A Plate of Brown Mushy Food

After a decade of trying clever recipes for Thanksgiving dinner, I realized when I was about 40 that a plain old turkey, cans of yams, cans of cranberry sauce,  Brussels sprouts (see below), mashed potatoes, and maybe a tube of dinner rolls add up to Just Fine. 

This time of year there are always recipes in newspapers and magazines for more interesting versions of Brussels sprouts and yams and pumpkin pie and killer directions for how to make a pear relish that takes half a day and a special strainer you have to go buy at Bed Bath & Beyond.

 

Unnecessary tart-up of Brussels sprouts: Roasted Brussels Sprouts, Trumpet Mushrooms & Persimmon Dressing

Not worth it.  Someone will be heartbroken that you didn't do it the traditional way, plus you end up doing a lot more work.  It's gonna be a plate of brown mushy food, no matter what you do.  That's the goal.

The only concession I've made to the need-for-novelty is to saute very finely sliced Brussels Sprouts in olive oil, with plenty of salt and pepper, so it's like a tasty cooked salad. My mother's traditional recipe was to boil the hell out of them.

Free-range, organic turkeys are good but expensive and not dramatically better than ones from Safeway, in my opinion.   No matter what you do, the breast is always dry or dryish, which is why you have gravy.

Typical seasonal recipe: Hard Cider Gravy with Shallots & Thyme

Gravy binds it all together. My dad used to make it, stirring up a roux and gradually adding milk and Kitchen Bouquet while the turkey "rested" on a platter. As he got older, the handwriting was on the wall, and my sister and I began to take notes. When he died, we figured out how to do it, but it's always a fraught experience and there's never quite enough.

Only a first-timer would bother cooking pumpkin for a pie and then making pastry. Buy one. In my family, we always have a cake, too, because it's my sister's birthday. I buy that at Masse's in Berkeley, expensive and totally worth it. 

I have a pal who swears by the complete turkey dinner you can buy at Whole Foods. My friend Claudia is going to buy one of those this year, and we're going to help her eat it. It will come with gravy, glory be.

Even if you buy the dinner, you'll still spend the next week putting away platters and serving spoons, and in my family, impractical pieces of Chinese export porcelain because my dad collected it, and my sister and I inherited it.  It's all about tradition.



Getting Some Zzzzzz's

People have been asking about my sleep and whether it's improving  now that I'm going to a sleep therapist.

Thanks for asking, and yes, it's improving.  I'm doing everything the sleep therapist suggests, including increasing "sleep pressure"  by lopping 2-1/2 hours off my time in bed, which means getting up at 6 am instead of my usual 8:30.

It's awful.  I'm so sleepy during my quiet hour before bedtime that I have to fight to keep my eyes open, but when I get into bed, I go to sleep right away.  No lying awake worrying.  When the alarm goes off, I drag myself out and sit in the living room, zomboid, for an hour before I rally and begin drinking hot tea.  Before I started this therapy, I had nights when I tossed and turned until 5 am. 

I've cheated once each week, sleeping an hour or two later in the morning because I'm exhausted, can't concentrate, have something going on the next day that requires some sharpness.  But then  I have to come clean to the sleep therapist.  He's not entirely happy.  We spar.

I'm tired!  I can't think straight!  I have things to do that require concentration! 

He blocks every exit.  Plenty of people are underslept (long-haul truckers, for example),  he says, and life goes on.  New parents are chronically under-slept and cope. Surgeons are exhausted, and what about pilots?  This is an investment in my future quality of life (even though I feel like hell now).   We're "re-regulating" my sleep.

This week I may not even bother to cheat, because I'm too tired to explain myself.

Three more weeks.  In the meantime: no naps, no TV or computer before bed, no reading in bed, no excuses.  I think it's working.  If only I weren't so damned tired.

Peaches Gets Caught

Peaches is the nickname of David Petraeus (can you believe it?).  As everyone knows, he got caught having an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula  Broadwell, and had to resign yesterday as director of the CIA.

I was stunned, because he seems like the straightest of  arrows.  On the other hand, sometimes the straightest arrows are so straight, they're brittle.  Whatever, he snapped.

Yesterday I roamed around on the internet to see what I could find out about Broadwell,  including an interview she did earlier this year with Jon Stewart.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-223097

 

In terms of fidelity-challengers, she's a nightmare:  young, beautiful, smart, funny, self-deprecating, in tiptop physical shape, an ex-Army officer, and a Ph.D. candidate.  She was  homecoming queen and student body president and valedictorian, for God's sake.

I could imagine it:  There's Dave, over in Afghanistan, being interviewed by her in a war zone, taking runs with her,  and no doubt being flattered with all the attention.  Then he had a life-changing revelation of a) his own attractiveness, and b) what a powerful man can get away with when he's thousands of miles away from home.

Paula Broadwell (above, right) and with David Petraeus (above)

And Mrs. Petraeus, his long-time wife, advocate for military families, is not young and beautiful, and you know what?  I bet she doesn't flatter the hell out of him.  She's probably ticked because he tosses his socks around the bedroom.  And she's probably not eager to have sex under a desk, which apparently was mentioned in the tell-tale e-mails the FBI found on Petraeus's computer.

I told Jerry about this.

"That must have been a monstrous desk," he said.

But did he see this affair as inevitable?  The perfect storm?

"You don't hear about Army generals who don't have affairs," he said, continuing upstairs with his cup of coffee this morning.   "Only the ones who do." 

Of course, he knows that I'd personally strangle him if the FBI came up with damning e-mails on his computer, but he may have a point.  Check out the Jon Stewart interview and see what you think.



Accepting Irrelevance

Not easy to do.

It's like finding out you've been wearing Mom Jeans for years;  that you've never heard of, say, the Radioheads; that you're wearing hopelessly dated underwear.  Boomers held sway for so many years, partly because there were so many of us and partly because we did, by God, have an impact, messy or not.  Look at the sixties.

But now, alas, we're old.    Interest in our generation seems limited to  how many of us will get reverse mortgages, burden Medicare,  move into retirement homes.

And post-election,  another dimension: we're not only old and white, but we're conservative.  Apparently, scads of us  voted for Mitt Romney.  Therefore we're so, you know, like, irrelevant.  Demographically, we're on the losing side.

Well, hell!  I'd like to point out to pundits and columnists that plenty of boomers are liberal, Obama-voting, gay-marriage promoting, feminist-identified,  pro-choice insistent people.   Not all of us were in the group of dejected over-groomed white people who stood around in Romney headquarters the other night. Instead, we  identified with the casually-dressed, multicultural crowd in Chicago who lost their minds when Obama was announced the winner.  Lots of us lost our minds right along with them. 

And one more thing:   Don't  underestimate the slew of Boomers who have raised remarkable daughters and sons who are now carrying the flag,  young people who are passionate, enlightened, and empathic.  They give me hope.

The other night, I  let go of worry about the soul of this country and became a bit more comfortable with accepting my own irrelevance.  Those young people are the future, thank God.  And they've been nurtured by the best.

My friend Debbie (r) and her two daughters, Annie and Libby, Democrats all.

.

Woohoo!

 

 

 

 

"...the former Massachusetts governor ended up a loser at the polls because of the racial, ethnic, and generational changes that have altered the U.S. electoral landscape."  San Francisco Chronicle, November 7, 2012

 

 

Map colored in by children at an election night party in Berkeley

 

Election Day Fantasy

$450 hand-painted scarf at Barney's

When the alarm went off  this morning, I was having a dream--I swear to God--about making friends with Ann Romney. 

She and I were together because our husbands were doing business (what on earth could THAT be?), and we were discovering some shared interests. Painting, for one; she liked to paint scarves.  Even in my dream, I was surprised.

Then I staggered out of bed, threw on my robe ($20 at Target years ago--you can imagine what it looks like), and crept downstairs in the dark.  I plugged into NPR for a long day of listening.  Every time there was a Romney sound bite, I turned down the volume and whispered a defiant obscenity.  When he was finished, I turned up the volume to listen to Obama and crossed my fingers.

I'm worn out.  From lack of sleep and an overload of political reports.  My wide-awake brain wants the Democrats to win today, but my poor old subconscious wants to figure out a way to be friends with the other side.

The Morning Before the Election

Jerry leans over the kitchen counter reading the sports page, with cup of coffee at hand.  Front section untouched.