Game Plan

Entering Thanksgiving week.  I serve as chef and host. Fewer guests than a year ago, just four.  None able to assist.  Dinner set for 2:30PM on Thanksgiving Day.

As with other centerpiece dinners, I crafted a menu by making a grid of food courses.  While I usually tap my cookbook collection and search for recipes online through a variety of keywords, this year's meal comes entirely from cyberspace.

1. French Bread for Motzi
2. Kasha Knishes for Appetizer
3. Butternut Squash Soup
4. Cucumber Salad
5. Roasted Half-Turkey Breast
6. Crock Pot Stuffing
7. Mediterranean Sweet Potatoes
8. Vegetable to be Determined
9. Citrus Cranberry Relish
10. Apple Strudel from Puff Pastry
11. Sparkling Cider

All recipes printed.  Shopping list assembled with acquisition in three stages.  I've been to Trader Joe's for staples best purchased there:  olive oil, eggs, butternut squash, turkey breast.  Shop-Rite supplies most other needs.  My current pantry holdings have been inventoried against the recipe ingredients.  Sprouts has the most appealing produce offerings, though at a slight premium to other places.  And sometimes they have gourmet coffee beans reduced, which I can grind to my needs on their grinder.

Meeting the dinner time deadline takes serial execution, multiple coordinated steps.  Shopping is under control.  Two essential items, the turkey and puff pastry, need removal from the freezer to thaw.  Figure Monday to prepare Thursday.  Most of my dining room creations, Seder, special birthdays, Mother's Day. Shabbos guests, all get served as late suppers.  I need those late afternoons for special touches.  Thanksgiving needs completion by mid-afternoon.  That means doing as much as possible in advance.  I set each printed recipe around the perimeter of the dining room table.  A few days in advance, I take out all non-perishable ingredients, placing them with the recipe for which they are most essential.  I try to take out the measuring devices, cups and spoons, to put on the table, along with the cooking implements that will be needed.  Five of the eleven items require the oven, so timing and bundling what can be baked together provides its own challenge.  Knish filling can be made the night before, as can the dough.  Then assemble in the morning until ready for baking.  The soup ingredients can be roasted the night before, then measured and assembled. Make salad 

By Thursday morning, early in the morning, I want to be assembling and heating.  Bread starts early as it needs time to rise.  Knish filling and dough can be made the night before, leaving me time to wash the mixer in anticipation of needing it early in the morning for bread.  That means my sink needs conversion to fleishig on Wednesday afternoon.  Then while bread rising, assemble the knishes, baking them either with the bread or with the turkey, depending on the oven temperature needed. 

Ingredients for the soup can be prepped the night before, assembled in the morning then cooked on the stove top where it will keep on a simmer indefinitely.  Cucumber salad needs marinating.  Best made the night before or very early Thursday.  Certainly, the components should be cut the evening before.

Turkey poses a challenge.  It is very easy to make.  Some celery and carrots around the perimeter of the bake pan, dry off the bird, oil it with olive oil, season with some type of poultry mix and black pepper.  Pop into oven for 90 minutes and set timer.  It will need to rest for about a half hour.  So to serve at 3PM it will need to go into the oven at about 12:30PM.  Other baking must work around that, including the bread and knishes and sweet potatoes.  The strudel, however, assembles and bakes early in the morning.  

I do not know which vegetable to make.  It is virtually always boiled for a few minutes, except beets which need roasting for about an hour.  I am the only one who likes beets, so I'll look for something green.  Sweet potatoes need some assembly.  Prep vegetables the night before.

Stuffing has to start the night before, as the bread needs cubing and drying in the oven.  Prep other ingredients like vegetables that will need inclusion.  All into the crockpot early in the morning.  Cook on high for an hour, then reduce to low and benign neglect until needed.

Cranberries are easy to make.  Citrus, sugar, water, berries.  Boil until popped.  Put lid on saucepan, then into refrigerator.

So that's the food.  An elegant, infrequent dinner involves more than food.  It requires presentation. Each table setting with fleishig utensils, dishes,  cloth napkins, and stemware.  Each food item attractively displayed.  Platters, tureens, salad bowls, salad -tongs, and other serving implements.  Set out in advance, which limits how I might use the dining table for preparation.

And when all is completed, cleanup. It typically takes me until Sunday to restore my kitchen to its pre-Thanksgiving condition.  Leftovers go in part to the guests, in part to microwavable containers.  Shabbos follows Thanksgiving.  The dining table needs to be repurposed, as does much but not all of the food.  Then my wife's birthday gets a special dinner the following week.  Cleanup in a steady efficient way takes some attention.

While the process of planning, execution, and restoration evolves over weeks, each component boosts my assessment of my own capacity.  I can begin with an idea, organize steps, visualize a final coherent event, and experience its glories.  No better satisfaction.  A process adaptable to creating many other forms of personal accomplishment.

Thanksgiving Table

Two weeks should enable a notable holiday.  While American in origin and practice, a Jewish element also has its place.  Rabbis in America, maybe elsewhere, debated whether turkey qualified as a Kosher bird.  It did, though I do not understand the uncertainties.  Then could Jews adopt the day as special?  It was not of pagan or idolatrous origin.  We did.  Its placement on Thursday also has a convenience.  Torah is read Thursday mornings.  In the era of automobiles, driving is prohibited on shabbos.  Many families arrange Bar Mitzvah celebrations on Thanksgiving, and now the Monday legal holidays, so that guests who would not be able to drive to the synagogue on Shabbos can attend on a weekday.  Having those days free from work also facilitates travel.  Moreover, appreciation, called Hakaras HaTov, recognition of The Good, unites Thanksgiving with a core Jewish value.

It has long been a demarcation holiday for me.  As the one who took medical call every Christmas to enable my colleagues some special time with their families, I could guarantee having Thanksgiving with my family. Once established as a kitchen maven, I could create a meal, part traditional, part surprise, that the others could not duplicate.

Now, we are empty nesters with minimal surviving family or at least readily accessible family. I anticipate only three or four at my table—three or four special people with their own preferences and idiosyncrasies.  Something special for them elevates them and challenges me.

As with most elegant kitchen intentions, I made a grid, this with twelve boxes instead of my more typical nine.

1. Motzi
2. Appetizer
3. Soup
4. Salad
5. Dressing
6. Turkey
7. Stuffing
8. Sweet Potatoes
9. Cranberry
10. Vegetable
11. Dessert
12. Beverage

I bake a bread at home.  I have my favorites.  Last year I made bialys.  This year, something in a loaf.

Appetizers challenge me.  An elegant one last year with beets, herring, and potatoes.  Simpler in presentation this year, though not necessarily in execution.  Soup and appetizer at the same meal, I rarely do.  But Thanksgiving warrants a special effort.  There are many options.  Traditional like mushroom-barley.  Seasonal like butternut squash.  Ethnic like harira.  I serve it with some elegance in a white tureen with porcelain ladle.  Salad tends to be simple.  Sometimes green, sometimes Israeli.  I gravitate to marinated salads like cucumber with red onion.  The dressing is usually incorporated into the salad recipe except for the green salad where I make the right amount of herbed vinaigrette.  Turkey depends on attendance.  For just a few, a half-turkey breast works well.  Olive oil, seasonings, roast 90 minutes, slice with an electric knife after resting.  It yields enough for me to give some to a guest for Shabbos and have some left for me the following night.  Stuffing I vary each year, though always with a basic foundation.  I find commercial stuffing cubes overpriced.  Instead, I cube my own bread, dry it in an oven, and assemble it with other ingredients.  Often I make it in a crock pot, as my oven has competition from other courses.  I've not yet tried the Instapot.  Sweet potatoes, cranberries, and apples appear in some form, either stand-alone or incorporated into something else.  Cranberry sauce with a citrus additive is simple to make.  Since it is served cold, I can make it on Wednesday, then refrigerate it.  I don't focus a lot on vegetables.  I happen to like beets, but few others share the fondness.  Easy to roast, goes well with everything else, adds unique color.  I might consider squash.  And there's green stuff:  broccoli, asparagus, haricots vert.  Cauliflower looks too pale on the plate.  Orange like carrots, my most common side vegetable, gets overwhelmed by the sweet potatoes.  Visual appeal matters here.

Desserts usually appear as a cake.  Polish apple cake is pareve.  I have recipes for puff pastry apple strudel.  Baklava is always among my favorites, though phyllo expensive and the process too tedious for other meal tasks.  

I am the only one who likes beer, but for Thanksgiving there are better options.  Many families splurge a bit on wine.  My guests shy away from alcohol.  Sparkling cider seems a compromise with something my guests would probably not buy for themselves.

There is food, and there is experience, both for me and for my guests.  Choosing them is straightforward.  Getting non-drivers to my home takes some planning, effort, and patience.  Elegance gets incorporated in different ways.  I have fine china but don't use it.  Instead, I set the table with ordinary fleishig dishes and utensils.  Bread on a tray, sliced with a serrated knife.  Appetizer on small plates.  Soup served in tureen, ladled into bowls. Salad onto the main plate, in an elegant bowl, served with either silver or wooden sets.  Turkey on a platter.  Stuffing in a bowl.  Sides in appealing bowls, plate or dishes.  Cake on a platter, served on dessert plates with dessert forks.  Stemmed goblets for the beverage.  Tea cups with saucers.  And energy reserved for the following day to wash the dishes and create a Friday night meal suitable for shabbos. 

Always worth the effort.  Planning, executing, concluding.  Many steps.  Me at my very best most of the time.

Sidetracked

Thanksgiving break has arrived. My OLLI Classes have suspended, In college Wednesday would have been a travel day.  I think public school still had classes on Wednesday but intercity travel, particularly air travel for family to assemble, was much less common than now.  Instead, Thanksgiving break has become a multifaceted demarcation point.  For some it is time off, for others seeing people not seen in a while.

My own interlude may need to focus on getting back on track.  Since my trip to Europe at the end of he summer, many of the other things I intended to do over this semi-annual cycle have found their way to the back burner.  I've done virtually no public writing, little focused reading, not been pursuing the home upgrades I thought I had aspired to, not engaged with friends as I might have.  Much of this purposeful activity found its way to screen time, those Twitter sinks or Reddit where at least my contributions are useful to other people.  I have had guests, even devoted some attention to the kitchen as I will for Thanksgiving, but at the cost of other things.  So the Did Instead wasn't nearly as valuable as what I had set out to do.

Some things have retained consistency.  Exercise goes mostly on schedule.  I get medical care largely as I should.  I have paid attention to finances and age related transitions.  But too much has gotten sidetracked with inadequate return on effort.

Thanksgiving, wife birthday, a couple of receptions, Hanukkah.  All purposeful.  Screen time, not adequately purposeful.

Turkeys

Thanksgiving and Seder have been my two most anticipated annual events for most of my adult life, at least my independent adult life in homes that I could call my own with kitchens that I controlled.  Since I covered the hospital every Christmas for my medical colleagues, I could always count on Thanksgiving as a free day.  Most years everyone assembled at my in-laws for both Thanksgiving dinner and Seder.  While living several hours distant as a medical resident, I tried to secure vacation time to allow the travel to their home for these holidays, succeeding about half the time.  Eventually we settled about an hour's drive away, raised my family, bundled everyone in the car.  As my in-laws became less able to prepare dinner, I began doing it, transporting the food to their home twice a year.  Once my sister-in-law became the sole occupant and my wife and I adapted to being empty nesters, the two elaborate dinners relocated to my kitchen and dining room.

Thanksgiving still has turkey as its centerpiece.  Seder once did as well, though with few people there are better entrée options, particularly things that my sister-in-law would not be able to obtain on her own with limited mobility.  

Turkey comes in a number of forms now, likely a commercial adaptation to smaller gatherings with families geographically scattered and smaller households.  While nothing beats that glorious whole roasted bird, bronzed skin as the olive oil coating and seasonings transform in a hot oven, it is not always practical.  Turkeys are now sold just as breasts, though at a premium per pound price.  I've not seen the legs sold separately, at least not for kosher turkeys.  No doubt, the booth operators at State Fairs around America purchase those legs, which they deep-fry and sell in large amounts.  I have seen turkey cutlets, boneless dark meat.  For four guests or less, and even for some Shabbat dinners with just my wife and me, I will purchase a breast half.  Very easy to make, just oil, season, put in a roasting pan or even a very large skillet, and let it roast for 90 minutes.  Carve with electric knife.  Eat what people can eat, give the rest away to guests or freeze for a subsequent shabbos.

But I still prefer having more people, enough to justify the Big Bird, my anticipated circumstance this Thanksgiving.  Turkey, even kosher turkey, was once an economical option.  It sold for under $2/lb, usually Empire frozen, mass-produced.  And they salted it before freezing, as kashrut requires.  Supermarkets would give them away if you bought enough other things at that store, or drastically reduce the price as a loss-leader to sell more profitable stuffing and pies.  Not so anymore.  Price now about $3.50 or even $4/lb, which would make a 15lb bird about $55.  And the selection has faltered the past few years.  While it is tempting to assign blame to the supply chain failures since the pandemic, kosher turkeys are raised and slaughtered in just a few places that do not require international shipping or sophisticated rail transit.  My main supermarket, Shop-Rite, has only frozen kosher turkeys, and at a look at their freezer, far fewer choices than they once offered.  Most are quite large, in the neighborhood of 18lb.   I only saw one under twelve pounds, something more appropriate to a small gathering.  Trader Joe's has better stuff, in a private arrangement with Empire.  Their turkeys are not frozen, or once were and pre-thawed by the retailer.  Virtually all are of uniform size, about 15 lb. And they sell out fast.  Last year they were all gone before I was ready to purchase, so this year I got one as soon as they went on display.

I moved some things around on the bottom shelf of my refrigerator to accommodate its bulk.  It will stay there until Thursday morning when the plastic wrapping can be cut, usually a fair amount of liquid drained, and a roasting pan prepared by scattering some past prime vegetables around its perimeter.  Place a rack in the middle.  Put in turkey, maybe put something in the cavity.  Coat with olive oil, season with whatever catches my fancy Thursday morning, pre-heat oven, and make it the final dish that needs the oven.  Some food mavens recommend rotating the turkey periodically, which I do as well.  But mostly it's set the timer and wait for it to reach its conclusion, check the thigh temperature for completeness, then let it rest.  

It's gotten more difficult to obtain, more expensive to purchase.  But still the Thanksgiving dinner of choice.

Thanksgiving Menu

Thanksgiving has been another demarcation day for me over many years.  In school it was not only a long weekend, but an appetizer for the much longer school break to follow, though perhaps also in college that needed reminder that finals needed some intense study after the long weekend.  In my medical years, since I covered everyone else for Christmas, I could count on Thanksgiving off.  As a homeowner, leaf raking took place at maximum intensity that weekend, time shared with kitchen chores.  And it was my turn to plan and execute one of my two annual elaborate dinners, using the inspirations of my growing cookbook collection, later the skills from Food TV.

Now in my later years, an empty nester, guests are fewer.  Somebody else deals with the leaves in the form of mulching with the weekly mowing.   It is a long weekend from OLLI Classes, and maybe still a prelude to a longer university hiatus where I manage to take a short trip most years.  But dinner, its planning and execution, keep it one of my annual calendar landmarks.

My guest list numbers six, a number to match my dining room chairs.  I might even add a leaf to the dining room table, something I've not had to do for many years.

Menu planning started by cookbook browsing, but will become more focused.  The format is largely set.

1. Motzi
2. Appetizer
3. Soup
4. Salad
5. Dressing
6. Turkey
7. Stuffing
8. Cranberry Sauce
9. Sweet Potatoes
10. Vegetable
11. Dessert
12. Beverage

Since it is not shabbos, the bread need not be a challah.  I have my favorite, but I also do not like to repeat individual dishes, unlike many families who have their classics.  I've always made loaf bread for Thanksgiving, but there's no reason I couldn't make bialys or rolls instead.  The appetizer offers some leeway.  I've stuffed vegetables, made samosas.  Imagination prevails here.  Soup tends to be chicken based, a chance to clear my freezer of carcasses.  Add something easy like noodles or rice.  Could make harira, something not suitable for Seder.  Or a fish soup.  Salad has greens most years.  This needs a vinaigrette, homemade.  Or Israeli or Eastern European salads go well, with the dressing part of the recipe.  For six diners I get a whole turkey.  Simple preparation, carved with electric knife.  The stuffing is baked separately, always bread based.  Cranberries are obtained as a fresh package, then boiled with sugar.  Some years I create a flavored additive.  Sweet potatoes also allow me to surf through recipes.  There are a lot of ways to make these.  In November Shop-Rite usually offers a five pound package at a significant discount.  For the vegetable, I like to use one that is green but can be influenced by what is on sale.  Carrots are for Rosh Hashanah.  And dessert tends to have apples, though not always.  Apple cakes can be made pareve.  Or a honey cake with more additives than the no frills variety I typically make for the Holy Days.  And wine.  And a bottle of the evil soda.

Cleanup takes two days, also part of the challenge.  In addition to creating the menu, Thanksgiving is also the time when the kitchen becomes mine.  I have everything I need, cooking utensils, oven, crock pot, knives, mandolin with nearby first aid kit.  Appliances with mixers, choppers, processors.  Workspace.  A sink prepped as fleishig before I begin.  Gratitude, which is the essence of the celebration, includes appreciation for a fully working fleishig kitchen capable of creating something that guests would have difficulty duplicating on their own.  And some gratitude for my own physical capacity to do this and for the ability to have some fun creating the menu, devising what could be a complex game plan for preparation, and relaxation as I clean up and ease into shabbos the following day.

But now, some kitchen organizing and some recipe exploration.

Cancelling

My wife sang in a concert a few days back.  The principal tenor, present for rehearsals, cancelled out just a few days prior to the performance, having developed symptomatic Covid.  A replacement, a very capable one, was recruited on short notice allowing a magnificent performance of Mozart's Requiem to take place.  The church providing the venue overflowed its parking lot and filled nearly all its lower level.

Now a few days later, my wife develops respiratory symptoms and achiness.  Thermometer 101.6F.  Covid PCR +.  In my refrigerator I have a mostly thawed 17 pound Big Bird, $58 worth, but guests have been disinvited.  I now have sniffles myself, but no fever.  Still a colonoscopy looms in six days with my wife as designated driver and me on quarantine.  And air travel in two weeks.

Need to do some phone time.  Donate turkey, or make every effort to do that.  Reschedule endoscopic procedures.  Buy some more home covid tests or maybe have one done at the pharmacy for myself.  Having had a booster, only one, I do not have to self-isolate but do have to mask.  And see what happens to the sniffles.  Then next month, relent and get the next booster

To the best of my memory, I've not missed Thanksgiving before.  One year in medical school I purchased a reheatable kosher TV turkey dinner from Sol & Ely's Kosher butcher in St. Louis.  Even as a physician, since I worked every Christmas, I could anticipate being off for Thanksgiving.  

My own temperature is normal this morning, though I have subtle suggestions of early symptoms.  Just cancel whatever would get me in contact with anyone for the long holiday weekend.  And take advantage of some unanticipated Me Time.

Tale of the Kosher Turkeys

 

And other Thanksgiving adventures.

In my freezer I have a half turkey breast, enough for three with some extra to give my sister-in-law for shabbos.  With five people, a small whole turkey or whole turkey breast would be better.  For Kosher turkeys, Trader Joe's contracts with Empire to provide unfrozen birds.  They had only one on my trip there last week, maybe just slightly larger than I wanted, and too soon to buy a fresh one.  I opted to return with enough time to thaw a frozen one from Shop-Rite if Trader Joe's still did not have one.  They didn't.  Moreover, their customer service agent told me no new ones would be coming.  So on to Shop-Rite.  No fresh ones.  No turkey breasts.  Not that many whole frozen ones, the smallest just under 17 pounds. Their meat department rep assured me they had no others in the freezer.  I put it in the cart.  Now I could see if Super G had one, but being risk averse, I did not want to lose what I had just acquired, as there was just enough time to thaw a bird that size in the refrigerator.  Or I could stretch out that half turkey breast, or maybe go back to TJ to see if they had a second half turkey breast which would feed everyone between the two halves.  I played it safe, purchasing the Big Bird, $58 worth.  It will thaw.  Leftovers will freeze for many a shabbatot to follow, made even more economical with poultry soup once the carcass is harvested.  And along the way I got all the other things I needed supplemented by a few things I didn't need.

At checkout, the register tape informed me that if I spend just another $13 before Thanksgiving, I qualify for their premium, usually a whole Empire chicken or vegetarian illusion of turkey.  Chicken the better option but it takes up freezer room.  I'll return and find a way to spend another $13 to get a premium worth $16.

I do not have a good sense of why Kosher turkeys have become scarce.  Standard turkeys, mostly frozen seem plentiful, though a bit expensive, defrayed by the Shop-Rite incentive which includes them as a redemption premium.  And the sizes vary a lot more.  Empire has a virtual monopoly on this.  They operate their main plant just a few hours from where I shop, so international transportation snafus would be a lot less than for the other poultry mass producers.  Maybe they have difficulty getting labor.  Maybe their contracted farmers don't want to make deals with them.  Perhaps they have a shochet shortage, as their slaughtering cannot be mechanized.

And the absence of small birds deserves a comment.  There was a discussion in the Haredi community as they populated America as to whether the turkey was a Kosher bird.  The experts ruled that it was.  Then they debated whether it was appropriate to celebrate an American holiday with Thanksgiving's origins.  It was ruled OK but not mandatory.  Also convenient, as Torah is read in synagogues every Thursday.  This enabled Bar Mitzvah ceremonies that relatives who would need to drive could attend.  A big turkey or two provides for a luncheon.  Today, those are the largest families among the Jews, and the most who also routinely engage in communal meals.  So selling them large turkeys makes business sense.

The rest of us have gotten smaller families, often hard to assemble in a single gathering for a single meal.  That's my family.  When I go to shabbos morning services, thinking about how our congregation could serve its members better, I will sometimes count who had shabbos dinner alone the night before.  About half the people in attendance.  More of us are couples.  A few of us have children nearby, too far to come for shabbos, within driving range for Thanksgiving.  And a few of us have siblings that can assemble without air travel.  But large gatherings seem the exception.  The marketplace usually adapts to this.  It looks like Empire Kosher Poultry hasn't.

Dinner Game Plan

Thanksgiving should be a little more populated this year with son and daughter-in-law joining us for a few days.  A chance to see what I can do in the kitchen and has host.  First a menu, all set.

1. Italian Bread for Motzi
2. Corn fritters
3. Butternut Squash soup with coconut milk
4. Cucumber chili salad
5. Whole Roast Turkey
6. Crock Pot stuffing
7. Sauteed Asparagus
8. Sweet Potato Casserole
9. Cranberry Sauce
10. Pumpkin Maple Bundt Cake
11. Assorted Beverages

Fair number of ingredients to get, but a list now under a magnet on the refrigerator door.  Probably a bottle or wine or two.  Have a bottle of sparkling cider.  No Soda.  I may have to not sample a couple if restricted by pending endoscopy preparation.

I need utensils and space.  Oven for bread, turkey, casserole, and cake, with duration of use and sequence taken into account.  Crock pot starts early, as does bread which needs to rise.  Stovetop has four burners to be allocated over fritters, soup, asparagus, and cranberry sauce.  Salad made cold.

Don't know yet if I will need to thaw the turkey, depends on if TJ has fresh Kosher ones of suitable size.  Some measuring to do, expect to use my full contingent of measuring devices.  And mixers, food processor, bowls, sheet pan, skillets, pots, bundt pan.  Bought a new salad bowl.  Knives for chopping and slicing, all sharpened in advance.  Probably will need a strainer.  

By late afternoon, a fully set Thanksgiving table with perhaps a few misadventures and first-aid in the process.

Some Shopping

 

Went to the stores, Shop-Rite for serious and large food purchases and then some early browsing for Hanukkah gifts, which I like to have at least selected, if not in hand, by Black Friday.  Two very different experiences, resulting in relatively erroneous impressions of how voters might respond to their shopping realities, as voting proceeded while I shopped.

Food has definitely gotten expensive.  And for people in retirement like me, counting on our IRAs, their value has headed south while the need to spend some of those funds has moved higher.  Shop-Rite issues a weekly newsprint ad that arrives unsolicited in the mail but is duplicated online.  I read it, note what is on sale, then create a shopping list from it.  Easy.  I also try to create menus for the near future from those ingredients, much like the super chefs of Iron Chef had to make the most of the ingredients mandated for them at Kitchen Stadium.  Not easy, but both manageable and something of a personal challenge.  Shop-Rite puts the items on the front page of their weekly circular right at the entrance to the store, so things go in the cart quickly.  Others things notably discounted go at the end of aisles.  Experience at navigating their store has a big advantage.

Not all items have inflated in price equally.  Produce remains seasonal, despite farming becoming global with fruits and vegetables imported from the Southern Hemisphere whose farming seasons differ from mine.  You still have to get the products from there to here, with transportation now more expensive and less reliable.  So fruits and vegetables still peak with the seasons, reflected in part in price.  Apples approaching season, down tick in price, uptick in menu presence as Thanksgiving approaches.  Meat has gotten expensive, even though produced domestically with animals fed things generated on American farms.  Kosher meat, my personal exclusive for religious reasons, has limited availability, limited selection, and approaching a prohibitive price.  Still I found four chicken breast halves notably reduced.  They come in pairs, but easy enough to re-wrap each individually at home and freeze.  Makes four shabbos dinners if we eat alone.  

Processed foods pose more of a pricing challenge, some explainable, some not so easy to rationalize.  I like making lasagna.  Noodles on sale, frozen spinach economical, block cheese which I shred about what it usually costs, jarred spaghetti sauce cheap and often on sale.  Cottage cheese above budget.  Have no explanation why, particularly when its shelf neighbors sour cream and cream cheese remain within acceptable price range, even discounted one brand each week.  Butter very expensive.  Yogurt with stable price.  Cake mixes discounted.  Staples of flour and sugar, each requiring factory processing and packaging more expensive than I've ever seen them.  Soda eliminated from diet for health reasons but at prices I've not seen before. Yet seltzer, which is flavored rather than sweetened, has shown stability of price across brands.  Interestingly, fish has become my go-to protein.  Now harvested in bulk and packaged at sea.  Sold frozen, keeps forever, just pull a couple of fillets to thaw the day before needed and nature supplies its version of fast food.  Per meal price OK, per pound price has stabilized after an acceleration that predated our current food inflation.  Cookies, cereals, and other items where the packaging has more nutritional value than the product have exceeded what I am willing to pay, though selected items are always discounted by the store each week.  In order to make these, producers create marketing and R & D teams to develop just the right sensory and packaging experience to lure the consumer at maximum price.  To do this, they often assemble an ingredient list that is both extensive and global.  This makes these products highly susceptible to price and availability fluctuations of individual components and the vagaries of transportation needed to get all this stuff to central factories so that all ingredients are available at the same time for production.  These packaged goods prices seem highest of all.  I am sort of at the mercy of mini-challots, now about $5 for a package of six, or three shabbos dinners, though I could make my own.  Alas, my own attempts at mini-challot have not gone well, and probably not worth the effort for a small savings.  

Consumers may divide into two camps.  There are people like me, probably a minority, who adapt their diets to price and availability. This may be the human default, as our hunter-gatherer ancestors really had no other option.  Changing shopping preferences comes as a challenge.  Giving up convenience foods may even generate better health.  And then there are people who like their products, will pay what is asked, and maybe find a whipping boy for their displeasure, be it the store or the elected official, neither of whom is truly responsible, though each is accountable.  Our food inflation exposes oodles about markets and supply.  It also reveals, perhaps, more than we would like about some of us as people and our collective willingness to adapt.

Non-perishable Hanukkah shopping went differently.  My list now totals twenty items with a need to stay within budget and to be able to ship items to remote locations.  While I judged it premature to purchase, there was no shortage of what I could purchase.  As the Eagles are currently undefeated, anything with their logo has inflated, likely based on consumer demand and licensing fees.  But grooming supplies, stationery, stuff with a cat logo, apparel accessories, petty edibles like candy, and things to make the kitchen friendlier seem to have avoided the dramatic price increases so obvious at the supermarket.  

As I approach Thanksgiving, where food splurges intersect with personal traditions, I probably have only a few perishables to add to food obtained yesterday.  I have created the menu and can anticipate the blend of challenge and joy executing it.  That same two weeks, and likely a little more, can be diverted to selecting gifts, thinking about the personalities and likes of the four individual recipients, that will enhance their own festivities without undue extravagance on my part.  

Planning Thanksgiving Dinner

Only four weeks off.  Always one of my premier annual efforts, usually successful though with enough daring to sometimes flop and more often than not create a minor injury.  Always know where the first aid kit can be found in the kitchen.

Unlike other dinners which go by categories, this one is modified to incorporate ingredients.  Turkey for sure, though a half breast instead of a big bird.  I have a large roasting chicken, but while the right amount of meat for everyone and it presents on a platter as a whole bird, it wouldn't be a suitable substitute. Stuffing is a must. Sweet potatoes, cranberries, and apples need to appear on the menu.  They come in different forms, though.  I always make bread.  Appetizers are the course most likely to fail.  Dessert is the course most likely to delight.  While cranberries usually get made into sauce, I have incorporated them into dessert.  

For Thanksgiving in recent years, I leave my many cookbooks on the shelf, instead searching the internet for what I want to make, the bread for motzi being the exception, as I really like the Hungarian farmhouse loaf that I make most often.  But this year, I'll seek out motzi electronically.  I can search by dish, such as appetizer or dessert, by pareve, by ingredient like sweet potato, or by what my favorite kitchen masters have to offer.

I think one of the attractions for this has been the diverse ways the final result can be created, from planning, purchasing, to the final kitchen execution.  One of my more stimulating post-retirement challenges.

Hanukkah Arrives

First candle had its thirty minutes of flame.  Gift opened.  Latkes eaten with applesauce.  Turnover of events: Thanksgiving, Shabbos, Hanukkah.  Special kitchen effort for each.  Then Medscape, Doctor, platelets, Birthday, special guest, vacation.  All before the majority get their holiday.  Vacation sounds good.

Post-Thanksgiving Dishes

Dinner went well except for the apple cake that fell apart when I tried to unmold it from its bundt pan.  As much as I try washing dishes as I go, priority needs to go to utensils used in early preparations that I will need later.  Except for the food processor used early, there are not a lot of One and Dones.

Just as executing a pre-planned menu takes some sorting and organization, so does cleanup the next day.  I start with what already soaks in the fleishig tub until it fills up the dish drying rack.  Then move leftwards to counter, stove, cutting board, and dining room table.  Some flexibility is needed.  There are utensils that cannot soak in a tub, others that need hand drying as soon as washed.  I do the glassware separately with a brush and skillets with a synthetic form of steel wool.

One rack at a time, this will take most of the day.  Yet I find it surprisingly relaxing.  Elements of frustration rarely emerge.  I can see my progress at every step.  Few things convey the gratification of accomplishment before completion.

Converging Tasks

FB sent me a memory reminder from two years ago.  At the time, I had been making preparations for Thanksgiving, but several other projects needed some juggling at the same time.  For some reason the latter half of November might emerge as my busy season in retirement. My Thanksgiving menu has taken form, ingredient list available, with next step to confirm what I have and what still needs purchase. But before that I committed to a medical presentation, now completed except for the thank-you notes.  My monthly Jewish donations come due.  Monthly financial status review precedes Thanksgiving.  I have a Medscape column to compose and submit, a few more OLLI classes before the semester concludes.  Right after Thanksgiving we have Hanukkah with my wife's birthday and daughter's visit during that interval.  And then a somewhat overdue vacation that still needs preparation.  Somewhere in that interval I need to establish a new safe deposit box and decide what goes in it.  

No single project seems daunting but their accumulation in a short time definitely alters the time flow of retirement.

Thanksgiving Preparation

Thanksgiving, while a small gathering, takes place at my home.  It also challenges me with preparation, both as chief chef and as host.  Three weeks remain, to include cleaning, shopping, meal preparation, some lessons in small talk, maybe a few YouTube sessions on family congeniality, with shabbos and dishwashing to follow.  Thus far I do not know who will need feeding or transport.  My daughter had been joining us but delayed her return to the East Coast by about a week.  My son and daughter-in-law now live within driving range but have not announced their plans.  It is unlikely I will need a turkey.  The single breast half should get us through shabbos.

In past years, I've made both soup and appetizer.  I think I'll omit the latter this year.  That brings menu categories to:

1. Motzi
2. Soup
3. Salad
4. Dressing
5. Turkey
6. Cranberry 
7. Sweet Potato
8. Vegetable
9. Dessert
10. Beverage 

Basic categories allow a lot of flexibility, laws of Kashrut providing the most restriction, along with practicalities of expense and ease of preparation.  I don't need any new utensils or appliances.  I will need to decide whether to use cookbooks or online recipes, though I really like the bread from one of my cookbooks.  Probably alcohol-free unless my son comes.  Having banned the evil soda from my home, I think wine would be his preferred substitute.  

I tend not to decorate as a theme, even for Hanukkah which this year follows Thanksgiving by only a few days and has its own cuisine.  

If my Thanksgivings now have a paucity of people, they retain the abundance of food and my satisfaction with assembling the parts to make the weekend festive.

Excessive Food

Between Thanksgiving and my wife's birthday, we have a lot of food, milchig and fleishig.  Had we a full contingent for Thanksgiving, six of us with two returning home after dinner, most of Thanksgiving would have been consumed or packaged, with a little remaining for us for shabbos.  As it is, recipe writers and food manufacturers have not really adapted well to the reality of people living alone or as empty nesters in ordinary times, made even more obvious by restrictions that Covid-19 safety has imposed on most of us.  I've not adapted to scaling down recipes or preferentially selecting those where excess can be frozen.  I'm not even sure I really have the cookware to make individual or double portions.  For my wife's birthday I made coulibiac which goes in a pie plate which seem pretty standard in size.  The almond torte goes in a springform pan, where I only had one designated milchig, though that I could have cut the ingredients and maybe baked it in an 8-inch skillet with parchment paper instead of a springform.  At least for the glazed carrots I took out the right amount.

Thanksgiving was harder.  I bought a half turkey breast which is easy to prepare and leftovers freeze well.  Soup could have been scaled back if I used fresh beans, which I did, but canned beans usually only come in one size.  Large cans of diced tomatoes can be portioned in plastic bags or they now come in small cans with some spice added.  Tomato paste can be used in the amount needed, the rest frozen in a sandwich bag and needed amounts broken and thawed later.  While the ratatouille excelled, it needs a variety of vegetables and therefore big quantity.  Better to make single vegetables and limited amounts of salad.  Stuffing can be scaled or frozen.  Cakes are hard to portion, either as partial recipes or finding smaller baking utensils.

I will likely have to send a lot of food to waste this time.  I enjoy the preparation and output, but need to reconsider portioning more appropriate to my circumstances.

Thanksgiving Week

 

This Thanksgiving will have a different form.  I've been alone before.  During my medical school years, I lived far from everyone else.  A classmate who observed kashrut would arrange a caterer to make dinner for his extended family and include me, though when he departed for a year in Israel, that invitation no longer came.  I made a turkey tv dinner from Sol & Ely's Kosher Butcher.  My aunt who usually made the family dinner would mail me some edible, though ironically via my mother's will which my uncle actually wrote, they were in fact stealing from me at the time.  As a resident and newlywed, I would try to make it to my in-laws for their dinner, succeeding two years of three, linked to a scheduled week's vacation.  

Thanksgiving, alone or amid family, always marked a landmark on my calendar.  School would suspend for a long weekend.  As a college student, I could take a bus or train to my father's house while those attending college from farther away stayed on campus.  Because of the extended weekend, and therefore classes earlier in the week underattended as some kids had to take a day or two off to travel with their families, those classes earlier in the week were often a review or catchup of less intensity than the rest of the semester.  One set of exams had been completed.  Pre-college midterms were a way off, college finals loomed with a few study breaks incorporated into that class free hiatus.

While Thanksgiving Day marked the apex, it was really a week's change in direction.  Returning home from college meant friends at other colleges also returned to their homes.  Old friends usually found a way to get together, usually informally.  We didn't think of college or pro athletes having the same entitlement to time off.  Some collegiate leagues had completed their schedules but others were making their final push for a bowl invitation or preparing for a bowl already secured.  Pros scrambled for league position, We watched on TV as they played.  For those with a yard, we were expected to pitch in with leaf disposal.  And those dinners would have extended families in attendance with somebody else preparing the meal.

Time brought me to adulthood, more responsibility.  Since I covered the hospitals for Christmas, I could count on Thanksgiving Day or even the extended weekend off from my medical duties.  Now I had the house, children in school with their Thanksgiving schedules, leaves to rake but for a long time dinner deferred to other people, though driving to the dinner assigned to me.  I worked pretty hard, the early days of the week just as intensely as any other work days, meaning I could use as much recreation as a few days away from work would allow.  It was not always that way.  Eventually as the children became adults, the generations turned over, and geography took its toll, Thanksgiving week changed.  Somebody could be paid to do the leaves.  I had taken a liking to cooking elaborate dinners so I became the caterer, transporting dinner to my in-laws.  Eventually it made more sense for people to come to me, which they did, though fewer of them as people became less willing to travel or ideological differences became unacceptable animosities.  I still watched football.  And the time remained more of a week with days of preparation, execution, and anticlimax of dishwashing and shabbos which always followed.

With some pandemic reality, I am back to my medical school and residency days, just me with my wife.  One child has his new family to absorb him as my in-laws absorbed me.  The other opted for the safe route, staying on America's other coast.  One regular guest decided to adhere to her state's Coronavirus control restrictions and stay home. But I'm still the caterer who thinks of this time more of a week than a day.

It's still a week delineated by a day.  Food acquisition early in the week, preparation with enjoyment Thursday, dishwashing and shabbos Friday and Saturday.  Indifferent to football as the teams have their own coronavirus restrictions which has detracted from level of performance for most and from hype for everyone.  Leaves again contracted out.  Osher Institute on intercession with no anticipation of return after the week concludes.  Less festive for sure.

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.

Black Friday 2019

My personal challenge, maybe my contribution, has been to make Thanksgiving dinner, followed by shabbos dinner, followed by my wife's birthday, with Hanukkah tossed to the calendar mix some years, though not this year.

Holiday shopping challenged me as well, thinking about the recipient as an individual with , things they like to do, teams they root for, and their elements of heritage, all of which can be translated to small gifts.

Circumstances change over the years, both for me and for the normal function of the world.  The gift list is much smaller, challenge of staying in budget much higher.  Stores are now open Sundays, a novelty in Boston when I first started this.  I no longer have to go to work on usual workdays and I am now rather attentive to not shopping on shabbos, now that there are ample other opportunities, though my regard for other Jewish elements may have waned.  And my dinners have become more grand, served at my house, leaving me with quite a lot of dishes to do. 

While we have on-line access to purchasing, it does not pay for items under $10.  For birthday gifts of larger cost that need transport, it's the way to go, for shipping on my own, I keep the gift selections light. 

Black Friday has itself changed.  Stores now open in the evening on Thanksgiving.  They used to open at 4-5 AM the following day, with steep discounts.   The ads would come in a large newspaper edition, and still do.  I would target one or two items, either for myself or for my wife's birthday gift, set out before dawn for Value City, of blessed memory, make a bee line for what I want to get, pay for it and be on my way before rosy-fingered dawn came over the parking lot.  No reason to do that now.  I don't need anything, don't particularly want anything, and wife's birthday gift is better expressed as an experience over a product.  The retailers have figured this out.  Stores open either at 6 o7 AM, the early bird discounts leave me unimpressed.   I wash dishes instead.

Prepping Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving dinner has been my challenge for a long time.  I would make it, planning the menu weeks in advance, then transport the whole thing to my in-laws.  Since my mother-in-law's passing, it made more sense for the people to come to us, which is how it has been.

The day and the meal have their traditions, American ones and personal ones.  Like many families, the gathering has become less populated for a host of reasons ranging from kids who have moved away to Trumpanzee relatives who avoid hostility or hard feelings by not coming.  I will cook for whoever comes.

My menu has its fixed and variable points.  Turkey remains a centerpiece, though no longer the big glorious bird which has gotten rather expensive with not enough people to eat it.  Empire makes a half-breast which I will make for shabbos sometimes and in recent years for Thanksgiving as well.  Appetizers vary.  I made something with Tofu last year.  Soup varies, typically mushroom and barley.  This year tomato with Israeli couscous seem the top choice.  Salad varies less.  Greens now come already cut and triple washed so I have made garden salads.  Israeli salads are easy to make.  I think I'll make a cabbage slaw this year.  Cranberry sauce come from the berries that I boil myself.  There are variants of this but mostly sugar, water, and cranberries.  Sweet potatoes come in a variety of preparations but there is always something with sweet potato.  I've been making stuffing in the crock pot because it is easy and keeps the oven clear for other things.  For a vegetable I get what is on sale that week.  I do not know why brussels sprouts dominate on line searches of Thanksgiving menus.  I like them but not everyone does.  And I've never made a green bean casserole.  Green beans on sale can be made plain or dressed with nuts or sauces.  For dessert, I usually make something with apples.  Strudel or apple cake this year.  The apple cake is a lot easier.  And beverage is usually soda or sparkling cider.  Last year I got wine and might again this year.

It challenges me.

November Under Way

If May is lusty, which I've never quite found it, then November might be reflective.  Thanksgiving gathers a dwindling cohort of family but still challenges my mind to arrange an repast second only to Seder and challenges my tenacity in executing it, with major cleanup the following two days.  Veterans Day was intended to be reflective but the hundred years since the original World War I armistice moved memory to history.  Still, a small moment of genuine respect remains for those who participated.

Medicare, of which I am now a beneficiary, has its Open Season, the chance to change supplementary options.  I've not raked leaves in many years but it used to be a major November initiative.  Some years, but not this one, Hanukkah arrives by November's end.  Even though it spans the Christmas season this calendar year, I reserve shopping time.  Partly I like to have it done before the Xmas crush, partly gift giving affords a chance to reflect on what each recipient is like and what captures their individual interests.

My father's yahrtzeit usually appears in November, now approaching its tenth anniversary.  But this being a Jewish leap year, it does not appear until December.  My mother's birthday was November 7, an annual day of celebration in her lifetime.  And since my wife's birthday appears just beyond the monthly transition to December, some November thought goes into that celebration.

November also marks the 2/3 point of my semi-annual projects.  I have a good inkling of what has gone well, what to pursue a little more, what be better abandoned or replaced.

Some years, but not this one, we vote.  Sometimes I'm with the majority, sometimes not.  But with this task, along with the others, November might really be about deciding what I stand for and pursuing it, whether at the ballot, with family, or the things I do on my own behalf.