Giving Thanks

Brothers & Cousins

Because extended family and both sets of grandparents all lived in the same town, we'd spent Thanksgiving with the Heimels one year and with the Fish family the next year. When Christmas came, it was the opposite - if we'd dined with Danny and Grandaddy for Thanksgiving, we'd gather around Grandma Heimel's big table in the apartment over Heimel's Market for Christmas.

At both Thanksgiving tables, there were some traditional dishes I'd pass politely on to the next person without taking a helping - oyster stuffing, gravy with giblets, creamed onions, squash, mincemeat pie.

But I loved my mother's molded cranberry salad. She brought the old heavy Enterprise food grinder out of the pantry and clamped it to the enameled  countertop she'd pull out of the kitchen cupboard. Sometimes I'd help to grind the cranberries, walnuts, oranges and to add to the jello, dumping the mixture into the ring mold to chill. Probably there was a mayonnaise dressing in a custard cup in the middle when it was turned out on a platter lined with iceberg lettuce leaves.

I looked forward to the relish tray with its assortment of pickles from sweet gherkins to the green tomato pickles that Grandaddy so loved, celery sticks and pimento-stuffed green olives. That was a fixture at the Fish table, always set with the blue and white Spode china, with matching serving dishes, and gleaming polished silverware. It seemed the kitchen was always steamy, and someone would open the back door for cool fresh air. There were always the pre-dinner cocktails – Manhattans, probably. I think I can remember the year they all had a little bit too much Thanksgiving cheer, leading to a very late dinner but perhaps it's only because it became family legend.

The Heimels always did things differently. There were no pre-dinner cocktails there and the china was from Limoges. Dad Dad and Grandma took their places at the head and foot of the table with Grandma closest to the kitchen. We listen to Uncle Roy share the blessing and then Dad Dad got to work on carving the turkey to order. Sometimes there were shrimp cocktails (but perhaps that was Christmas) and sometimes my father had his oysters raw in a little dish in addition to the oyster stuffing that was scooped from the front of the bird.

This year, there will be no gathering around Grandma Heimel's big table that fills Paul & Lugene's dining room today. We won't have a "Friendsgiving" celebration with our Washington family and won't share a wild turkey feast with our son's inlaws. Instead, I'm going to attempt Ina Garten's turkey roulade from a recipe I read in the New York Times and we'll harvest the Brussels Sprouts I've been keeping watch over all year in the high tunnel. My mom's making an apple pie from our Northern Spy apples and will furnish the cranberries but the molded cranberry salad will have to wait for another year!