We’re the grateful fed today
Thanksgiving is the only pure holiday.
Halloween is mostly for kids, except the campy adult version. Christmas is a commercial orgy as much as anything, and some other holidays are just a day off for most folks. But Thanksgiving is built around that most human celebratory activity, feasting with family and friends.
Of course there’s being thankful, which deeply enriches the experience, but mostly it’s about the eating - and the ritual of preparing the meal.
Our country can seem to be dominated by differences, but on Thanksgiving there is unity.
The vast majority of us will be sitting down to turkey. There’ll be mashed potatoes, yams, green beans, cranberry sauce, stuffing and some kind of pie.
The basic menu doesn’t vary much, but every table will have a few dishes that distinguish it.
How American is that, a common core with variations by region, ethnicity, family?
Being busy is American, too.
Shelley Cox and her daughter Erin are both working this year, so they won’t have the usual family get-together.
So Erin is improvising. Tuesday at the Safeway in Lower Queen Anne she was pushing a cart with a cookbook propped up on it.
“This will be an adventure,” she said. “I’ve never cooked Thanksgiving before.” Her mom, who usually cooks (she’s really good with gravy), was helping her find ingredients.
Erin is taking Thanksgiving dinner to work to share with her colleagues at Shorty’s bar in Belltown.
In a different part of the store, Michiko Macbride was picking out vegetables with her friend Paula Williams.
They work together, and Williams, a veteran holiday cook, was helping Macbride, who is new to the complex choreography of a Thanksgiving meal.
Williams enjoys cooking the entire meal.
She’s making turkey, greens, cornbread dressing, mac and cheese, peach cobbler, sweet potato pie and a whole bunch more because she has 19 people coming over.
“I don’t like for other people to bring stuff,” Williams said.
Once her brother-in-law, who was in cooking school, made the turkey. “He thought it was done, but it was raw - even the legs weren’t done.”
Sometimes relationships are defined or reinforced by who does what for Thanksgiving.
Marc Salverda said he and his brother sometimes tussle over who’s going to cook what for Thanksgiving dinner. In this family, the brothers cook; the sisters don’t.
So there was Salverda, at the QFC on Broadway and Pike, holding a shopping list between his teeth while he filled a bag with green beans.
I love Thanksgiving’s simplicity, but Americans can’t leave anything alone.
It used to be you’d just buy a turkey. This year we had to choose from heirloom or heritage birds, free range, brined, kosher, natural, organic, frozen or fresh.
Some people opt for Tofurkey, and others get fancy, stuffing a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey.
And more than a few families have traded the oven for a deep-fat fryer.
But mercifully, we don’t have to string lights, send cards or buy presents, yet. I’m thankful for that.
Jerry Large’s column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.