Thanksgiving Day

The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth. Oil on canvas. Jennie Augusta Brownscombe.

 

 

It was going to be a busy day and the entire family had no wishes for going out. We were staying for the day. My mother had already started marinating our chicken two days earlier. Since the beginning of the week, we had been acquiring various groceries (and forgetting some of them). My shoulder was hurting from carrying a large bag of papayas on one day and ten pounds worth of flour on another day. Then on the last day, I went out with my dad to get whatever remaining things we needed. It was cold and it was raining making at difficult to balance an umbrella and several bags. I had to rely on a shoulder bag again. Due to my new regimen of exercising, my poor shoulder hasn't suffered too much. 

I did not put a lot of thought into Thanksgiving mainly because I was more hyped about Christmas dinner. My mother was bent on roasting our own chicken this year even though she failed the week before. As a test, we tried to do a rotisserie chicken of our own and it came out dry. So with the second chicken, we tried a longer marinade time and a different marinade. It still didn't work out because our marinade wasn't salty enough. My mother is always in fear of over-salting things and it has resulted on multiple occasions in under-seasoned dishes. I thought my mother could handle the chicken on her own and I didn't bother reminding her on some things. As it turns out, the chicken wasn't evenly properly trussed in the first place and by the time I looked at it, it was already rotating in the oven. She used the barbeque pins to pin the wings together, but it came off anyways within the first hour of roasting.

While the chicken was in the oven at 3pm, I began my own prep work. My dad set aside his chickory roughly an hour earlier so that the kitchen would not be crowded with people. Most of my morning was spent drawing my doujinshi, watching the Macy's parade, and surfing the web. The Internet was not particularly interesting on Thanksgiving day so I shut it off almost immediately. It was a waste of my time. I decided last minute the night before that I would make a vegetable lasagna. If there was ground meat leftover, I would use the ground meat. As it turns out, there was no ground meat and I would make a vegetarian pasta. So here I was washing and prepping my vegetables. The beefsteak tomatoes were soft just how I wanted them to be, but as I cut them open I discovered the horror. They were actually picked when they were very raw and ripened on the shelf. I spent a good amount of time pulling out the hard yellow spikes and I knew that these tomatoes would create a very acidic sauce.  The two young zucchini I bought were the best I could salvage from the market and I used the remains of half a peeled carrot.

By 4:20pm, I started the flames. I poured some peanut oil onto the hot pan and instantly the aroma dissipated. Peanut oil, an odd choice you might say. It was the only oil I had available that was able to withstand high temperatures. I added the sliced garlic and let it cook in the oil for a good thirty seconds. When I poured in my diced tomatoes, the pan made a loud sizzle. That is the sound I like to hear most in a kitchen. Not the silent weak bubbling or the clanging metal steamer. While I let the sauce cook, I was boiling a pot of salted water on another stove top. I looked for the box of lasagna noodles. It was stacked below a bunch of slab sugar that we would need for New Year's. I counted six sheets and dropped them into the boiling water. A problem arose; I didn't add enough water to the pot. The sheets were sticking out of the water and they will take forever to soften like that. Meanwhile the sauce was bubbling violently in the nearly stove top. I took off the lid of the pan to give the sauce a stir. The tomatoes gave off an immense amount of liquid. So much for being ripe. I proceeded to give the sauce a stir and poured a bit more water into the pot of lasagna noodles.

It may have been past 5:15 pm already. I flavored the sauce with a basil, oregano, and thyme mix. I gave it a taste and found it extremely sour. This can't be served to the table. The lasagna noodles had not cooked completely so I let it bubble away in the pot for three more minutes. My hand reached for the sugar and poured teaspoon after teaspoon of sugar. No matter how much I put, it would remain sour. These damn tomatoes were so damn sour. I let the water evaporate for a minute and stirred in a teaspoon of starch to thicken it. It was my way of cheating. I added a two pinches of salt and decided that it was done. The lasagna noodles would proved to be very difficult to take out of a pot with chopsticks, but I did it anyway. The sauce was done and poured into a bowl to cool. I washed the pan to be ready for the next round of cooking.

First I sauteed the onions until they started sweating a little. Then I added in the diced carrots. I regret cutting them so big because they took longer to cook. The onions were already softening too much and the pan was getting dry. I added a splash of water and some salt. I have some terrible salt at my disposal. It was way too light to the tongue. I lowered my heat and covered the pan to let the carrots simmer a bit more before I added in the diced zucchini. Zucchini cook quickly and so do the sliced olives. When I took off the lid again, I gave the carrots a taste. It was still under-seasoned, but they began to soften. I took the Trader Joe's Everyday seasoning and gave that grinder a good seven turns. I stirred in the zucchini and olives and topped the pan with the lid again. While the vegetables were cooking, I started slicing the noodles. I was going to use a loaf pan to bake my lasagna and the noodles were made for a flat, glass pan. I took out the mozzarella cheese and began to slice it. The cheese would become the glue for my layers.

The vegetables were finally done and it was close to 6pm. It was my dad's turn to use the kitchen. My mother would check on the roast every half hour to make sure it was done well. There was a huge pool of oil dripping from the roast that would soak the nearby potatoes we put on the pan to roast along. The chicken was near done as my mom announced, sticking the meat thermometer into the meat. I started layering lasagna in the pan. Pasta sheets, a layer of vegetables, some sauce, and ending it with cheese. When I was done layering, the chicken was out of the oven. I stuck my pan in at 350 degrees for half an hour. The cheese didn't bubble until I didn't give it ten minutes more. The potatoes were taking forever to cook, but they were finished in the end. With the remaining heat in the oven, we toasted some sliced yugo bread.

Our dinner table was laid out with a roast chicken, my lasagna, stir-fried chickory and garlicky broccoli, a beer, and baked potatoes. I was full from the food, but it wasn't exactly a satisfying meal. I said a few spiteful things and we all expressed some sort of annoyance. It can't be helped since there were a lot of unhappy things happening. We were just trying to make the best of it. It's not like we ended killing each other over it. We just ate and ate some more.

Last night before I slept, I made a quick list of things to be thankful. First and foremost, family and friends that stuck with me is the most important thing. Secondly are the people that gave me opportunities that I think I unfortunately I am not taking full advantage of. Third is being thankful for being alive and healthy. Out of all the times I contemplated death over life, I decided to choose living. Fourth is my own sanity. There were many occasions that I could have acted impulsively and fallen into depravity, but my own conscience forbids it. Sanity is most needed in times like these when so many things are happening and you don't know anymore what is right or wrong. Fifth I added as a joke to my friends is thankful for the ojiisans out there for me to fawn over. I live for the amusing posts of Yoshiki's life after all.