and they will danged well like it. I’m tired of making sauce AND relish.

I won’t make fruit salad (or any type of salad), and there will be no rolls. No snacks. No cookies. It will be turkey, beans, potatoes, cranberry relish, and pecan pie. I think I cut four hours of work out of my life.

I have learned to love small turkeys. The store was full of birds the size of toddlers, but I dug out a 12-pounder. I am going to bone it and stuff it. It’s a lot of work, but once you’ve had a boned turkey, all other turkeys are disgusting.

You know the big, dried-out turkey cadaver you end up with every year? You struggle to fit it on a platter, and then you try to cover it with foil, but people never put the foil back correctly, so everything turns into leather? You don’t get that with a boned turkey. You get a solid loaf of pure food you can slice and put in Tupperware. The bones go in the trash on Thursday, not Monday, or you can use them for gravy.

If you don’t know how big your turkey should be, you can find the information on the web. If the raw weight in pounds is 1.5 times the number of diners, you’re good. If you want a lot of leftovers, maybe you need to go bigger. I do not want leftovers. Sharing leftover food with a dementia patient is a bad experience. You go to the fridge hoping to make a turkey sandwich, and then you see that someone else has handled the meat with his fingers. That kind of thing happens.

My dad was never a great person to share leftovers with. He would eat the best stuff right away, and the more there was, the more he ate. No one else got very much. He’s an unusual person. I take him to restaurants for big lunches, and then when he gets home, he eats ice cream out of the carton.

I’ll be throwing out any remaining leftovers on Saturday. My dad hates that, but I hate dealing with the mess. Turkey bits on the counter. Cranberry sauce on the floor. As long as I’m the sole member of the cleaning crew, I make the rules. On Saturday, out it goes.

When I finally gritted my teeth and decided to cook, I invited my friend Amanda over. She has three sons and an elderly parent (not demented). Like me, she has no help whatsoever. None. Nada. I figured things would be easier on both of us if we teamed up. Also, if she wants, she can fill in with items I refuse to cook. I am hoping both of us will do a lot less work than we would have had to do with two separate operations.

My attitude toward the whole affair is not all that positive. I suppose I should think of Amanda’s sons. Thanksgiving was a big deal to me when I was a kid. Maybe if I think of this as a chance to help patch up their childhoods, I’ll feel more motivated. I should focus on that, because feeding my dad is not all that rewarding.

I don’t see the holiday as an opportunity to give thanks. I give thanks like crazy every day. I’m not sure jamming yourself full of food is a good way to express gratitude. I’m also unexcited about the idea of going somewhere and feeding the poor. If you’re only good to other people on holidays, I suppose working at a homeless shelter two days a year is better than nothing, but I want no part of it. I’m not sure how people who do it manage to put any food on their own tables. I expect to be cooking from 9 a.m. until at least 2 p.m., not including the things I’ll do tomorrow and Wednesday. There is no conceivable way I could produce edible food AND spend three hours virtue signaling and posting selfies of myself hugging the poor while trying not to get too dirty.

If you want to freak the poor out, go feed them two weeks after Thanksgiving, and stay all day. Or feed them in March, giving up a vacation day. That will make an impression. Much better than hopping out of your Range Rover and slapping instant mashed potatoes on trays for 45 minutes.

If I cook anything at all for Christmas, it will be rib roast, baked potatoes, and cheesecake. Maybe a Caesar salad. I would fix these things on Thursday if I could get away with it. The cheesecake takes a little effort, but the other things are as easy to prepare as toast. It’s also a much better meal than turkey and dressing.

It looks like the best strategy is to think of the kids. That gives me a little enthusiasm, or at least it makes me feel some obligation. My dad and Amanda’s mom–I think Amanda will forgive me–are not the sort of seniors who make you want to cook special stuff for them in order to thank them for being so wonderful.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll get amped up and cook yams.

No pumpkin pie. No way. I hate fads, and for the last couple of years, we’ve been seeing way too much “pumpkin spice.” Pumpkin spice cookies. Pumpkin spice cappuccino. Pumpkin spice pork rinds. Pumpkin spice Preparation H. No; someone must rage against the machine, and as Dean Vernon Wormer said, that foot is me.

Try that boned turkey. You don’t know what you’re missing.