Turkey Day 2013

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.