THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 24, 1994 TAG: 9411220243
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
It's five days before Thanksgiving as I write this and my plans for the day of big thanks, big parades and big birds are elaborate.
This is the year that every bit of the Thanksgiving dinner will be cooked by my own hands, served on fine china that hasn't seen the light of day since last Christmas and eaten with sterling silver flatware that will be shown off to advantage just as soon as I polish five years of tarnish from its surface.
It is the year that I will finally find my Army-Navy lace tablecloth with 12 matching napkins, the silver candlesticks that match my good silver, the fine ceramic turkey napkin holders last used when my 35-year-old son was a freshman at Tech and the monogrammed stemware that was packed away the year that same kid was a housewrecking toddler.
I will arrange a tasteful centerpiece using a carefully selected variety of fall flowers from the neighborhood florist's cooler and fix a turkey that is fresh, not frozen.
Our appetizer will be a sophisticated mock caviar morsel, which I will whip up from a Bon Apetit recipe and serve on imported crackers, available only at a small shop in Williamsburg. It will be served with a non-alcoholic drink that calls for 12 ingredients, most of which are unavailable east of the Mississippi.
There will be fresh cranberry-orange relish from the same recipe that caused my food processor to have a breakdown the last time I tried it, and the salad will be made to California specifications, providing the produce manager at my neighborhood super market can locate a source for those five greens with unpronounceable names.
He's also been alerted to the fact that I will need four different types of root vegetables, three kinds of squash, two pounds of onions no greater than one inch in diameter, fresh corn on the cob and the pettiest of petits pois (that's the smallest of small green peas for those of you who have forgotten your high school French.)
I will bake the rolls from scratch, kneading them by hand without so much as an assist from my breadmaker. The gravy will come not from a package but from pan drippings, giblets, flour and water. The stuffing, concocted from mashed potatoes, will adhere to the strict standards of a family recipe handed down from my grandmother.
The pies will be filled with Granny Smith apples, fresh pecans from my friend Jane's tree and pumpkin salvaged from a neighboring kid's jack-o'-lantern. The whipped cream will be real and the crusts will be assembled from one of those recipes that says ``cut in shortening with two knives.''
The cake will require five bowls, four hours and three pans to assemble and will be iced with something that calls for a pound of confectioner's sugar to make and a double dose of insulin to digest. The cookies will be shaped like small turkeys, covered with a reddish brown frosting and decorated with finely grated white chocolate.
Between courses, we will cleanse our palates with a sherbert made from fresh kiwis and an imported, non-sparkling mineral water.
The plans and menu for our holiday dinner are not new. I originally jotted them down in 1959, making only minor changes during the intervening 35 years.
I announce them in September of each year and fully intend to follow through with them until push comes to shove. Which, predictably each year, is just about now.
Earlier today my mother called to announce that she got a great buy on a frozen turkey that she'll drop by tomorrow so I can start working on it. It's an offer I can't refuse.
Nor can I refuse the one from Bill's mother who is contributing a couple of cans each of cranberry sauce and creamed corn, a box of stuffing mix and a cash donation for one of those frozen yogurt cakes she's been yearning for.
Bill has suggested that we not get into silver polishing, linen searching or a ceramic turkey hunt this year. Jane called to let me know that this year's pecan crop failed.
By tomorrow I suspect the produce manager will tell me that the kiwi shipment ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, the smallest available onions weigh in at 12 ounces each, it's been a bad year for root vegetables and Granny Smith has quit the apple business. So I'll pick up a few less exotic items and ask my mother to donate the apple pie I saw lurking at the bottom of her freezer last week.
By Tuesday, I will have had second thoughts about things like driving to Williamsburg for crackers, making mock caviar when the family would be happier with a bag of chips. I will decide not to beat the living daylights out of bread dough when the grocery store has great potato rolls on sale for 79 cents a dozen.
Which means that, as usual, we will sit down to give thanks for our many blessings over a meal of defrosted turkey with all of the almost-ready-to-eat-trimmings served on pottery dishes and eaten with stainless steel cutlery at a table covered with a permanent press cloth and decorated with paper pilgrims and the last few mums from my backyard garden. by CNB