The Fat Diaries: My Thanksgiving Tradition... Overeating
In six short days we’ll be in one of my favorite holidays, and one of the most potentially damaging to my metabolism: Thanksgiving. I personally appreciate Thanksgiving more than I used to as a kid. Mostly because when I was younger there were no toys involved (unlike at Christmas). When you’re a little girl trying to be “good” in order to receive a “Little Miss Makeup” doll, there’s not much excitement in a huge eating party where you have to dress up and the food on your plate touches. I also was the oldest, so it was my job to sit at the kids’ table and supervise the younger kids. I’ve only been allowed to sit at the “adults’ table” in the last six years.
Now that I’m a grown-up who’s in charge of paying for/making the toys, it’s nice to have a holiday where no one expects you to plop down a Benjamin for festively-wrapped tokens of esteem. It’s a time when I don’t have to do much traveling. Since I’m never the host, I don’t have to do all the cooking (just the dishes). I don’t have to sit with the kids anymore (that duty is now thrust upon my youngest brother). I even like football enough to enjoy the games that day. I also love the food.
Three or four years ago Thanksgiving used to be the excuse to put on the “eating pants” (or in my case the stretchy velour dress with no waist) and go nuts. It was a holiday so I went into the meal with the mindset that I “deserved” to eat enough to make me uncomfortably full. Pumpkin pie and stuffing were rare foods one doesn’t see everyday at the table, so I had to “stock up” like a camel to satisfy my need for them. It would be another 364 days until I saw them again. Thankfully, I’ve been able to put that mindset behind me. I take sensible portions. If I feel I want to taste everything, I put a tiny little dollop on my plate. It sounds stupid, but it works for me. Just a few bites of stuffing is enough to satisfy that ritual craving.
Granted, it’s not easy. My mother’s table always has an impressive spread every year. A Polish-American from Illinois, she never does anything halfway, and most of it is always from scratch. Every year there’s a hybrid bird-zilla turkey defrosting in the fridge that will be roasted to 5-star excellence. Mashed potatoes will be made from actual potatoes along with whole sticks of butter and some of the whipping cream that will later be used for desert. There will be real bread stuffing–again, made from real bread she’s actually dried and cut up with celery and herbs. The famous 50’s stand-by will be present: green bean casserole, complete with the crunchy French’s onions on top that all the cooks have dipped into during the hectic cooking periods.
Then there will be my favorite: Aunt Shirley’s rolls. I don’t know which Aunt Shirley the name evokes, nor when she invented the recipe, but every holiday my mother makes her rolls. She makes the dough the night before and rolls and cuts them out the next morning. They’re masterpieces of comfort food; A pale gold color, with a gentle fold in the middle, giving it the shape of a sleeping cat. The tender inside is pale white, sweet, and when doused in butter, it’s transcendently good. Even when I try my hardest to behave myself and not overeat, I always have trouble with the rolls. They make me weak at the knees.
The dinner is always so perfect that I’m rather in awe of my mother. I keep wondering how she has the stamina and patience to deal with everything–often with kids running in an out of the kitchen all day. In fact the only thing my mother doesn’t make from scratch is the cranberry sauce, which (decades ago) was one of the few things my brother Dave would eat and so it always sits in it’s little star-cut preserves bowl in a familiar cylindrical shape.
There’d be the odd salad or vegetable plate, but for the life of me, I can never remember what was on that dish. They seemed superfluous to all these rare treats, the most tempting of which were the pies. Oh dear. Even if I manage to survive the dinner gauntlet, even if I’ve taken the tiniest portions imaginable, even if (miracle of miracles) I could get through dinner having only eaten ONE of Aunt Shirley’s rolls (which has yet to happen) I always give in to the pies.
On some Thanksgivings, my mother has had ready for dessert no fewer than 3 kinds of pie. You had to have pumpkin pie, it was expected (what else would you have for breakfast the next morning?), but my brothers never liked pumpkin so she made apple as well. Then maybe, just maybe if we had special company, or someone who liked neither pumpkin or apple, she would make a fantastic shoo-fly pecan pie. The whipped cream would be made by hand and would top the pie and sometimes ice cream. If there was any cream left in the carton it would be poured into the coffee.
I love Thanksgiving. Even just writing this article, I started to imagine myself in the many kitchens we lived in over the years and the warm smells and pleasant conversations. I remembered the many countries where we celebrated this American holiday alone. I remembered old faces we don’t see at the table any more, and the new faces who are with us this year. Things changed every year. Some years were happy, some were bittersweet. We were flush or we were in debt; we were all together or spread out over the country. There were good announcements, bad announcements, sad announcements and a few fights (but I can’t remember what they were about). The food was the same. The food never changed, and with that constancy, I find another kind of homecoming every year.
I’ll do my best to overcome my eating binges, and keep from gaining back all I lost this year in the 40-some days of holiday feasts ahead of me. This year I’m thankful for my health, my new career, and I’m especially thankful for my huge, funny, wonderful family. It’s not about the meal any more. It’s about having a meal with them. Happy Thanksgiving!
