Saratoga News Family Daze Debbie Farmer Square box in the kitchen served well for this feast This year I decided to emulate Martha Stewart and have a traditional, old-fashioned Thanksgiving at home with my family instead of traveling. I thought preparing and eating our feast together would be a fun, enriching experience that would help my children understand that the meaning of Thanksgiving was more than mashing cranberries into fake blood and smearing it on the cat or jamming black olives onto their fingers and seeing who could fling them the farthest. "This year," I announced to my family, "we're going to have Thanksgiving dinner at home instead of going to Grandma's house." "Does this mean I can eat Frosted Flakes out of my Barney bowl in the living room?" my 5-year-old daughter asked. "No," I said. "We are going to work together to create a family meal that'll show our thankfulness for each other, our lives and all living creatures." "Yippee! Macaroni and cheese!" I sighed. "We're going to buy a turkey and cook it ourselves." "How?" "We're going to put it in the oven." My children looked confused. "You know," I said, "the box in the kitchen where I store the Christmas paper and extra shoeboxes." I wanted everything to be perfect, so the day before Thanksgiving I consulted my copy of The Domestic Goddess/Culinary Queen Holiday Cookbook, which I had placed in the back of my deepest cupboard when I became the mother of two. I leafed through the pages and found the turkey recipe, which advised me to: "Pick a turkey from the flock by the perkiness of its tail. Once plucked and feathered, rinse, stuff with bread crumbs left over from your oldest homemade loaf and season with fresh garden herbs mixed with honey from the hive." I considered the recipe for a moment, then quickly translated it into the "Busy Woman With Kids" version: Buy a turkey, thaw, bake. Next, I looked up pumpkin pie: "Pick a ripe pumpkin from the garden by tapping its gourd. Then peel and cook meat. Grind flour for crust and mix in fresh butter made from cream." I couldn't find the part about opening the can and pouring the pumpkin into the ready-made crust. So, I translated again into Motherhood dialect: one frozen pie. Next, I found the recipe for yams: "Dig up roots from garden. Dice and sauté in fresh garlic and basil. Add molasses from the trunk of a sweet gum tree and stir." I wrote down: two cans of sweet potatoes in syrup. The next day I woke at dawn to slide the 30-pound turkey into the oven. When my children were over their fascination with the working oven, we went into the back yard to find cuttings for our centerpiece. An hour before the turkey was ready I assembled my children in the kitchen so we could have a family experience creating the rest of the meal. I placed a pot on the stove and turned on the burner, and watched my son pour the cranberry sauce out of the can into the pot. He smiled as he stirred. After that, my daughter sprinkled marshmallows over the sweet potatoes. When everything was finished, my children proudly carried their culinary masterpieces to the dining room to present to my husband, who was busy picking ants off the tablecloth from the centerpiece. "What a wonderful feast!" he said. My children proudly told him our secret recipes while we ate our meal. Gravy from a jar, canned vegetables and processed pie had never tasted so good. [ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Saratoga News, November 25, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.