The Eye of the Heffalump: Thanksgiving 2007!

This was my kitchen at 5:30 AM Thanksgivin' mornin'.

Ahhh, Thanksgiving. As some of you know, tis me favorite holiday (and why I slipped into an Irish Spring accent just now, I do not know). The Annual Day of American Sloth – well, the “official” annual day of sloth – not like those other days of sloth that Americans so adore, is simply the best.

Truly, I am looking for any shameless opportunity to share my love of finding recipes and then putting them into execution. Some call this “cooking”. I call it a knack for reading and following instructions.

Last Thanksgiving, my dad was here visiting. It was my great pleasure to have him in the kitchen with me helping to prepare the meal. In my eyes, my dad was some kind of renegade in the kitchen while I was growing up. He tried some super freaky shit, like the time he made liver (please suppress your gag reflex, my sister and I actually like liver [more super freaky shit]) and stuffed it with cream cheese. Even a true liver lover would reject that. We certainly did, and let me tell you, a pair of girls aged nine and ten years old can be vicious critics.

Then again, my dad made fantastic lasagna. In fact, any pasta dish he tried came out with a nice finish. My father also makes great burgers. He taught me and my sister how to flavor ground beef for hamburgers, and I still use his core method today (worchestershire, an egg and a piece of torn up bread) with my own modifications.

I always admired my father’s ability for seeming to be making things up as he goes along. Dad has plenty of tricks up his sleeve, and I suspect that he may sometimes use recipes as “guidelines”. Ultimately, though, he always leaves room for improvisation in the kitchen and that is what I enjoy most about his kitchen style.

This Thanksgiving weekend, I was very lucky to host my mom for leftovers. Although she didn’t arrive on the actual day of sloth, she was able to participate in the extended celebration of the slothfulness all the way through to the Monday that followed Thanksgiving. It was leftovers galore, and I couldn’t hope for a better person to share it with.

My mom loves food – much in the same way I do. We both give into cravings too much, which I believe is the plight of the average woman, not just a shared affliction in my family. What I admire about my mom’s approach to cooking, though, is her love of the recipe. This is where the recipe became a reality for me – watching my mom pour over every page of the classic Betty Crocker Cookbook. She had others, but it was good ol’ Betty that she worshipped.

I learned to admire those same pages at my own life speed, but with the same intensity as my mom. It was a challenge to read the entire recipe through, plan the ingredients and carry out the measure of every step with precision. The result? Well, the hope is to match the illustration of the dish that is mocking you from the pages of the cookbook: “Your version will never really look like I do in all my glorious color and deliciousness, but – nice try.”

The execution of a recipe still holds that fascination with me that my mom instilled – it’s a little experiment, let’s give it a try. And as I grew older, I finally started to throw some caution to the kitchen winds and improvise a little – like my dad. I feel that I have nurtured culinary attitude and skill that still requires vast improvement. But thanks to my parents, I have a solid foundation to build upon. And now, happy friends get to reap the reward.

The pie was finished at 6AM and the Chardonnay was open at 7AM (it's for a recipe, I assure you).