Tweak my dinner? Thanks, but no thanks

‘Recalculating’ and what tech lady is really saying
4:50 p.m.
Stuck-elevator query elicits high and low
4:47 p.m.
Centerville Coeds dance team celebrates 50 years
12:16 p.m.
Is there a way to avoid those intense cravings?
2/8/10
Author offers Valentine’s advice to grieving lovers
2/8/10
> More lifestyle headlines

By D.L. Stewart, Contributing Writer 5:07 PM Tuesday, November 24, 2009

As always at this time of year, the food writers of America are doing their part to ruin my Thanksgiving. In newspapers, magazines and Web sites, they’re encouraging me to take the best meal of the year and tweak it, twist it and update it.

One suggested making my stuffing with shrimp and jalapeno peppers. Another urged me to chop fennel, top it with shaved pecorino and serve it as a side dish.

Some food writers want to make my Thanksgiving dinner healthier. Instead of a turkey, they recommend, I could serve caramelized onion lasagna. That sounds better than a block of tofu, but it’s not quite the way Norman Rockwell painted it when he invented Thanksgiving.

Besides, I don’t want to eat healthy tomorrow. I have 364 other days to eat healthy. I don’t want shrimp in my stuffing and pecorino on my fennel. I want my Thanksgiving dinner to be exactly the same this year as it has been every previous year.

Because Thanksgiving has nothing to do with creative cuisine and fine dining. It’s not a day for fussy French chefs or truffle oil-infused Brussels sprouts. It’s a day for green beans, not haricot vert.

Tomorrow is a day for traditions, some of them significant, some of them silly. For years, it was a tradition in our family to put the whole, uncarved turkey in front of the youngest kid at the table and take a photo of his or her expression, which ran the gamut from amazement to terror.

That tradition ended with our last kid, who ate a third of the turkey before we could wrestle it away from him.

Thanksgiving is a day to be preceded by a week of shopping, two days of house cleaning, getting up at 6 in the morning to stuff the bird and cooking for hours in a house full of noise and aromas. All for a meal that would be over in 45 minutes.

One year several years ago, we decided it was all too much work, so we loaded the kids into the station wagon and drove to the nearest restaurant.

The food was wonderful. The turkey was perfectly sliced, not mangled the way it always was when I tried to carve it. The mashed potatoes were creamy and smooth, without any of the lumps mine always had. It may have been the first time our kids ever encountered gravy that wasn’t either the consistency of skim milk or so thick they had to cut it with a knife.

When we were finished, we drove home to a kitchen that was just as clean as when we left it. It was the easiest Thanksgiving ever.

And we all hated it.

Because it was, well, different. And for one day, at least, we like everything to be the same. Everything to be predictable. Everything to be familiar.

So, tomorrow, I’ll thank the food writers of America to keep their pecorino to themselves.

Contact D.L. Stewart at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.

Share this article