The Estes Thanksgiving Epic 2001

The Estes Thanksgiving Epic
November, 2001

Okay, so, my mom hates Thanksgiving. It has nothing to do with anything actually associated with Thanksgiving, except for the dinner. She can't stand the work of a huge meal alone, much less the pressure of getting just right the taste of something she only cooks once a year -- turkey and dressing. Then add bowls of all the other nonsense -- sweet potato casserole, veggies, strawberry salad, the can-shaped slices of cranberry (or "crankleberry" as Dad likes to call it) sauce that Dad insists on, and on and on -- and she's fighting a meltdown.

Then add that this was the first Thanksgiving in y-e-a-r-s that was going to be an all-inclusive (East Coast, anyway - the West Coast Estes are never in town for Thanksgiving) Estes Thanksgiving. My sister-in-law had to be with her father for medical reasons, along with the rest of her family who's been hosting the official Thanksgiving dinner with their traditional food since I can remember (relieving Mom of the annual cooking practice -- and robbing us of Mom's cooking). So Wayne was bringing down the girls for Thanksgiving at his childhood home. I was thrilled! After five years of bumming Thanksgiving dinners off people in Los Angeles, and then treating Mom and Dad to a Boston Market dinner last year, which -- to my horror -- they proclaimed, scooping food from plastic containers, was THE way Thanksgiving should be celebrated (I can't disagree more -- the house was bereft of dinner cooking aroma), I couldn't have been happier.

For me, it's save the turkey for sammiches, and just make dressing. Dressing, dressing, dressing. This year, Mom actually said dressing was the only thing she was interested in, that anyone seemed to be interested in, and I said, well, then, let's just have dressing! Turkey-shaped dressing, veggie-shaped dressing, casserole-shaped dressing, and plain dressing -- with maybe a nice, huge floral-shaped arrangement of dressing for the middle of the table!

So Mom was starting to warm up to the idea of fewer things on the table, maybe one veggie and one casserole, and focusing on the turkey and dressing. (I'd all ready offered to make the desserts, which was a huge relief to her, except when I came over to bake a caramel cake on Monday, she'd made two orange juice cakes earlier that day and decided she'd knock out a couple of sweet potato pies the next day, despite me planning to make toll house cookies with the girls on Friday.) So Wednesday night, while we're all watching The West Wing, Mom's fretting that the dressing won't turn out well, and then how terrible would that be. I assure her that that simply isn't possible -- I approach Mom's dressing like I approach any and all cookies in existence: they can be stale, they can be boring, they can be made of flavors I despise, and I will still devour a batch of them long past my being full and having the ability to taste them.

So Thursday morning, I get a call from extremely Southern Mom, who wails in an almost New York Jewish matron voice, "We... are having... a nightmare!" It was spoken in a sincerely devastated and dramatic tone that suggested nothing short of the house having burned down and at least three family members in critical condition at the hospital, but I had a feeling it was that the oven wasn't working. Sentences and sentences and heartfelt descriptions later, with some more sentences thrown in, Mom finally tells me that the oven isn't working. I look at my oven and the clock, knowing we have to leave at 5 for a hockey game (NASCAR Wayne had gotten us all seats in the Gatorade suite for the Thrashers game), and nervously ask how long a turkey needs to cook. Mom says it's across the street at Don and Tamera's (they're a swinging couple who eat take-out and never use their oven), but she'd like to know if it's okay if she mixes up the dressing and Dad brings it over for me to cook. (The dressing! Woo-hoo!) And she's bagging the sweet potato casserole, and, really, anything that gets in her way at this point.

So I preheat the oven to Mom's instructed 375 degrees, having it all ready and perfect when Dad arrives with the dressing, and Dad arrives and just as I'm about to set the pan into the oven, Mom calls and says, change that, it's 350. So I have to leave the door open and fan it and wait before I think it might be the right temperature (the oven sensors only tell you when the temp is up to a particular degree, not when it's down to one). Later when I check the cooking dressing, the center of it looks like something is trying to escape from a huge rising fissure, so I beat it down and turn the pan around and let it cook longer. Now it's my turn to consider all the ways I can ruin the dressing -- overcook it, undercook it -- except I know Mom's mixed up the flavorful part and if I wreck it for everyone, more dressing for me! Unfortunately, it looks fine when I finally take it out.

So I arrive at the 'rents, and Wayne's watching some boring pro football game (after college, the players really should get a job), and Mom's working alone in the kitchen, despite our promises to help her (she's still rehabilitating from knee surgery over the summer). She tells me, exhausted, she's going to have to rest before going out tonight, and I assure her Wayne and I are cleaning up the kitchen despite her. She tastes the dressing and sighs that it's terrible. I taste it and note that it tastes the same as it always does, and she says maybe she's just too close to it. (I point out film crew people had the same experience watching movies we'd made -- we were too wrapped up with the production to really see the final outcome.) But there was this fissure thing when it was cooking... I continue. She says that's normal, and I marvel that dressing just gets cooler and cooler. We're nearly ready, but the ice isn't in the glasses yet, and I, taking the garbage downstairs, pass a brother, a dad, and two nieces who are in the football room and not helping in the kitchen, and stare at them. Oh, never mind.

When we gather at the table, Wayne looks at me and asks, "When did you come in?" And was also amazed to discover I cooked the dressing -- "When did Dad go over there?" So we've set out steamed broccoli with a really nice sour cream lemon sauce, Mom's fabulous strawberry salad, the crankleberry sauce, the dressing and turkey, and Dad starts to ask about something in a teasing voice. Mom cuts him off with a no-nonsense sharp, "Anybody doesn't like anything here can just go to McDonalds!" She had the tiniest pause before "to," like she was searching what to say, so I say almost laughing, "Woo! Glad she finished that sentence with 'McDonalds'!" It takes a full minute and bits of other conversation before Mom bursts out laughing and says, "I just realized what you said!"

Dinner wolfed in record time, and seconds around without so much food that it kills us, plus caramel cake and sweet potato pie for dessert, and Mom starts clearing the table and cleaning the kitchen, despite me telling her to stop. She just wants to take care of this, and that, and get this done... I can't move, and she won't stop. I'm full, plus it's that hanging around the table and shooting the breeze after dinner part I love so much, so jumping up to beat her to the sink isn't happening. Stop, Mom, stop. "I will, I will! I just want to do..." So Wayne and I get up and walk to the kitchen with the intent of wrestling her away, but half the stuff is put away, and she's all ready put almost all of the dishes in the dishwasher. So I begin taking things out of her hands, after shoving a drying towel in Wayne's, and put away the food.

Then -- no kidding -- just as I'm about to set the gloriously leftover dressing into the fridge, Dad commands me to stop, that he wants to make a plate for Don and Tamera before I put things away. I don't know what inspires my horror angry expression more -- that the dressing was the very last thing I was putting away, or that he fully expected me to surrender these precious few pieces of dressing to someone outside the house, nay, non-blood relatives (I was all ready trying to devise schemes to distract my nieces at the big leftover meal).

Mom slowly turned and faced him with an expression matching my flashing eyes. Her mind is saying she's just about done with this nightmare meal, and now he wants her to suddenly stop finishing it and continue it and lay out a spread for people who inspire more nerves than cooking for family? She can't refrain from saying outloud that the dressing isn't good enough for the neighbors, and I'm willing to go with that argument if it works, which it doesn't. I protest that they all ready have their Thanksgiving dinner -- they got take-out! Dad says they were cooking chili, and he promised them turkey and dressing when he picked up our turkey that had been cooking in their house all morning. (Hours later, I will accept the graciousness of the gesture as the only true and proper thing to do, but at this point, it ain't happening.) I angrily set three pieces of the dressing on a plate. Dad instructs me to set out four, I bark "Three's enough!" at him, and Dad, suddenly realizing just how seriously close I am to killing him, quickly backs down and says, oh, yes, that's fine... I dump the leftover broken slices and bits of turkey from the sandwich bag onto the plate, really, really not into this, and Mom almost tearfully backs him that, no, we aren't giving them that, and she pulls out the turkey again and slices prettier pieces. I don't know if it's because Mom's still holding the plugged-in electric knife, but Dad looks too scared to ask for... I reach back into the refrigerator for the cranberry sauce, and he smiles, all happy again. And do we have a little container for some gravy? he gingerly continues.

By the next hour, half the household is asleep, Dad's reading the paper, and I'm watching the Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon on F/X except when I manage to tear myself away for a walk before we leave for the hockey game, which was a blast. (Wayne returned to the suite with some kind of cold pizza with chunks of tomato and hunks of sausage, and Mom happily declared it was just the best pizza she'd tasted.)

The next day, Mom asks me to pick up a few things at the store on my way over. We discuss the inventory of food available until Wayne and the girls leave on Sunday, and the menu plans. I remind her I can bake toll house cookies with the girls later today. "No, you can't!" she laughs. Oh, that's right! I cry. Again, my plans for chocolate chip cookies are thwarted. The dessert inventory should be fine, I offer, commenting the caramel cake is probably nearly gone, though. She laughs and said, yeah, since Dad made a plate of it and the pie and snuck it out for Don and Tamera when I wasn't looking! She suggests I can cook a fajita dinner for them tonight or tomorrow, and we could go out one evening. I point out we can avoid that if she'd prefer -- I can pick up some things from Boston Market and we can finish the leftovers (I managed to maintain one piece of dressing for each of the six of us, plus there was plenty of turkey and strawberry salad -- I figured a side of sweet potato casserole and creamed spinach would add a little newness). She's not game for it, and after trying to convince her, it dawns me her plan: "Or we can hold off until they're gone and we can have TWO pieces of dressing each!"

It was the best Estes Thanksgiving ever.

Thanksgiving

The holiday scene

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