Thursday, November 26. Thanksgiving For Eleven. It's a perfect day for Thanksgiving. Cold in the morning, things warmed up enough to be comfortable without a jacket. Our trees are near peak color, by New Orleans standards. Most of them are pines, live oaks, and magnolias, whose colors are green all the time. But the maples, Chinese tallowtrees, sweetgums, and (most brilliant of all) the poison ivy are all reds and oranges.
The first sign that this celebration would be different from those in the past came when Mary Leigh awoke and turned the television on to watch the Macy's parade. Thanksgiving is her favorite holiday, and this is one of its rituals. But nobody remembered that we do not have the converter box with which to watch local television, now that it's changed over to digital. Nor do we have cable--it's not in our neighborhood--or satellite. Mary Leigh was so disappointed that I saw her actually sobbing.
The turkey came out of the brine and onto the sugar-cane-fed pit around seven-thirty. The ham got glazed next, and was in the oven fifteen minutes later. From that moment on for the remainder of the day, I spent more time washing dishes than cooking. A shocking accumulation in the sink and on the counter greeted me.
Mary Ann pitched in, and finally got around to doing the load of wine glasses. She grilled squashes and zucchini that only she would eat--not because they were bad, but because there would be far too much food. Mary Leigh made her marvelous sticks of puff pastry with garlic and herbs. Jude came down and played the piano. And performed a first: he cooked something. Cornbread sticks. Even he had to admit were terrible, but I was impressed that he did anything at all.
At nine, I went on the air with my usual WWL Thanksgiving morning show, direct from my kitchen counter. Between talking with the listeners, I made cranberry sauce and a biscuit dough with herbs, pepper, and cheese. I had wanted to make real bread, but this was all I had time for.
After the show, the preparations went along at an easy pace. The invective that usually flared up between Mary Ann and me in the last hours before showtime failed to catch fire, thank God. I peeled potatoes for the mash. Cleaned the guest bathroom. Washed what seemed like a hundred pots, pans, dishes, and other utensils by hand. I noticed that about two-thirds of our silverware was dirty, in the dishwasher. How'd that happen? Good thing we have service for twenty-four.
The miracle of our Thanksgiving is that, regardless of the chaos of the last hour or so of preparation, everything works out fine and all the guests are happy. That happened this year too, even though the first invitees arrived early--my sister Lynn by over a half-hour.
By a bit after one, we were ready to serve. But the Tim Connells, whose reputation for lateness is beyond legendary, didn't get here till three. That set the style of the service. It was even more casual than a buffet. A few people made up plates, but most picked up appetizers (mushrooms stuffed with Italian sausage, Mary Ann's pimiento cheese spread, tapenade, crabmeat ravigote) or a slice of ham or turkey, and just ate it. People were scattered all over the ranch. With no watchable television, there was no football game to create a focus. I never had enough of a concentration of people to say grace with.
The primary difference between this year's gathering and those of the past fourteen was the small size of the crowd. When Mary Ann and I took over Thanksgiving from her parents in 1995, all her siblings and all their kids showed up, plus a goodly part of my family. That came to forty people. It went even higher in the following years, but began to dwindle as the kids grew up, got married, and left town. When Mary Ann's parents died (three years apart), it allowed some of her siblings to go elsewhere. Still, we had about twenty last year.
But this year we're down to eleven. One turkey easily fed everybody. (I am not talking about myself here.) The number of appetizers and side dishes was absurdly out of proportion to the number of eaters, leaving over vast quantities of leftovers. When you have leftover lump crabmeat ravigote, you definitely had too much food. I'm glad I didn't make a stuffing.
And we only drank two and a half bottles of wine, total. I began with the 2009 Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau, calling it the Lloyd Schully Memorial Wine. Lloyd--husband of Mary Ann's sister Sylvia--died this year. He brought this very wine to all previous Thanksgivings. The first glass went to his son Gary. Gary supplied the only thing like the fun of past years by giving rides around the ranch on his four-wheeler. He would have been busier if anyone here had been under seventeen.
I quit washing dishes when my hip started to ache. I was sorry Tim's wife Desiree wasn't here. She and I could have had a relaxing single-malt Scotch together. I did find company with my sister Lynn. We reminisced about 1960s rock and blues. I need to loan her my prom night music three-CD set.
The party persisted well past darkness, until about eight. Mary Ann's brother Tim and nephew Brian held discussions in the corner while I supplied them with café au lait. Mary Leigh and her cousin Hillary conferred with Brian's wife Shana. Shana has been part of the family since before Katrina, but as one of the women, not one of the girls. Mary Leigh told me that this tete-a-tete was different than those before in being more like the ones she has with her friends. That's because Mary Leigh and Hillary recently became grown-up women, too.
In fact, everybody here was a grownup. Another a first. I'd rather not think about that too much.
Gosh, I was tired. But I always am on Thanksgiving night.
