Yeah, so I “cooked” for Thanksgiving. It wasn’t a big family deal (I will resist the almost overpowering urge to add an “io” to the end of “deal”) (I will) — just the DOG and I (unlike previous years when it was the King and I) (but then Yul Brynner had to go and die and all) — so I didn’t go all out the way I ordinarily would, with three different kinds of stuffings, my super-secret Yam and Pineapple Surprise (pssst, the surprise is that the yams are really carrots! and the pineapples are your long-lost half-sister who has been sleeping with your son!), roasted garlic rosemary chive parsley parsnip paprika praline pecan mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce that’s not sauce at all but a lovely concoction in which each cranberry retains its individuality and is not jellied beyond recognition with can marks to facilitate slicing, and vegan turducken. Instead I lovingly prepared a Tofurky Feast, and noted, with a generous helping of chagrin, dismay, and alarm, that there is no “e” in “tofurky”. Imagine my disappointment, with this information coming on the heels of my discovery that there is no “I” in “team”!
So, anyway, yes. In answer to your burning questions (really, you should see a doctor about that already), I did cook. Not the kind of cooking many of you indulged in, but still, it counted as cooking to me, because, as I’m sure you know (or could guess), I don’t really do the cooking thing. It’s not that I can’t. No. Au contraire. I, like Yan, can cook. The thing is, it’s just not my thing. I don’t dig it. It does not relax me, as many of my kooky cook friends say it does them. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It unnerves me, and not just because I’m afraid of losing yet another finger (thankfully I started out with eight on each hand). In fact, it doesn’t even unnerve me. I just plain ol’ don’t like it.
I did it anyway, but not without yelling at one point — when I realized that I didn’t do a very good job of timing, and the dumplings defied boiling and refused to rise to the water’s surface, and the broccoli was not only getting cold but was approaching a certain aloofness — “Oh, it’s all too much! I am not doing this again next year!”
I did take a couple of photographs, but the food insisted on approving them before I shared them. Unfortunately, the tofurky said it looked fat in the photos and the dumplings said they looked dumpy, and both threatened to make me fat if I didn’t comply with their demands to keep the photos private. Of course, they did not appreciate my taunts of, “What are you? Chicken?” So really, I didn’t have any choice.
But I know you want fabulous food fotos. So I’ll show you what I had for lunch yesterday, at Village Mingala, where I think I have now attained status as a regular. Here it is:
Mango Salad and Basil Tofu
Today the DOG and I head to my parents’ house for a more traditional Thanksgiving feast, which will hopefully not be as shy about having showing itself photographically. I suppose I won’t have it wear the rather immodest underpinnings I forced on the Tofurky Feast. In retrospect, that probably wasn’t a very good idea.
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Thanksgiving, last year: