One Turkey Muses On Another

The Norman Rockwell portrait that is the typical American Thanksgiving feast is quite remarkable, when you think about how many tables in our country have pretty much the same food on the same day. And in the center, that giant turkey all brown and steaming and ready for Friday sandwiches. Yum.

The wild turkeys roaming the hills of our fair city have grown in size from the summer, from relatively small birds to proportions that make me understand how this particular fowl came to be the star of the Thanksgiving feast. A chicken is not going to serve more than a couple of people – for the family gathering, you need a big bird.

I’m not a fan of the turkey farms, and each year I vow to find an alternative to the mass manufactured product. And each year, I put that vow off until it’s too late, and I wind up getting the biggest frozen turkey I can get my hands on. There is a kind of perverse pride in size when it comes to turkeys. It means more Friday sandwiches, I guess.

The saddest Thanksgiving I ever spent was the year after a divorce, and I lived for a brief time across the bridge in Benicia. I was living alone for the first time in my life, and Thanksgiving literally snuck up on me. One day, it was just another kind of sad Wednesday, the next, it was Thanksgiving. I had made no plans, I had no people to spend it with, so I headed down to Nation’s Burgers and sat there with the other refugees, chowing down on cheeseburgers and fries and a coke. Yikes.

But this year, we’ll be spending the holiday in our new home, with lots of friends and family. And on the menu, naturally, is the turkey. But the variables are the side dishes. In our home, we love sweet potatoes. But some of our kids like candied sweet potatoes, and others just like them baked with butter. The primary hit for our kids is green bean casserole with cream of mushroom soup. There will be pie, and ice cream.

Tell us what’s on your menu for this Thanksgiving. What will you be serving this year?