Thanksgiving with a Spine

Thanksgiving turned out well...probably the best meal we've had in years. I have no idea if I can ever replicate it. In my experience, there's definitely a magic of the moment that makes cooking a gamble.  For instance, last year, I'd had spine surgery right before and we had a grease fire in the oven to boot. Last year, there was no magic lol. It was all chaos on fire in a dumpster. 

I didn't do anything special this year. Just went with the classics. But the flow was with me. The meal came together effortlessly.

Everything was very basic. Foil on the turkey, no basting, no brining, just some herbs, butter, and stock at the bottom of the pan, and it came out perfectly. I made a simple homemade cranberry sauce, no add ins, and honestly, it was brilliant. 

You know, sometimes I think we get recipes with fifteen different ingredients because people are trying to make a name for themselves. Like, if I started a food blog and told you to just do water, the exact right amount of sugar, and year old frozen cranberries, you wouldn't listen. I have to have a SECRET, right? 

There's a lot of psychological manipulation in recipe and personal cooking brands (not to mention outright sabotage in the actual recipe, I've run into that a few times). I do have secrets and recipes no one else knows, but I also don't try to make things extra complicated.

The best example of food power plays I have is my husband had a college professor who caused him all sorts of petty grief including getting him pulled into the Dean's office. I won't get into the whole story because it's boring, but I want to make clear it was utter bullshit and the professor was really awful. 

I'm not the kind of friend/spouse who takes your side no matter what, If you screw up, I'll call you on it and then help you as much as I can. I'm not much of an enabler. I don't pander. So when I say the professor was the aggressor, that's what the evidence showed. Total abuse of power. (And it just goes to show how much emotion and power dynamics go into situations...they warp policy and logic all too often.)

Anyway the point is, I made my crackle top molasses cookies for the class. I am often told I could sell these*. I get rave reviews. All the time. Meaning the professor begged for the recipe. Begged and actually pestered. And I refused because they'd been such an asshat. My personal code is no cookies for dick taints.

Oh, another one. My one in-law won't give me their cheesecake recipe going on 30 years now lol. 

There's all sorts of psychological and interpersonal dynamics that go into recipes and food, and given there's big money in building a food brand, you can get some skullduggery as well. It's easy to forget how much of the content thrown at us is marketing something and they will do almost anything to make it work. (See also Balenciaga's latest 'we had no idea even though we spent months working on the obviously problematic details and they went through several layers of management approval without anyone noticing a thing so clearly it was NOT by design at all you see' scandal.)

But anyway, the turkey wasn't dry. The cranberry sauce was the perfect balance of tart to sweet. We had enough gravy, although gravy boats remain frustratingly too small. The pumpkin pies turned out**. We outsourced the mashed potatoes and green beans. 

Very easy meal, nothing fancy, yet perfect. (Fancy with regards to food is sometimes just be an upsell y'all.) It was nice to be fairly functional with minimal health disruption. Wish that happened way more often.

*I'm not made to be a baker lol. But also these cookies are (oddly enough) sensitive to humidity and temperature. They're not reliable. The weather affects quality more than I'd like. To run a business with them...oof. It'd be super annoying.

**In fact, hubby bought a sweet potato pie and had a personal crisis. Why did I do that when you make the best pumpkin pie??? This pie is not your pie. OMG I have to eat this pie when I want to eat your pumpkin pie instead. I don't want this pie. So he gave the sweet potato pie to the neighbor we've gotten in the habit of feeding so he could focus on just the pumpkin pies. And I've had a request for a repeat ASAP because we are now out of pie.