Foodstuff

It has been twenty years since I have been wowed by a Thanksgiving dinner, but last Thursday's feast was one for the books.  Don't get me wrong - the food is routinely fine and plentiful but there has always seemed to be something missing. 

Most likely my "complaint" stems from the differences between food selection and preparation between where I hail from (Western New York) and here (Southeastern Virginia).  You know, as I review the previous sentence I see of course it would be that way.  I mean, what the hell else would it possibly be, the color of the flatware or the lighting or something? I really felt confident going into that sentence, too...

Regardless, two decades of the missing whatever decided to show up all at once last Thursday, kicked in the door, and demanded to be included in this year's festivities. 

It was awesome.  In addition to the traditional fare, which was exactly correctly perfect FWIW, my wife made a leek casserole that was out of this world.  Also she made a huge tray of meatballs that were apparently molded from raw hunks of primal deliciousness and cranberry sauce.  Also she made this really exotic garlic and fruit-based stuffing that was as complex in texture as it was in flavor.  It even looked interesting.

I ate.

I ate not until I was full.  Oh, no, dear friends, no.  You see, technically, I was full before the meal started since she also made these killer deviled eggs.  Now,  if you served me eight scrambled eggs and told me that it was not, as it would first seem, four days worth of breakfasts but instead just an appetizer I would probably gag a little.  Or maybe a lot.  But add a little mustard, mayo, and vinegar and all of a sudden I magically poof into Adam Richman or that Japanese hot dog dude.

No.  I ate until I was tired.  This has never happened to me before (well, probably as an infant...) Whether I was physically exhausted from the non-stop hoisting of goodies from my plate to my gob or whether I was in a near narcoleptic state from endorphin poisoning, I didn't know or care.  I needed a snooze.

I fell into a self-induced coma about the time my son went down for his nap.  Two hours later, much to my shock and delight, I woke up.  I was also shocked and delighted to discover there was food left over.  O, most frabjous day! 

There were only two things missing to make this the perfect Thanksgiving, though.

The first is the traditional drunken shouting match and near fistfight initiated by someone forgetting the canned cranberry sauce (again, if you can believe it... I mean they only had one thing to remember and they couldn't even do that right) and ending in the sullen tears of a randomly picked "loved" one cascading miserably into an ashtray crammed with the butts of semi-extinguished Marlboro Reds. 

Say... that would be an awesome Norman Rockwell painting, dontcha think?  Let's give it the working title "Pumpkin Pie and Domestic Incident Related DUI".  Picture it: Two Irish cops are hauling a blue-suited but disheveled and clearly drunk man past a traditionally-laden dining room table while family members cower tearfully behind the remains of an overturned china hutch.  The man is shaking the remains of his  crumpled fedora angrily at the onlookers and through the open, broken front door you can make out aghast neighbors assessing the damage to a 1949 Packard and a light pole.  One of the neighbors is smoking a pipe.

Ah, memories...

Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  The second thing that was missing was green olives in the veggie platter.  Man, I love those things.

Sigh.  Maybe next year...  Happy Thanksgiving, all!