Finally, Thanksgiving at Home

We are getting ready for our second Thanksgiving together. Last year, we ate at Lawry’s in Singapore, and it was expensive and not very good. Is this because Singaporeans can’t cook American food, or is it because Lawry’s is a bad chain? I don’t know, but I am suspicious of Lawry’s. They serve steamed peas as a side dish, which makes you wonder if they have read a competing menu since 1938.

They served lumpy creme brulee. It’s not a hard dish to make correctly.

I made a pecan pie, and I have a sweet potato pie in the oven. Why not pumpkin pie, like my mother and grandmother? The simple fact is that pumpkin pie is not as good. It’s exactly the same thing, made with a vegetable that isn’t as tasty.

I don’t really understand why pumpkin pie exists. Think of all the better pies. Apple. Key lime. Cherry. Peach. Blueberry. Coconut cream. Cheesecake is a type of pie. It’s a pie people eat out of a sense of obligation. No one orders pumpkin pie in October.

I would guess that most people who have never had sweet potato pie would think it was pumpkin pie upon trying it. They would think somebody had finally made a good pumpkin pie.

I don’t have my own sweet potato pie recipe, so I found the Libby’s pumpkin pie recipe, substituted yams 1:1, I added a couple of things. I put in a tiny bit of nutmeg, some vanilla, and a tablespoon of butter. Butter should be in everything.

Is it wrong to drink the leftover batter? I’m not saying I would do that. But would it be wrong?

Definitely not saying I just did it.

I use the pecan recipe from the Karo bottle, but I add bourbon. Makes a big difference.

I should make my own pie crusts, but I don’t. Not for obligatory pies.

I think the recipe is too hot. It calls for 375°. At this temperature, your crust will burn. When I saw my crust getting dark, I threw a sheet of foil over it. It stuck in one place, but the pie is okay.

Next time, I plan to watch the pie to see how it’s doing, and I’ll drop the temperature to 300° when the crust starts to scare me. There are really only two things you have to do when you make pies of the custard family: brown the crust and firm up the batter. You can firm up the batter at 200° if it makes you happy. There is nothing magical about 375°. You can make fantastic creme brulee at 205° with no water bath. I think bakers use water baths because they’re in a hurry.

Later, I will be fixing green beans with salt pork. They always taste better the second day. I’ll also put some cranberry relish and cornbread dressing together.

Tomorrow, I have to get up and bone the turkey. Then I’ll cram it full of dressing, throw it in the oven, and hope for the best.

I’ll be using a lot of dry white wine in the food. What a difference it makes. But when I suggest it to people, they wrinkle their noses. People want exactly what their mothers made, no matter how bad it is. My friend Mike eats canned cranberry sauce. Sometimes I miss my mom’s spaghetti, which had chili powder in it.

Thanksgiving will seem strange. For the first time, I’ll be celebrating in an environment containing only Spirit-led Christians who can appreciate the purpose of the holiday.

I don’t know if my wife will get the full benefit of the experience, because she has never had traditional American Thanksgiving food. For all I know, she won’t like any of it. But we’ll be together, thanking God, and we won’t be eating restaurant food that is, objectively, substandard.

She is tearing the house up. The sudden cleanliness and order are intimidating.

It will take time to get used to having someone do things for me, without being resentful or keeping score on me. It feels odd, especially in a world of man-hating feminists who are miserable because they bought into one of history’s great lies. I’m no feminist, but I have nagging feelings: “Shouldn’t I clean that up? Is it really okay to just sit here?” I dismiss them.

My wife didn’t have thoughts like that while I was fixing the sinks. Feminism is a one-edged sword. Men are brainwashed to do what wives used to do, but women are not expected to fix sinks, kill spiders, open their own jars, or shoot burglars.

I have never seen a marriage that was in proper order. I’ve seen whiny, unsatisfied women. I’ve seen self-centered men who were like middle-aged frat boys. I’ve seen Christians repeat Satanic marriage doctrine, speaking of men as though we were somehow defective and in need of a redesign. I’ve seen women who pretended to be glad they were able to live their dreams, working in fungible, modestly-paid positions in Dilbertian cubicles with their forgotten liberal arts degrees. I never saw one who turned out to be Amelia Earhart or Wonder Woman, the way feminists say they will.

“Thank you, Betty Friedan, because I get to sit in a cubicle, living out scenes from Office Space every day! Thank God an unvetted Mexican with a 6th-grade education is raising my kids while I shuffle folders and look for ways to torpedo all the other women at my job! Thank God I aborted the burdensome children I conceived while trying unsuccessfully to convince men to marry me. I’m so glad I will never see them grow up!” No woman who is honest has ever felt like saying that.

I’ve known all sorts of women who saw 30 coming and realized they had blown it. You can see a lot of women like that on Youtube. Search for videos about women “hitting the wall.” They enter the workplace at 22 or 25, and before they get beyond entry-level, they’re 30, and their fertility is tanking precipitously. And they are competing with women the better part of a decade younger.

Men like youth. It’s the best cosmetic. There is no substitute. And the way women put out these days, men don’t have much incentive to marry their old girlfriends. They milk the cow until the wall looms up, and then they bail out and trade up.

Since leaving college, I have probably Googled girls I knew fewer than 5 times, and I don’t mean women I wished I had dated or married, because there weren’t any like that. I just wondered if such women could possibly be married. I found them easy to find. Generally, they still had their maiden names.

I went to Columbia University, where 2020 arrived in about 1975. The women were horrible. Perpetually enraged. Landmines that blew up and spewed sexist hate when men got too close. Now I can Google them and find out how they have done, alone, with no kids, in jobs where their legacies mean about as much as the legacy I leave when I check out of a Hampton Inn.

Sometimes I wonder if any college girl* from the Northeast has ever married (a man**) and had children***.

We have a shot at a normal marriage.

No human being can make a marriage work, so I am doing what I can to turn everything over to God. There is no possibility either of us could make it work on our own.

* XX or “actual” woman
** XY or “actual” man
*** not cats