The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [78]
My only concern was whether the turkey was thoroughly cooked. Matt helped me carve the turkey, and after the first few slices of breast meat, close to the surface, I held my breath. But one after another, the slices came out clean, ivory colored, and moist.
“I can’t believe it’s cooked,” I said.
“And it’s so good,” Karol said, mopping up some gravy with a piece.
After having seconds of both white and dark meat, I knew there was something very different about this turkey, both inside and out. It had a prominent, savory flavor, and its meat was utterly moist throughout. I’d never go back to regular grocery-store turkeys again, I vowed. (It was too late to order one for my parents’ upcoming Thanksgiving, though.)
After all the frustrations I’d been through with Ben during day, it felt great to be with friends who really appreciated the work I’d put into the food that I made. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt that kind of genuine respect from Ben for something I had cooked. Then again, he saw me cook every single day, and my friends were reacting to a rare treat.
There was so much food, especially so much turkey thanks to the huge bird that Matt had gotten, that we had enough for continuous munching throughout the night, even after we declared ourselves full several times over. The desserts were polished off the quickest. Karol’s tart, with its chocolate cookie shell, smooth peanut butter cream filling, and milk chocolate topping, didn’t last very long. I had more than my share of the wonderful sour cream apple pie—and of the perfect complement to it, Bourbon-spiked apple cider.
Once we’d dug far enough into the turkey to reveal the wishbone, we carefully removed it. Matt and I decided to face off over the age-old wishbone pull. We each gripped one end and pulled. As our shaky feet began to lose their balance and we stumbled about the room, it was clear that this bone was too rubbery to break apart. It had barely spent any time outside the still-warm turkey. We continued to twist and stretch at the ends for what seemed like five minutes before giving up. A truce.
I don’t have a clue what I had been wishing for anymore, but looking back, I don’t think there’s anything more I could have wished for on that night. I had everything that I loved about life: good people (and not too many of them) and really good food (too much of it, but that was okay). It was a wonderful night. Also, some of the people I became closer with that night at the Fall Harvest Feast, Matt and Maia especially, have remained some of my very best friends.
A week later, it was Thanksgiving morning. I had taken the train to New Jersey the night before and arrived late, along with my brother, my aunt Ellen, and my cousin Phoebe. But I woke up early, fixated on food preparations, and walked downstairs to my parents’ kitchen in my pajamas. I put a big pot of coffee on. In the fully stocked fridge, I found a package of Greek feta, a somewhat squashed tomato, and a full carton of eggs. There was a wholesale club-sized bag of yellow onions in a drawer at the bottom of a kitchen cupboard. I decided to make a big frittata for breakfast, to share with everyone once they had woken up.
In The Physiology of Taste, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, “The preparation and distribution of food necessarily brought the whole family together, the fathers apportioning to their children the results of the hunt, and the grown children then doing the same to their aged parents.” It’s funny, even though Brillat-Savarin was writing in eighteenth-century France, he might as well have been describing the Thanksgiving dinners of the Erway family tradition. That is, if you can call a thirty-pound turkey