Thanksgiving

This is my favorite holiday. 

Likely because it centers around food and family and the modest act of reflection upon how lucky we each are.

Thanksgiving this year was different.  It was only my mother, grandmother and I, and a half turkey that was pre-seasoned and nestled in a bed of vegetables, ready to just stick in the oven.  I can hear the hecklers now, a pre-seasoned turkey! 

Now I will say this for my Thanksgiving meal -- the other entrees: corn cassarole, roasted winter vegetables and mashed potatoes all turned out gloriously and all were made by yours truly.  My Achilles Heel seems to be surmounted and the running record of horrid mashed potatoes seems to have come to an end.  Hurrah.  How someone can by foiled by simple boiling is beyond me.  However, this year a recipe for excellent mashed potatoes was discovered and modified to become a new addition to my recipe box.

Mashed Potatoes

4 lbs. of Russet Potatoes, peeled and cubed into 1 1/2 inch cubes
8 cloves of garlic peeled
3 tbsp. coarsely chopped Rosemary
8 tbsp. (1 stick) room temp salted butter
Salt and Pepper to taste

Fill 5 qt. stockpot halfway with lightly salted water.  Bring to a boil. 
Peel and cube potatoes, peel garlic and chop Rosemary.  Add all to the boiling water, reduce heat to medium and simmer for 20 minutes or until smaller pieces of potato start to fall apart at the edges.  Drain potatoes using colander.  Transfer to large bowl. 
Cube butter.  Using a sturdy rubber spatula, stir in butter, salt and pepper to taste.  Best if served immediately.

(adapted from a recipe by Diane Rossen Worthington published November 2010 in Bon Appetit)

And here comes the philosophy.  Hopefully you've stayed with me thus far.

There's a painting by Norman Rockwell titled Freedom from Want that depicts a family at a Thanksgiving table.  I begin to have an appreciation for Rockwell now as I grow older.  In my younger days him works seemed obvious..  Why would I ever want to look at paintings of real-looking people?  I suppose the truth is that I had enough reality to last for ages, but I digress.

On the cover of one of those newspaper insert magazines, which one I can't remember, President Obama's family patterned themselves after this photo.  It's quite charming and it's definitely nice to have a President with a young family.  It struck a chord with me.  This idea of Freedom from Want. 

Satisfaction.

Which is what a lack of want really is (though Satisfaction is not so a good a painting title).  I find it ironic that at midnight of a day of copious reminders of how gluttonous we are -- while people still do starve -- we then go out and relieve ourselves of copious amounts of money.  Which we are so sick of having that we spend it with gusto to obtain things which the celebration before just told us we don't need.

So I'd like to stop a moment and try to think on how we have somehow turned a holiday which is to remind us to be grateful for that which we have and to remind us there is nothing more that is needed than food and family.  I'd like to blame businesses for starting a tradition of sales on this day.  An act that seems ripe with plot and ploy to keep us from really feeling... well, satisfied.

But that blame actually lies upon me and upon you, for so easily forgetting that food and family are really the basics of everything.  That we really need little else.

The challenge for this December, will be to remember that companionship and the availability of food are something that few of us reading this lack.  Despite this, why is it that we all still don't feel free from wanting?