Shrimp-Shaped Carrots and Other Thanksgiving Crimes

Thanksgiving isn’t always Norman Rockwell turkeys and frilly aprons. In Jean’s world, it’s turkey rolls at the CCC, shrimp-shaped carrots at the culinary college, and relatives who think pet rats make great dinner companions. From flaming coffee to child-sized toilets, her holiday meals have been less “Hallmark” and more “sitcom blooper reel.” This year, she’ll be celebrating in sweatpants with a festive headdress, proving once again that widowhood comes with its own brand of holiday misadventures. AI….

I started The Misadventures of Widowhood blog in 2012, just after my husband passed away, and I’ve written a Thanksgiving post every year since. I just re-read them all back-to-back, and it made my head spin. I’ve gone from feeling sorry for myself because I couldn’t buy a turkey leg to fix for little old me, to last year silently bitching because my CCC served a turkey roll of pressed white meat instead of a golden skinned, whole turkey. And in between, there were all those years of being invited to an assortment of relatives’ homes for the holiday meal.

The last time I saw and smelled a whole turkey cooking was three years ago, when my great-nephew invited me and my brother to eat with his family of what felt like a million kids under six or seven, plus two large dogs, four pet rats, and a cat so fat I thought it was ready to deliver a litter of kittens—until I was told that was impossible. “Do you want to hold my rat?” I was asked before I even got my coat off. I replied, “No, thank you” when I wanted to scream, "Eek!! Get that thing away from me."

That day, the turkey was cooked in a smoker. Almost as delicious as the smoked turkey was the smoked Philadelphia Cream Cheese my great-nephew made. Who knew you could smoke just about anything and make it taste like heaven. Like his father and grandfather before him, my great-nephew has turned into a great cook. He and his wife would welcome me back again, but I refuse their holiday invitations because their guest bathroom literally has a child’s-height toilet, and my ancient knees won’t let me squat that low. Not to mention, I’m too old to have the patience to spend the afternoon with a flock of home-schooled kids who compete for my attention.

Sometimes I regret that the foodie gene skipped me altogether, and other times the selfish side of me is glad I escaped ever hosting a Christmas, Thanksgiving or Easter dinner. But no one who ever saw the things I collected in my Hope Chest during the ’50s would have predicted my life would turn out the way it did. Least of all, me. Back then, unmarried girls like me thought we’d happily spend holidays wearing frilly cotton aprons trimmed with rick-rack and carrying a Better Homes Cookbook—with its classic red-and-white cover—tucked under our arm. We’d make our husbands read page 258 on "how to carve a turkey like an expert at the table" and we'd serve Jell-o ring salads like on page 285. (Yes I still have my very first cookbook. I think buying one was required before we could pass high school home economics class.) Back then, meat carving was the division of labor between the sexes when it came to holiday dinners. If you were lucky, you could get a guy to mash the potatoes, since that did take some brute strength. At least now, Mr. and Mrs. Host share much of the cooking and cleaning and guests bring the side dishes. Young women don’t know how lucky they.

Last week, twelve of my fellow residents and I went down to the culinary college here in town to eat at their fancy-ass restaurant, where future chefs must spend a semester working on the wait staff—and all eight students serving that day were male. Times are changing. Although chefs in five-star restaurants have traditionally been male, the chefs in places like where I live and in family restaurants haven’t been as male-dominated in the past as they seem to be today. And then there’s the whole distinction between chefs and cooks. 

I’ve been to the culinary college restaurant three or four times since my husband died, but it’s not easy to get reservations. They are fully books through the holidays, and our Life Enrichment Director is looking to book us another outing around Easter. You go there for the experience as much as the food.  It’s the kind of place where, if you order tea, they bring a cart to the table and make a production out of educating you about your choices, then leave you with a pot of hot water, a three-tube timer and a loose tea holder. I once ordered a coffee from their coffee cart, and they lit it on fire—the coffee, not the cart. That was fun. The dessert cart, of course, is my favorite. 

I’m guessing the students have to take a class on the art of arranging food and sauces on the plate. One of the ladies at my table ordered something that came with carrots and they were carved to look exactly like shrimp. You pay (through the nose) for the visual aspect and drama of the meal, and you risk going home to make yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because you’re still hungry.

The photo above is of my beef with-fancy-name-I-don't-recall entrée with potatoes. The bill came to $37, which included a scant cup of soup, great breads (3 half slices per person) with custom butters, the entrée, and a chocolate dessert about the size of a golf ball and it was to-die-for delicious. I drank water and I left the college student-future chef a $10 tip. 

This year I’ll be eating a turkey roll again here at the CCC, along with other courses that will please my taste buds—but they’ll be lucky if I trade my sweatpants for polyester. I will be wearing an Indian head dress (or Native American head dress if you want to be politically correct). Since moving here, I’ve accumulated a collection of holiday headbands. Don’t worry, I won’t look out of place, surrounded by fellow residents in their holiday-themed sweaters and shirts. When in Rome act like the Romans.  ©   

Until Next Wednesday, Happy Thanksgiving!

This is a clip of a classic pray that was featured in an episode of ‘Father Knows Best’ while they were celebrating Thanksgiving with a meal of hamburgers .

 

Thanksgiving and the Week of Giving

It’s been a busy few weeks leading up to Thanksgiving here on the continuum care campus. I mentioned but didn’t write about what the management called ‘A Week of Giving.’ I didn’t know what to expect of a something billed as “new opportunities to help the community every day” but I decided whatever they had lined up I was going to put my selfish tendency aside and pitch in and the gods of good deeds blessed me with easy stuff to do.

One day we volunteers spent the afternoon knitting loom hats for kids in need. Another day we decorated paper lunch bags that will get filled for weekend lunches for kids in need. A third day it was making small lap blankets for the Linus Project. Another giving day we were supposed to get bused over to the sister campus to help make lavender cuddle bunnies but that got canceled due to a Covid out break over there. It was wide-spread enough that the entire campus was in quarantine. 

The same core group of crafters took part in all the hand-on portion of 'A Week of Giving' including me, but there's no way of knowing who might have donated in other ways giving cash or supplies instead of time. There are plenty of people who live here who I've never seen who probably bought into the complex because it a nice place but who haven't immersed themselves into culture. The point being there was no shortage of donated yarn, crafting supplies and fabrics for us to work with and there's no pressure to take part in anything.

For Thanksgiving day I along with 20 others signed up for a buffet here on campus. They cooked a traditional meal with everything anyone could want on Thanksgiving and served it with pinot noir wine. We had carved turkey, shrimp scampi, ham, stuffing, buttermilk potatoes and gravy, roasted squash, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and eclairs. 'Gotta say I’ve never had eclairs for Thanksgiving but they might be my new favorite thing. It was a great meal and they even sent us home with left-overs. I haven’t had many traditional holidays meals in recent years so this was a real treat. Except for those two hours at dinner this place was like a ghost town and I spent the rest of the day binge-watching Outlander. I never got through all the books, but I can't seem to stop watching the series on my new Netflix account.

And you’re not going to believe this but I actually dressed up for the the buffet, even gave myself a French manicure, my all-time favorite nail look. I worn an old Pendleton wool jacket in a classic style with a silk blouse underneath paired with real slacks, not the pretend slacks with the elastic waistbands I usually wear. I pulled my ungodly expensive Israelian-made Mary Janes out of its place of honor in my closet to complete my non-caregiver look.

I also dug out my bling. Wore my diamond earrings---the larger ones of the two pairs I own---and wore them along with a silver locket that contains some of my husband’s ashes plus my wedding rings. When I was first widowed I wore that locket often when I was facing a new social situation. It gave me courage and a sense of not being so alone in the world because it reminds me that I was once loved. Jeez! I just had an epiphany! Is that one of the reasons why Christians wear their crosses? I always thought it was a declaration of their faith like wear a jersey to declare which team they support but maybe the symbolism go deeper than that? That's a rhetorical question, no need to answer.

If felt good to look nice, to be wearing quality-made clothing for a change but the bling all went back in their boxes afterward. The rings are too big and in danger of getting lost. In the past I never took off my smaller diamonds but I would swap them out for the larger stones for special occasions...until masks became part of our lives. Now with hearing aids, glasses, masks and earrings I was getting paranoid about something getting pulled off with the mask and lost. I had it happen with a hearing aid and an earring both and am not willing to risk it anymore. When I do wear all that crap on my ears I'm constantly checking to makes sure the earrings and hearing aids are still in place so I probably look like I've got a spasmodic tic.

I'll wear my bling soon enough though. A Christmas party is on the calendar and they're taking a poll to judge interest in a New Years Eve party plus a second poll to see if anyone wants to take part in an apartment tour to show off our holiday decorations and general furnishings. Other things in the works if Covid doesn't get them canceled are a bus trip to see the holiday lights downtown and a piano concert of Christmas music. Our county recently had the highest rate of hospitalizations for Covid in the nation. Oh, and that resulted in a get-your-booster shots event here on campus.  ©

Thanksgiving 2020 - Hell Yes, I'm Staying Home!

It’s the day before Thanksgiving and all through the house not a creature is stirring except Levi, my four-legged spouse. I have no place to go tomorrow, no dish-to-pass to make in the kitchen. No problem. I’m a big girl and I am thankful that I have a warm house and food in the refrigerator. Okay, I actual wrote those opening lines last year for my day-before-Thanksgiving post and while on a personal level not much has changed since last year when I wrote them, on a broader level everything in the world has changed. And since Thanksgiving is about giving thanks I am thankful I’m not one of the thousands of people who've had to wait in long lines to get Covid-19 tested and I am thankful I’m not like so many others who, for the first time in their lives, found themselves waiting in long lines at food banks. But I am heartbroken (and angry) that so many others are victims of the world-wide pandemic not only those who are sick or the exhausted essential workers but also those who have lost jobs and businesses and loved ones they’ve had to bury. It didn’t have to be this bad. Politicizing wearing masks, not modeling social distancing. Blah, blah, blah. Yes, I'm also thankful we're getting a new president in 54 days. Okay, Jean, time to put your snarky remarks back in the box. It’s a holiday after all, the opening bell to the season of joy and peace on earth and all that good stuff .

Since starting this blog I’ve written about Thanksgiving thirteen times and while preparing to write this Thanksgiving post I skim-read all those other posts. The first two years after my husband died I spent the day with relatives on his side of the family, feeling like the proverbial fifth wheel. The third year I came home with food poisoning which wasn’t fun but I was thankful my husband wasn't with me. Can you imagine managing a guy in a wheelchair while you're both upping your cookies and purging your bowels? I’ve written about Sarah Joseph Hale who lobbied politicians for 40 years to get Thanksgiving celebrated national on a fixed date. (Talk about being dedicated to a passion project!) I’ve written about overdosing on Hallmark holiday movies, about making turkey soup and surprisingly I’ve written very little about my childhood holiday memories. (Look at me, using two words on the no-no list---‘very’ and ‘little’---that serious writers should never use and I strung them together no less. Oh well, I have a bad habit of over populating my posts with too many no-no words. Try as I might I can't help being smitten with starting sentences off with 'and' and 'so' even though it makes me sound like a Valley Girl. But I digress.)

Several years into widowhood I turned down all the invitations I got and I wrote: “My determination to stay home alone this Thanksgiving was part of an experiment on aging, on widowhood? Does it really matter which? The point was: 1) I didn’t want to be someone’s charity case, an old person/widow only invited because others felt sorry for me being all alone on a holiday; 2) I actually wanted to see what it felt like to be alone on a holiday since I'd never experienced that in the past. And you know what, it turned out fine. I didn’t wallow in loneliness, self-pity or memories of happier times. I didn’t go hungry as an elderly relative predicted I would, forced to eat stale crackers for dinner, and I didn’t treat Thanksgiving like any other day on the calendar. I planned a big meal with a few comfort foods from holidays past. I cooked, cleaned up and froze my leftovers for Christmas dinner. I also realized that I do have a post-Don Thanksgiving tradition: Watching the annual National Dog Show with Levi. We saw it last year and this year both and that dog actually watches the TV, barking and whining at his favorite canines on the screen. He is my core family now that my husband is gone.” That was written 5-6 years ago and Levi and I have continued our Dog Show tradition but that turned out to be the last year I cooked a special meal.

Levi is not feeling well today and I’m concerned. He’s clinging to me like white on rice which is not normal for him. When I put him outside for his first morning pee he laid down on the deck which in itself wouldn’t be alarming but the temperature outside is 38 degrees and he just got a haircut. Tomorrow I will be thankful if I don’t have to spend Thanksgiving Day at the animal ER. ©

The Thankful Widow at Thanksgiving

It’s the day before Thanksgiving and all through the house not a creature is stirring except Levi, my four-legged spouse. I have no place to go tomorrow, no dish-to-pass to make in the kitchen. No problem. I’m a big girl and I am thankful that I have a warm house and food in the refrigerator. It might not be a turkey and all the trimmings but tomorrow I won't be down at a mission depending on the good deeds of strangers to get a warm meal and a hot cup of coffee. And after the last piece of pie is served and the coffee pot is drained dry I won't get dispersed back out on the freezing cold streets and I won't be standing in line by five o'clock to get one of the limited beds down at the shelter. I can’t imagine living that way. And I do think of them often---those homeless, lost souls. Call me a bleeding heart liberal. I won’t be offended.

I’m also thankful for decades worth of warm memories of holidays spent at my mom and dad’s cottage on a lake, then later at my brother and sister-in-law’s place in a grove of white pines. I don’t think I’m looking back through rose colored glasses when I say those holidays were filled with fun and laughter. But I can acknowledge, now, what I probably didn’t fully appreciate back then that I had it easy. I wasn’t expected to help with preparing the food. I was never known for my willingness to learn my way around the kitchen so by the time my nieces and nephew came along I was on official duty to keep the kids busy and out from under the feet of the true cooks in the family. I’m sorry, Mom and Melanie I should have helped more!

 

My favorite holiday memories are filled with snowmobiling, sledding and snowball fights with the kids or playing in their fort in the woods or just walking along country roads. There is no way to replicate those carefree times with my family and I’m content not to try. I have over four decades of good memories to draw on before my brother's divorce and my mom's death left no one to organize big holiday meals. I did have the family to my house in the city once, but it wasn't a great situation when they all had to travel so far and my house was too small. That was the year I tried to make cranberry relish and I put fresh berries in a blender but forgot to put the top on before turning it on. Aside from cleaning cranberries off the ceiling, when I think of my best family Thanksgivings I don’t remember the food as much as the bonding time with my nieces and nephew.

Fast forward to after my husband’s stroke when we moved even farther from my family to be closer to his and we spent the next fourteen years going to the only place that was wheelchair friendly…my sister-in-law’s house. Those were super-large family get-togethers where the accent was on the food, the more the better. The women are all great cooks and the men are big eaters. Me? An early mistake of making a pink salad of potatoes and beets earned me a reputation for being a joke in the kitchen. I didn’t care. It took the pressure off me to kitchen-compete with a family who knows all the secrets to making the best of the best. They never expected much out of my dishes to pass and I delivered on their low expectations. Then my sister-in-law passed away and that ended the big holiday meals at her house. The adult kids all took their celebrations to their own homes to build new traditions with their growing families. It’s a classic story that only the elderly are privileged enough to tell. As much as some of my peers would like to, we can’t freeze our holiday gatherings like a scene in a snow globe that never changes. The best we can do is shake up our memories from time to time and watch them flutter down like the glitter inside those snow globes. 

In a world so full of dark and scary things that seem beyond our control---gun violence in our schools, our climate crisis and the constitutional crisis our nation is facing to name a few things---it’s more important than ever for us to pause to be thankful for the big and small blessings in our lives. I am thankful that I’m relatively healthy, that I’ve been loved and loved back in my life, that I’ve lived a moral life with few regrets and that I have a plan for a new chapter in my life that will give me security as I age out of this world. And I am grateful for my annoyingly demanding dog, Levi, who still lacks the logic to understand that if it’s raining outside one door of the house that it’s raining outside the other two doors. He makes me prove it to him every time before he’ll finally go outside to answer nature’s call. I humor him because I still remember my reluctance to go outside to the outhouse when I was a kid spending my summers at the cottage. Have I mentioned I'm grateful for indoor plumbing and flush toilets? ©

A Holiday with the In-Laws

Due to my own loose lips on Facebook, one of my great-nieces on my husband’s side of the family got wind of the fact that I was going to be alone on Thanksgiving. She told her mother and her mother called me and said: “I’m not taking ‘no’ for answer. You’re to be on my doorstep at twelve noon tomorrow.” I did try to say no, that I’d be fine alone but she repeated “Twelve sharp! You don’t have to bring anything” and I said, “Good, I don’t have anything in the house to make and the stores will be too busy tonight.” But her daughter had a request of all the guests. We were to bring one of our favorite things---something small we are grateful for. She was bringing, for example, Oreo cookies to hand out during the ‘favorite things’ game. 

Serendipity kicked in after I got off the phone when I remembered that Amazon had just delivered a box of Turkish Delight Pomegranate Pistachio jells. (A Christmas present for myself.) Oh-my-god are they good and with a 65% sugar content these small cubes of candy melt in your mouth. Supposedly they were developed in its current form in the 10^th century by Arabic apothecaries and they are the great-granddaddy to our modern day jelly beans when a smart confectioner in Boston in the 1860s put a hard sugar shell on them instead of the classic powdered sugar. Turkish Delights are also known as “Lokum” named after the Sultan who helped to popularized them around the world. Who knew jelly beans came with such an interesting back story. Anyway, I got out some paper cups made to hold mini tarts and I filled fifteen of them up with Turkish Delights to pass around.

This exercise in sharing something we love was more fun than I expected it to be. Everyone told a story about why they brought what they brought. My niece-in-law handed out circus peanuts, one of her daughter’s brought chap sticks for everyone. Twinkies, Ding Dongs, beef jerky sticks, Reese's Peanut Butter cups, incense, Pepsi, new car scent tags for our cars----lots of laughter came with the stories. I told the history of the Turkish Delights and how one of my guilty pleasures is to occasionally try something new that’s made in another country. Several of the stories were so sentimental they came with tears as people told about the long-gone person who introduced them to their comfort food. And it was great hearing people talk about their Uncle Don (my husband). Everyone knew he would have brought coffee and our sister-in-law---the mother or grandmother of everyone in attendance---would have brought slices of Polish kielbasa. It’s kind of cool, really, how certain foods can bring back memories of certain people. My dad was the Fig Newton cookies guy and I can’t see Brach's Orange Slices candy without remembering my mom. 

Thanksgiving was a day of good food and fellowship and I came home with enough food for two more meals (plus a bag full of favorite things). No family in my life-long experience has ever had so many good cooks as in my husband’s. And no one had their noses buried in a cell phone. Being the oldest person in the room it was quite obvious---at least to me---that I crossed over ‘The Line’ a few times when I blurted out things I probably shouldn’t have, the way old people and young children do. For example, after my niece-in-law’s husband said, “I’m always careful” I blurted out “And yet you ended up with all these kids.” He was talking about carpentry but everyone laughed at my joke. It was one of those rare afternoons when I didn’t try to edit any of the words that passed over my lips. Unconsciously I knew that no matter what transgression I could make, I’d be forgiven. “That’s just Aunt Jean” and we love her flaws and all.

Why would they cut me slack when others might not get it? Because I came into the family 48 years ago as the barefoot, hippie girlfriend of the family’s baby brother. Don’s oldest brother---the deceased father or grandfather of everyone there on Thanksgiving---got a kick out of how much I shocked the uptight, next-in-line brother and how much I confused the ever elegant Cary Grant-like third-in-line brother. I was just as likely to sit down on the floor and play with the kids as I was to hang out with the adults. I didn’t drink or smoke but I could ride the pink elephant in the near-by park and I loved board games. They didn’t understand me but in their eyes I was a good influence on their baby brother. I only met Don’s father once because he died soon after but he sealed the deal for me when he told the family, “This is 'The One' Don needs to settle done with.” I remember that day as if it was yesterday. I was wearing a t-shirt with two giant foot prints on my chest and all the other ladies were dressed in their Sunday best---I didn’t know I was going to meet the family that day---and I sat on a footstool next to Don’s dad. He teased me unmercifully and I gave it right back at him. The rest is history. ©