As Thanksgiving season passes through to Christmas season, I find myself thankful for my cast of characters. Although, in my house, Thanksgiving season can be considered “slip on the leaves on the driveway season” and Christmas season is the beginning of “slip on the ice on the driveway season.” Those are stories for another day. Today, we begin with Thanksgiving. As usual, we served brunch. This year, we had 49 people for brunch. Despite the low numbers, it was festive and full. We had 22 for dinner. This year, Travis smartly heeded my advice and allowed me to make chili instead of the traditional turkey dinner. We mostly did this because Trav was on call, and I didn’t think I could handle the recovery from brunch and the turkey prep with all the fixings by myself if he got called in (which he did). We also did this because turkey sucks. Seriously, would turkey ever be your first choice for dinner? Do you ever think, “Hey, let’s make a bird that is so difficult to get right that there are a million tricks on the internet to try to trick the meal into maybe turning out juicy.” The pilgrims had turkey because they had to. They didn’t have much else around but those plentiful birds. Then, there’s always that one year that you actually get it right. You make the perfect bird. It’s juicy and delicious. But you only get it once. The rest of the years, you need to dump mountains of mashed potatoes and gravy just to juice things up. But you will always chase the holy grail turkey of yesteryear. 

Truth is, I read that the pilgrims probably had lobster for thanksgiving dinner, given how plentiful lobster was in the Northeast at that time. Now there is a plan I could get behind, if it wasn’t so cost prohibitive to feed lobster to 22 people. So we get turkey, the lobster of the Midwest. I believe that turkey is best ground up and served in chili, so that’s what I did.

Some wonder why we serve Thanksgiving brunch. Many years ago, my Mom started this tradition so that her married kids could have brunch with us, then move onto the other side of the family for dinner. That way, nobody got slighted. When Travis and I bought my parents house back in 2000, we inherited Thanksgiving brunch, along with a garage partially full of somewhat useful stuff,  a bedroom closet full of not so useful stuff, and a couple of orange chairs my mom had garbage picked and had recovered (Taryn still has these chairs). It came with the house. Those of us young enough to not have a significant other when the tradition was started went to Debbie’s or Jeannie’s for Thanksgiving dinner. Originally, I continued that tradition, but then I moved to Indiana and it became more difficult to mooch dinner off family. So, we started making dinner. The first year, it was pizza (because it was completely unplanned), then turkey for years, and now chili. See, I have never been confused on the purpose of the celebration. It’s about the people, not the meal… although I consider the chili bar an improvement on the turkey, which we only made well once. I can make chili well most of the time. 

So, hug those we are lucky enough to have around us. Be thankful for all our cast of characters. I know I drew the best hand with my family. I would choose my group even if I wasn’t stuck with them from birth. So, there’s that. Now I have to wait another year for my favorite holiday.