Nanksgiving Report

That's what the niece calls it, so that's what I call it.

There's been an explosion of children among the surrounding relatives in the last few years. With this flood of youngsters manning the ramparts of the family castle, the event itself has morphed from a semi-formal sit-down dinner with grownups being uncomfortable and poking each other across the table with their well-honed neuroses to a much more enjoyable, anarchic event best described as "day care pot-luck".

There are several generations of excellent cooks represented and the menu shuns the fare that heaped the groaning sideboards of my white trash youth (celery and cream cheese, quivering lumps of canned cranberry sauce, green bean casserole and candied yams, weirdly populated jello rings coaxed from bundt cake pans).
As a rule I'm prone to nostalgia of all types (as are all collectors, I think), but I'm no fool. I've repudiated my gastronomical past before a full subcommittee and am free to embrace the new.

The 'new' this year included a fantastic soup from the wife's cousin that involved pureed butternut squash, spinach and ginger- add a dollop of plain yogurt, squeeze in a lime wedge and enjoy. I don't think I disgraced myself too badly by licking the pan clean while the others were bedazzled by the mass of cousins dancing to David Bowie in the living room. The brother-in-law supplied a massive Dutch oven full of rattatoile, which was splendid alongside a looming mountain of garlic mashed potatoes. I passed on the pallid frozen turkey breast donated by the father in law (his recommendation: "it was on sale!") and went with the glazed ham for my meat course.

The deserts were spectacular, as usual...everyone on the wife's aunt's side of the family bakes like a dream. The wife provided a splendid apple cranberry pie with a cream cheese crust from one of my favorite cookbooks (it was delicious that night, but it was even better paired with a giant eggnog latte for breakfast the next morning).
The wife's cousin came strong with two offerings- a pear tart where the pears were poached in wine and (my favorite) a walnut/cranberry/pecan torte that was served with real whipped cream and a crazy pomegranate molasses sauce (I slobber to think of it).

All the kids were a fine diversion from family politics, none of them being old enough to have absorbed the stone-graven prejudices of their elders, or developed any of their own. They ran around and played and danced and knocked things over and cried and made space for the adults to enjoy the time without fanning out their grievances for display like a peacock's tail to see who's was the most grand.