[Sca-cooks] Thanksgiving

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

My mom alternates hosting Thanksgiving with my brother's in-laws who
have nothing special, just the usual and while not bad, nothing is
outstanding. My mom can't cook for the family anymore - she hasn't
for years - she is physically not up to it - so she just took us all
out to an expensive restaurant.

This year my mother has hired someone to cook, so i suppose it will
be as close to what she used to cook as possible. Another boring
typical Thanksgiving. My mom likes things *her* way, so whenever i
try to help or bring something that actually is interesting to eat, i
get yelled at or my food gets sneered at.

Plus my brother's wife and her mother just play with their food
anyway, since they're typically Southern Californian and that kind of
SoCal woman would rather be thin than anything else, except rich and
thin.

And his two young sons, ages 11 and 9, while not particularly fussy,
are not experimental - and my mother makes sure to keep feeding them
sugary stuff throughout the meal while my brother and his wife keep
asking her not to.

And my brother has confessed to me that he doesn't really like food
anyway and doesn't understand the pleasure some folks take in eating
good food. He'll also be chiding me and his wife about eating too
much (she certainly won't be - most of the time she and her mother
eat enough food for one, maybe, between the two of them)

So i'm off to
-- a regular tossed green salad with bottled dressing
-- store bought bread and sweet butter
-- canned cranberry sauce (both the clear smooth kind and the kind
with berries in the jell)
-- whole roast turkey with a very dull but butter rich stuffing (i've
made much tastier stuffings, but my mother doesn't like anything
except her own)
-- sweet potato casserole topped with marshmallows (shudder - i'd
rather have them just baked in the skin and dressed with butter and
salt by each diner)
-- either green beans or broccoli
and
-- pumpkin pie made the way the label on the can says (i've made
variations, such as pumpkin mouse in a pan lined with lady fingers
and a coating of toasted pecans and brown sugar on the bottom, but if
it isn't just a boring regular pumpkin pie, no one wants it)
-- topped with either excellent home made whipped cream - or - since
my mother and my nephews like Reddi-whip (ugh), that may be what we
have (sigh)

maybe some Martinelli's sparkling apple juice to drink if we're
lucky. Otherwise it will be some not very palatable overpriced white
wine, so i'll just drink water.

And, after testing Tofurkey and UnTurkey last year (you all read my
reports), i'm bringing a frozen UnTurkey and a side container of
Tofurkey gravy for my vegetarian daughter.

Sigh. And frankly, the company (other than my daughter) does not
redeem the food. So, i'm off to torture at the hands of seven other
people who have little in common with each other and 4 of whom have
nothing but some genes in common with me (again not counting my
daughter, whose company i enjoy).

I'd rather be reading e-mail from all of you about what you're eating
for Thanksgiving :-)

We shoulda left already for the drive south this afternoon, but my
daughter, who flew into SF late Thursday night, from the East Coast,
had some last minute errands to run this afternoon, so we're going to
try to hit the road around 5 AM tomorrow. I'm estimating a 10 hour
trip with about 8 hours of driving, what with stops for gas, food,
and toileting.

I will be incommunicado until next Sunday. Have a safe and happy
holiday to everyone in the US, and a good week to everyone else.

Anahita