Next Holiday: Thanksgiving

My two favorite holidays, Pesach and Thanksgiving, center around elaborate dinners.  Most people think that it's the people gathering around the tables that make the festivities, but the last few years have posed a few challenges.  Toxic divisive public figures promoting confrontation bring people seeking confrontation to those dinner tables.  The holidays reflect a different view but the people who I would ordinarily invite are steadfast, so like many of us I have to choose between people and holiday.  For Pesach I've chosen people, for Thanksgiving I've chosen holiday.  While animosities can be set aside, justified disrespect has this aftertaste.  The purpose of gathering around our table must advance the holiday.  When it undermines it, the holiday stays, the people are sent into exile to repackage their own holidays.  Not a whole lot different than Hagar and Ishmael being unfriended or Lot selecting Sodom for its bounty.  They'll claim their turf. I won't challenge theirs but I will defend the sanctity of mine.

Covid changes the reality as well.  The risk of travel, particularly by car, may exceed the risk of hospitalization or death from the virus.  Travel we are used to and accept the risk, a lethal virus in our midst seems less acceptable.  My dinner table can be adapted to fewer people very easily.

So I'm back to food, though not exactly food as much as the pleasure I get from designing the meal and assembling it.  I've been through recipes, some familiar, some a new adventure.  That glorious roast turkey which can be eaten to gluttony, segmented for guests to take a portion home for shabbos the next evening, with a remaining carcass for soup later has given way to the more practical half turkey breast.  It is easy to prepare, though this year I think I will use a thermometer instead of depending on my timer.  I like crock pot stuffing but my crock pot lid needs replacement.  A barley kugel looks like the way to go.  For a salad, red cabbage and pears.  I hesitated on my preferred recipe as it calls for small amounts of port and red wine, but I can drink whatever we have leftover a little at a time.  Sweet potatoes have not yet gone on sale.  I have a recipe for a baked givetch vegetable medley.  And my synagogue assembled a cookbook about 20 years ago that offers a few cranberry options.  For dessert, something I've made before, a cranberry apple oatmeal torte.  And I think I'll try making some minestrone soup.

So the people have lost their centerpiece, replaced by my creativity and dedication.