No Place But Home for the Holidays?

The holidays are approaching, but they won’t be the same this year. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has just released its Thanksgiving 2020 safety guidelines, and the only low-risk approach is a small dinner with other members of the household. Eating outdoors with family and friends who live in your community is listed as moderate risk, and large indoor gatherings with people from outside your household are high risk. Where does that leave us? What are you planning?

Rethinking our traditions

The current circumstances present a key break to the way that Thanksgiving has been celebrated. When I was growing up, Thanksgiving at my grandparent’s house involved a big turkey or two, a ham, and all the accompaniments – mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, and some farm belt 50s-vintage vegetable casseroles: string beans in cream of mushroom soup, scalloped corn, and peas with pearl onions. In addition to some fruit salads and cranberry sauce, the meal also featured some Scandinavian additions that my grandmother included, such as lingonberries. Finally, those who could stuff it in could partake of a variety of different pies.

Each U.S. region has its own special Thanksgiving food traditions, as I was reminded when I found a record of a November 1891 Thanksgiving dinner for 17 in Newburyport, Massachusetts: raw oysters, mock turtle soup, two turkeys, four chickens, sweet and white potatoes, squash, onions, two quarts of cranberry, and four heads of celery. Rounding out the meal was Christmas plum pudding, peach ice cream, White Mountain cake, Havana oranges, tangerines, Tokay and Concord grapes, bananas, apples, pears, a jar of prunes, Dutch cheese, raisins from S.S. Pierce, five pounds of shellbarks, two quarts of olives, four pounds of mixed nuts, and a pound and a half of shelled almonds. It was washed down with four bottles of claret and coffee. Mrs. F. Lyman Winship reported that the dinner, apart from the wine, cost $23.99.

Granting turkeys a wishbone

Those huge meals are our Thanksgiving memories, but this year will be creatively different – good news for turkeys, but not for turkey growers. As for Mrs. Farmboy and me, we’re planning a small Thanksgiving with a local pod that’s safe – dinner for four – but still carrying on some of the same themes of poultry and seasonal ingredients. I’m thinking of a Spanish approach. I have a favorite cookbook – The Food of Spain by Claudia Roden – that includes a recipe for roast chicken and apples and grapes. I’ve decided on that, along with a green salad, potato galette made with duck fat, and some seasonal vegetables, maybe beets with orange sauce or carrots with harissa. A fine meal, but no leftover turkey and gravy.

I checked in with a few people to find out what they are planning. Like many, my sister Ellen Grau in California hasn’t started thinking about it yet – understandably enough. She is finally seeing a clear sky after the local brush fires that have plagued the area that is also battling the virus. On the other hand, my friend and subscriber Sue Creed is already ahead of it. She’s a turkey-no-matter-what fan. She’s planning a traditional – but smaller – Thanksgiving dinner with family. Since she cares for her grandkids (no need to quarantine), they will join along with their parents for a meal that will include a fresh bird from Raymond’s Turkey Farm in Methuen, Mass., accompanied with the usual potatoes, gravy, and sausage stuffing. Daughter Hannah will bring her cranberry chutney. If Sue’s brother and his wife attend, they’ll bring wine and dessert. If not, Sue will make a suet pudding with hard sauce or maybe Indian pudding.

How about you? What are your plans? Please share by commenting below.

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