This will be the first real
“empty nest” Thanksgiving for John and me. Sarah is in Chicago for graduate
school and will come home at Christmas break. Johnny has to work, so he won’t
be able to drive down from Seattle. It will be the first Thanksgiving since we’ve
had kids, twenty five years ago, that we’ll go back to it being just the two of
us.
I planned to shop for our turkey
on Tuesday with the slim hope that is would be defrosted by Thanksgiving day. I
have a history of trying to wrestle/pry the frozen neck out of the turkey on
Thanksgiving morning, so you’d think that by now I’d remember to buy the bird
earlier, but oh well, why ruin a well established tradition?
The advantage of there being
just us two is that I won’t have to cook as much. The experts say to allow ½ a
pound to a pound of turkey per person. I jokingly told John that it was going
to be very hard to find a 2-lb turkey.
While I looked over the coupons
in the newspaper I asked John, “So since it’s just the two of us, what do you
want for Thanksgiving dinner?”
I had my pen ready to write the shortened
shopping list. He answered, “Well, turkey.”
“O.K ”
“And mashed potatoes and sweet
potatoes.”
“What about stuffing?”
“Oh yeah, we’ve got to have
stuffing.”
I wrote it down. “Do you want
succotash?” That was the only vegetable Johnny would eat.
“No, let’s have Brussels sprouts
instead.”
“That’s good. You don’t want the
applesauce Jello that the kids always wanted, do you?”
“Oh yeah! We’ve got to have
that! Oh, and rolls.”
I added King’s Hawaiian sweet
rolls to the list. “Cranberry sauce?”
“Definitely! And don’t forget,
pumpkin pie. Oh, and sausage cheeseballs!”
I had to laugh, so basically I’d
be preparing everything I cook no matter how many people are here for
Thanksgiving. I guess he wasn’t kidding all those times he’d told me that he
liked everything I made for Thanksgiving. The bright spot of preparing 10
courses this time is that the timing is flexible for when I’ve got to have
everything on the table.
At the store I loaded my cart
with all the ingredients I would need, including things I’d forgotten to list
like olives and Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider. I solved the frozen turkey
dilemma by buying a fresh free range turkey (no thawing needed), and I bought
enough groceries to qualify for a frozen turkey that I can cook later. John got a new propane tank to cook the turkey
on the grill. I’m looking forward to watching the Macy’s Day Thanksgiving
Parade and football while cooking at my leisure tomorrow. We will have plenty
of time to count our blessings. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Laura Keolanui
Stark is looking forward to leftovers. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.
