Thanksgiving

May the beauty of your life become more visible to you that you may glimpse your wild divinity.

May the wonders of the earth call you forth from all your small secret prisons and set your feet free in the pastures of possibility . . .

Mum read a blessing by the Irish philosopher, poet, and priest John O’ Donohue. The words filled the room, heavy with the wisdom and humanity of their author, abundant and generous as our table. This was full, creaking under the weight of a day’s worth of cooking. There was a whole ham, warm from the oven and sweet with a glaze of mustard, brown sugar, and whiskey. To escort the ham we had black figs poached in a spicy syrup, creamy parsley sauce, roast and mashed potatoes, peas perfumed with mint, and two whole pumpkins, hollowed and baked with gruyere, cream, and gratings of nutmeg. And these were merely my own contributions to the meal. Danielle arrived around midday and traipsed into the kitchen laden with shopping bags. She roasted a whole turkey, tossed together an aromatic mushroom-sage stuffing, and whizzed up a fresh, garlicky artichoke dip.

All this was done with the non-committal assistance of Danielle’s boyfriend Jacob and Cousin Brad. Brad would peer over our shoulders enthusiastically, and in manner of cooking show assistant he would repeat ingredient measurements and ask a volley of questions. Then quite suddenly he’d take a swig of wine, mumble that his estrogen level was getting dangerously high, and disappear to the gentlemen’s club that was rapidly forming in the sitting room (presumably to replenish his testosterone with televised football and more booze). Jacob’s approach was different. He’d wander into the kitchen having fetched something for Danielle, say something complimentary or encouraging, and then sidle out again. To be fair, however, Brad beautifully sliced the apples for my pie, and Jacob concocted a luscious pumpkin filling for a second pie.

By four o’clock the first guests arrived; Roosje and her husband Dan, an ex chef who came rolling with a gorgeous pate. It looked humble enough from the outside. Nevertheless, having heard talk of this pate for weeks, I knew it was going to be something special. “Dan has ordered a truffle from Italy,” Roosje had revealed to me one day, bubbling with excitement. I was anticipating a masterpiece.

At the party, Dan nodded in confirmation. “Yes, it’s made of chicken liver, goose liver, and truffle.” My knees wobbled a bit. The Champagne was uncorked by my father, with the usual fanfare. The bubbles were poured, clinked, and sipped, and then we descended upon the pate. Here the words for an accurate description fail me. All I can truthfully say is that it was one of those mouthfuls that make your tongue, teeth and taste buds feel as though they are helplessly melting into divine oblivion. It was insane.

Later we sat down to the meal: not insane, but just as a Thanksgiving feast ought to be—the archetype of good home cooking. My favorite dish by far was also the simplest, and is prepared as follows: Cut the lid off a pumpkin and scrape out all the seeds and stringy pulp from the inside. Fill 1/3 full with grated gruyere cheese and pour in heavy cream until 2/3 full. Toss in a knob of butter, a little salt, pepper, and a few gratings from a whole nutmeg. Replace the lid and bake in a 375F oven until the flesh of the pumpkin is cooked through.

For me, it was a novel way of preparing pumpkin, inspired—get again—by the British chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, on whom I have a culinary crush. Okay, he’s middle aged and looks a bit like a cave man (in a good way) but he raises his own meat, grows his own veg, and has a wonderfully expansive, unfussy approach to the kitchen. But I digress.

Like the meal, the evening was just as it should be: hours of eating, drinking, and good laughs followed by plenty of lounging, coffee, and dessert—the luxurious business of being pleasantly unproductive. During the waning of the year, Thanksgiving always seems to me the moment of huddling down, of lighting our metaphorical fires for the winter. John O’ Donohue’s blessing echoed in my mind as I went to sleep that night, perfectly in sync with the tone of our evening and this turning of seasons:

May the liturgy of twilight shelter all your fears and darkness within the circle of ease.

May the angel of memory surprise you in bleak times with new gifts from the harvest of your vanished days.

May you allow no dark hand to quench the candle of hope in your heart.

May you discover a new generosity towards yourself and encourage yourself to engage your life as a great adventure.

Feast before the Fight

Yesterday afternoon, I was in the middle of a peaceful lunch (whole grain bread topped with thinly sliced apple and crumbly goat cheese, shoved under the broiler for a minute or two and accompanied by a simple salad) when I innocently began thumbing through the latest edition of the Economist. I turned a page: “Monsanto, corporate sinner or saint?” the title asked. I read on, hopefully. Gradually my blood pressure began to rise, lunch turned to ashes in my mouth, and I found myself physically shaking with fury. Far from being a balanced and insightful report on the doings of this agri-giant, the author passes softly by the hoard of howling skeletons in Monsanto’s closet and paints a picture of a benevolent beacon of innovation and advancement. Not an infallible creature, but on balance a solid force for good.

Now I will not go into the details of why this portrait of the world’s dominant seed company caused me to erupt into anger and frustration—its reputation is well known. To delve into that closet of dishonesty, corruption, political arm twisting, and fundamental bad manners that Monsanto has displayed over the past decade or so would take too long. Do the research. After my exploration, the verdict appears self-evident: Monsanto is a serious sinner. More importantly Monsanto represents the pinnacle of all that I find despicable about corporate agriculture: the co-opting of power from individual farmers and a spectacular disregard for the importance of biodiversity being just two examples.

By the time I’d reached the end of the article my mind was consumed in anger and frustration. I couldn’t even think about a menu for the evening’s feast. Food, in its pleasurable sense, was farthest from my mind. I stared glumly at my shelves of recipe books unable to pull my brain away from dispiriting thoughts of genetic homogenization, topsoil depletion, and tomatoes bulging with fish genes. Count me out of a world such as that.

And so, in an unusually constructive channeling of anger I went out for a run and tore up the roads. But I didn’t stop thinking about corporate agribusiness. On the contrary I had one of those moments out running, the wind tossing the trees, the sea and my hair. I stopped abruptly at the bottom of a dip, just by an old scraggy apple tree. The road ahead rose steeply. What can I do? I begged my mind. What can I do? And then the words of one social activist—I don’t remember who she was—but when I read her words they took root. I vaguely recollect that she was going to campaign for the rights of Australian aborigines, but before actively storming the fortress, she spent two years living with these people. When questioned about her extensive time in their community, her response ran something like this: “In order win, you have to know what you’re fighting for.” And that is what my feasting is about: the feast is not the real work, it is not my aim. But strangely, as my love of food and feasting deepens, so too has my commitment to cultivating the sort of world in which these simple pleasures are possible for all. Feasting is simply a constant reminder of what I want to spend my career doing: fostering sustainable food systems. And I am inching towards that goal.
















It is time for fifty-two feasts to grow up. From now on it’s not just about feasting but fighting. In the best sense of the word: I’m going to fight the way I sometimes fight to drag myself out on a drizzly fall morning for a run; the kind of fighting that reaps plentiful rewards. And yet my aim is never to lose that center, that hearth around which the battlers nourish themselves. It’s like that social activist was saying: you need food before you fight; you need to feast before diving into the fray.















What does fighting mean in the context of these feasts? Well, to start I am going to use more local, seasonal, and sustainably produced ingredients; more plants and less meat. I’m going to spend more energy on sourcing and learning the stories behind the foods I love. The great thing about a fork is that in the same moment you can use it to nourish your body, to make your taste buds squeal in delight, and to change the world ever so slightly for the better.

A Thanksgiving for Nomads

This morning I recieved a message from my dear friend Aleah. She was in London. “I love this city,” she wrote. “Maybe it’s all the memories from our travels. Do you remember our Thanksgiving chicken?”

Of course I remembered. Fresh out of high school Aleah and I went backpacking together across Europe. Beginning in Spain we ambled all over the continent, from Italy and Croatia, to France and the Czech Republic. We met up with friends, took epic train journeys, saw the sights, and spent an inordinate amount of time in the cafes of Europe—reading, talking, writing, drawing, and simply absorbing our surroundings.

During the final weeks of this odyssey we found ourselves in London, staying in my cousin’s apartment. It was late November and we were cold, sodden and thoroughly ready for home. Gone were the sun-drenched days spent wallowing in Spanish plazas and basking beside Italian fountains. Our backpacks, clothes, and shoes—smart and new months before—had become increasingly gray, tattered, and odiferous. And along with them our spirit of adventure was rapidly wearing thin.

“Do you realize it’s Thanksgiving today?” Aleah was indignant as she stared at her calendar. “Oh,” I replied mournfully, glaring down at my breakfast toast with renewed disgust.

We were both silent for a moment, wallowing in the pathos of our situation. Then Aleah went back to sketching, giving a momentary sniff and flare of the nostrils—demonstrative, I knew by now, of a fit of the grumps.

I brooded for a moment and then stood up. “Well, let’s make dinner then. We have Patrick’s kitchen, I’m sure he won’t mind . . . especially once he sees the leftovers.”

“You mean, buy and cook a whole turkey for the two of us?”

“Well, maybe a chicken,” I admitted, “but still, it’s better than nothing.”

So we made our way to the nearest shop with renewed enthusiasm, and bought the ingredients for a makeshift Thanksgiving meal: a fat chicken, potatoes to mash, carrots to glaze, wine to mull, apples for pie, and even a couple cheeses to start.

That afternoon was spent ensconced in my cousin’s kitchen, listening to music, reminiscing about Thanksgivings past, and preparing our feast. It was perfect day for the meal: a dull gray sky, fine drizzle of rain, and heavy chill to the air.

I don’t remember much about the meal itself (my activities in the kitchen at the time were more enthusiastic than skillful) but it was the idea—the mental image of a feast—that counted. We ate hungrily, drank liberally, and thoroughly revived our sagging spirits. It served as a reminder of where we were: at the culmination of an epic adventure. It was a journey we would remember and talk about for years, as much for the smelly, uncomfortable hostels and nights spent camping out on train stations as for the appropriately raucous nights and magnificent architecture.

This year I’ll be at home for Thanksgiving, but Aleah and her boyfriend will be abroad, installed in their little rental cottage in the Netherlands. I hope they will have a feast, perhaps another Thanksgiving chicken, a pile of creamy mashed potatoes, and a gravy rich enough to wash away even the most remote traces of homesickness.

Tradition and the Table

Some feasts are humble affairs, others momentous occasions, but the epitome of feasting in our culture arrives each year on the last Thursday in November. I have always found Thanksgiving to be the most satisfying and least stressful annual holiday. While Christmas is smothered under a surfeit of commercialism, New Year’s Eve lies gasping under the weight of forced jollity, and Valentine’s Day inevitably arrives smugly to rub salt into the wounds of your latest breakup, Thanksgiving is a blissful relief. A gourmet’s paradise, it is uncomplicated, unburdened with material expectation, and devoted solely to the table.

“How about something different this year,” I suggested to Mum, while sitting on the sofa, a pile of cookbooks on my lap. “You mean something other than turkey,” she responded, visibly dubious.

“Yes, like a goose or a ham. I mean turkey for Thanksgiving and again for Christmas. . . Gets a bit boring, don’t you think?”

“But its tradition,” Mother protested, “and I love turkey.”

I sighed; even Thanksgiving was apparently not without tribulation—the dull old face of tradition glumly staring down each one of my festive ideas. Why are people like this? Why do they persist in defending endless repetition for its own sake? Now I am a great fan of many culinary traditions: they have given us an excuse to guzzle champagne at the merest hint of celebration, break out the barbeque each summer, and consume endless mince pies with brandy butter throughout the month of December. However, it is often necessary to give these rituals a makeover: a new hair cut, some flashy new earrings. Otherwise they are in danger of becoming utterly insipid and dull.

The annual Christmas pudding saga perfectly illustrates my argument. My family has clung vehemently to our English tradition of serving Christmas pudding as the culmination to the long and abundant holiday lunch. It is a massive, upside down bowl shaped wodge of dried fruit, flour, and booze. And in accordance with custom, it is doused with brandy, lit on fire, and paraded to the table. It is a wonderful moment, the flaming dessert topped with a sprig of holly, making its entrance to enthusiastic cheers from the crowd.

Sadly, this piece of culinary tradition is more style than substance. Or rather it is far too substantial. Everyone dutifully takes a slice, although we’re all far too bloated and tipsy to enjoy it. My strategy is to pile on the brandy butter (butter whipped up with a considerable amount of sugar and brandy), and thus drown out the actual taste of the pudding. It is stodgy, leaden, and alarmingly durable. Few souls have the requisite tenacity to finish their slice, so a lot goes straight to the bin. Alas this is not the end. Mum generally makes two Christmas puddings—so enthusiastic about this tradition that she manages to forget how unpopular they are—and so the family is left not only with the remainder of the first, but a massive second pudding to conquer. As a child, I remember surveying that foul, black-brown slice mutinously at breakfast, in pack lunches, and fried up in yet more brandy after dinner for weeks on end. It sat stolidly in the fridge, in both shape and effect like a glowering, impenetrable Mount Rainier. Sometimes I swear we were still attempting to dispose of it throughout the waning days of January.

This Christmas, I shall probably fail in my campaign to ban the pudding and replace it with a sexier dessert, but I did win a small victory over Thanksgiving meal. It is a rule of thumb that by the judicious mention of certain ingredients, I can convince Mother of the virtue of almost any dish. She simply cannot resist the mention of ginger, figs, anise, goat cheese, gruyere, or hazelnuts. When I suggested a shoulder of ham she remained skeptical, but after my cunning elaboration—a glazed baked ham with spiced figs and parsley sauce—she grudgingly agreed. Now all that remains is to source a magnificent ham and dream up delectable trimmings: perhaps sme gruyere baked squash? Roasted onions? Cranberry sauce? A deep dish apple pie? All this dreaming and scheming is almost as enjoyable as feasting itself.

The Compostion of a Feast

“So, does this count as a feast?” Alex asked, carefully stripping the fragrant thyme leaves from their stems. “I mean, what makes it a feast?”

I thought about this for a moment, surprised that I didn’t have a clear answer. “I guess it’s a feast when I want it to be one. Yea, this could be a feast . . . I mean, why not?”

Yet I continued mulling over this question; what does make a feast? In these last few months I have consciously created many feasts. Some have been larger, such as the epic meal last weekend or the birthday party for my dad. Others have been composed of simpler food eaten among only a few friends. And then there have been plenty of meals that I have chosen not to rank among my official feasts. Why have these been excluded? They were variously too boring, rushed, small, or insignificant. What they all have in common, however, is that they were not premeditated in the same way as a true feast.

For an answer to Alex’s question I turned first to various official definitions of a feast. Wandering around the gargantuan virtual library of description and delineation, I found several themes crystallize: the word feast collects around it the garments of cuisine and culture, religion and ritual, ceremony and celebration, abundance and enjoyment.

My favorite definition, one among several from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, describes a feast as “something that gives unusual or abundant enjoyment.” I also liked the Cambridge dictionary’s explanation of “a very enjoyable experience for the senses.” The word itself comes from the Latin festus, meaning “joyous.” Pleasure is at the heart of feasting, firmly rooted in its very etymological heritage.

In having to explicitly define feast for myself and this project, I have realized that it is this celebratory intention that characterizes my feasts. On the one hand it is clearly a hedonistic pleasure—people coming together for the sole purpose of gastronomic enjoyment—and I wholeheartedly accept that. On the other hand it is also a defiant statement, a quiet rejection of the forces that would have us speed up our lives, scuttling faster and faster around the hamster wheels of frenetic daily activity with such puritanical zeal that we have no time for friends, feasting, or any of those other proverbial simple pleasures. So really, any meal has the potential to be a feast. And that is my ultimate goal: I don’t just want to cook, host, and enjoy feasts; I want to embody a feasting mentality, an attitude of abundance, and a propensity to celebrate whenever given half a chance and a cork screw.

I lifted the pot of mussels off the heat and stirred in a large spoonful of crème fraiche. We sat down to eat: the seafood aromatic with herbs, garlic, and wine. The wedges of roasted potato fat and well browned, a light fluffy center encased in a fine crisp shell. They were ideal for sopping up the sauce. We sat around the table eating, drinking and talking. “Awww, I wish I hadn’t eaten,” Justin lamented, his hand edging towards the tray of oven fries. “Oh, go on,” Alex prompted, “there’s plenty.” The dollop of mustard I’d added to my plate slid downwards and dissolved into the sauce, accidentally improving it I noticed, plucking another mussel from its shell and popping it into my mouth. I took a sip of cold white wine. Alex returned to the plate of smoked salmon. Justin caved in to the temptation of pommes frites. Yes, I concluded to myself, this is definitely a feast.