Perhaps Thanksgiving dinner once served as a family's final fattening before winter when food would be scarce, and a celebration of the bounty a family had worked to grow through the season. While times have changed, our indulgence has not, and so begins the season of food blitz.
Women are furiously making lists, phone calls to nail down menus and delegate pies, clipping coupons, and eying sales for hordes of turkey with all the trimmings. Expected guests on Turkey Day are intended to overstuff themselves intentionally, to become miserable humans who knew it was coming. Men the nation over assume without much thought that they'll bust out (of) their fat jeans with the extra give, or plan to wear elastic-waisted pajama pants from a Christmas gone by (depending on the audience). Many expect arguments with previously mentioned women whose evolutionary job it is to pull off grand meals effortlessly, get their hair done before the doorbell rings, and ensure their husbands didn't dress like Stupid for Thanksgiving dinner.
Sexism aside in a nuclear family Thanksgiving, the indulgence of the season isn't limited to copious amounts of food and drink that we abuse to give thanks for whatever we are thankful, but rich is the information we seek from media for curbing our holiday eating traditions--eating less, drinking less, and turning our food into shadows of the real thing to save our hips from certain doom.
And so, I make the case for unconventional Thanksgiving.
My Thanksgiving menu is as follows:
Green olives, cheese and crackers for snacking
Organic Spring Mix for salads (despite Autumn)
Two whole roasted chickens for the men who must consume meat in masculine quantities
Homemade chicken soup (it's flu season, after all)
Homemade artisan bread with real butter
Baked whole sweet potatoes*
Homemade apple pie, courtesy of Mom
(*Ounce for ounce, sweet potatoes pack the biggest nutritional punch of all foods in the produce section.)
Regardless of the menu items, most people will join in some circumstantial indulgence, but we don't have to go overboard. Unconventional Thanksgiving (whether it's homemade chicken soup or Chinese takeout) means we can get together without the expectation of an overhyped meal that leaves us so full with indigestion that we'd rather throw up (just so we can eat more.) The average American will consume 4,000 calories Thanksgiving Day, because we're expected to. So, why must Thanksgiving be so traditional, since most of us are in no way facing winter starvation? With Louisville's waistlines growing a little faster than the national average, perhaps it's time to downgrade, make more of less, and be truly thankful for what we can provide without consuming everything we're able.
The challenge: make a regular favorite meal to share, be thankful for the loved ones who stop by, for your ability to nourish them reasonably, and thank yourself for not dealing with that giant turkey that is nothing but obligation, from the grocery cart to the leftovers you have no space for anyway.
Contact the writer at rachel@hurdanger.com.
Image: Cousin Reginald Catches the Thanksgiving Turkey, by Norman Rockwell
