Thanks­giv­ing is upon us!

Final­ly! The real thing is here, not a crazy Eng­lish use of the word that flum­mox­es all expat Amer­i­cans. It’s time for fig­ur­ing out how to make the body of the paper turkey for the cen­ter­piece (although I’m groov­ing to my fruit and veg bits here), it’s time to gath­er leaves from the gar­den and let them dry so they can be scat­tered here and there to please the kit­ties, it’s time to pro­duce mam­moth amounts of food for Anna’s fam­i­ly, plus Sophi­a’s fam­i­ly, who will be com­ing tomor­row. So I slept in this morn­ing while John took Avery to school (gee, it’s pleas­ant hav­ing two adults in the fam­i­ly, at home!), to gath­er strength for cook­ing all day today. That’s just about my favorite way to spend the day, in advance of a par­ty: in the kitchen, singing away to the new “West­life” album, I’m ashamed to say. Their cov­er of Bette Midler’s “The Rose” is to die for!

What a dif­fer­ence a year makes. Last Thanks­giv­ing we were hap­pi­ly hun­ker­ing down at our farm­house in Con­necti­cut, with the Sad­offs and the three Js, all of us mak­ing over Baby Jane, not the least David from across the road, since Anne had gone off to spend the hol­i­day with her moth­er Con­stance, daugh­ter of Gladys Taber, the great Martha Stew­art of the 1940s. Con­stance is also the author of two of our fam­i­ly’s absolute top 10 books: “A Skunk in the House,” and “The View from Morn­ing­side.” They each give the nicest pos­si­ble vision of a New York City child­hood in the 1970s. Any­way, with no sig­nif­i­cant oth­er, David came over to us for Thanks­giv­ing. I am always flat­tered when he comes over, espe­cial­ly on his own, because I sus­pect him of choos­ing his friends very care­ful­ly and pre­fer­ring often to be on his own. And prob­a­bly he should have been work­ing on his new book, giv­en the enor­mous suc­cess of his first book, “Crashout,” about a break­out at Sing-Sing prison where his fam­i­ly has a tra­di­tion of being guards! Fas­ci­nat­ing, believe me. But he came, and had my exper­i­men­tal brined turkey, which was such a hit that we’re repeat­ing it this year. I remem­ber our first Thanks­giv­ing in Lon­don the last time around, gosh it must have been 1990, and I paid some astro­nom­i­cal sum for an organ­ic turkey from the butch­er in Ful­ham Road, only to find that it was… rather pur­ple, had almost no breast, and in gen­er­al bore no resem­blance to the top-heavy Amer­i­can mon­ster that we had all come to know and love. Some things don’t need improv­ing on, in my crass opin­ion. So this year Becky and I con­ferred and found that we hearti­ly agreed with one anoth­er on this point, and a nice overfed unnat­u­ral­ly busty Mr Turkey is resid­ing in his salty, her­by bath, out­side my bed­room door. The school librar­i­an yes­ter­day alert­ed me to the very real pos­si­bil­i­ty of a fox in our gar­den, so the lid is, when our bird is not sub­mit­ting to a pho­to shoot, firm­ly anchored with a flower pot.

It was a morn­ing of good smells. Why does cel­ery always make me think of my Aunt Mary Wayne? I think it must be because we always spent Thanks­giv­ing with them when I was a lit­tle girl, in their per­fect home in Louisville, Ken­tucky, sur­round­ed by my Uncle Ken­ny’s Civ­il War mem­o­ra­bil­ia (and the very real pos­si­bil­i­ty that he was on The Oth­er Side than we Yan­kees from up North). When else do you real­ly have cel­ery sticks on the table? I nev­er do. But at Thanks­giv­ing, yes, my Aunt Mary Wayne would have a dish of them, and car­rots and pos­si­bly radish­es, to sprin­kle with salt and munch on when you were about to eat your sis­ter’s arm off, the turkey smelled so good. This was at the point of the hol­i­day when we were glad to be out of the car, our par­ents say­ing to one anoth­er in annoy­ance, “That was the exit! Or is it the next one? We do this every year…” So this morn­ing my cel­ery made me home­sick. Then I brushed away my onion-and-sen­ti­ment tears and start­ed chop­ping briskly for a Thanks­giv­ing dress­ing of my own design, loose­ly inspired by Lau­rie Col­win:

Sage and Sausage Dressing
(serves the mass­es, or maybe 10)

2 loaves of sim­ple white (unsliced) bread, Ital­ian maybe?
1/2 stick butter
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, minced
4 stalks cel­ery, chopped
8 medi­um mush­rooms, chopped
12 leaves fresh sage, chopped
1 pound sausage (I used pork and leek), out of casings
1 cup cream
chick­en stock (at least 2 cups, but depends on bread amounts)
2 eggs, whisked

If you pos­si­bly can, TWO nights before you want to eat it, tear the insides of the bread into lit­tle bite-size pieces. Feed the ducks with the crusts. Leave to get stale, toss­ing now and then. It is absolute­ly essen­tial to do this at least the day before. I tried once the day of, and the bread was too moist (hate that word) to absorb fla­vors prop­er­ly and it was a bust. So two days at best, one at least.

The day BEFORE, if you can (the fla­vors are so much bet­ter if they can rest togeth­er overnight), make the dress­ing. Saute the gar­lic, onion, cel­ery, mush­rooms and sage in the but­ter. Mean­while, saute the sausage, tak­ing care to break it up as much as pos­si­ble so it’s in small bites. Now, pour the veg­etable mix­ture and the sausage onto the bread, add the cream and at least two cups of stock plus the eggs, and begin mix­ing. Add more stock as you need it. The mix­ture should be wet, but not seep­ing liquid.

Pat into a non­stick-sprayed 9 x 13 pan, and leave overnight in the fridge. Pat on some but­ter bits over the sur­face and bake just before serv­ing, 45 min­utes at 375 degrees.

OK, I cooked too much today! The dress­ing, for which I had to make fresh chick­en stock from a nice pot of bones I had, plus the jalapeno-cheese spinach casse­role I shall tell you about tomor­row, and crazy juices for lunch, and then fresh toma­to sauce with ricot­ta and sausage for din­ner (on far­falle), plus a beet and avo­ca­do sal­ad! Of course, I think I worked it all off (lots of tast­ing, of course) ice-skat­ing out­side the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um with Avery and John, plus Sophia and Susan! It was pour­ing down rain, so some­what a non-ide­al cir­cum­stance, but still great fun, even more so than it was when Avery and I first arrived, last win­ter. Plus at the Christ­mas Fair there I acquired a cou­ple of wreaths, in lotus root and a small white blos­somy berry, from Jacky Weaver-Pronk, in Stanst­ed, Mount­fitch­et, Essex (one of those address­es I adore), and a Christ­mas present that shall go unde­scribed because some­one who reads this is the recip­i­ent, but here’s the cre­ator’s web­site. We zoomed Susan and Sophia home, crammed into Emmy, and then came home across the Park, gold­en leaves blow­ing every which way in the dark, across the wind­screen and into the car, with her top down. Glorious.

I shall go col­lapse with a love­ly Cal­va­dos and a book. Avery is deep into a sto­ry about a stal­lion for a book­store com­pe­ti­tion, so per­haps a bit of a read of that would do. Hap­py Thanks­giv­ing! I would­n’t trade being an Eng­lish per­son, much as I am an anglophile, and for all that some of them have pret­ty cool lives. Maybe on Fri­day. But not on Thanksgiving.