Planning to host Thanksgiving Dinner on the other side of the country comes with challenges, especially when you don't rent a car.
How do you get a twenty pound turkey and enough food to feed fourteen people to a rental house?
We asked our youngest daughter Amy, who recently moved to Jersey City, to pick up enough groceries for our feast, for which we of course reimbursed her.
Amy is now Vegan, so perhaps asking her to buy a turkey was unfair, sort of like asking a prohibitionist to buy us a bottle of rum, but she took on the task.
Our kids and their significant others are very much into the whole natural-foods movement, so we weren't surprised to find she had foregone one of those frozen turkeys you get at bargain rates if you buy enough groceries in favor of an organic turkey. I don't know how much a fresh (never frozen) organic turkey costs --- and quite frankly, I don't really want to know --- but I can guess that it costs more than the six bucks we paid for our Redondo Beach bird we will be sharing today with some friends back home. Anticipating this, I tried to push the idea of a Cajun turkey from her boyfriend favorite restaurant, Popeye's, which I'd seen advertised on TV and figured at $45 would be a bargain by comparison. That was a no go, but anyone who knows me knows I had to try.
In any case, we were grateful Amy and her boyfriend Lukas took care of most of the groceries for us, which was not an easy task with their busy schedules.
Days before we boarded our flight, we learned Amy had been named by Forbes Magazine on its prestigious 30 Under 30 list for Media.
~~~List members are also showing legacy publications how to adapt to the new financial realities of the industry. Amy Schellenbaum, 27, has revitalized the 146-year-old Popular Science as online director, relaunching its site and overhauling its editorial strategy, slashing output from 25 stories a day to seven, in favor of more reporting and deeper analysis. It was a risk to choose quality over quantity, but the site’s traffic from Google has already doubled, she says.
Like so many other list members, though, she sees a higher purpose to her work than chasing clicks.
“Popular Science primarily reaches the middle of the country and the south, which makes its mission unique,” she says. “We keep people loving science, so they're more likely to believe science when it concludes inconvenient things, like that human-caused climate change is real or that vaccines are vital. We want to be the most inclusive science and tech publication—not only for our business but because humanity's future requires we accept science.”~~~
(See how I managed to slip that bit of parental bragging in without anyone noticing?)
Julie took a train to Jersey City a half day ahead of Gina, Emma and myself. She bought potatoes, which she and Amy peeled and mashed at Amy's new condo, making three huge batches: regular, garlic and Vegan. I now know Vegan means no dairy products, requiring substitutions for things like butter, milk and eggs.
Gina prepurchased train tickets for Emma and me to meet her in Philadelphia after Emma got off her school bus, which made it easy-peasy for me. We had a bit of delay waiting for the right train at the 30th Street Station in Philly, but after a snack and some play on bars, we were en route to Secaucus, where Gina secured an Uber that took us the rest of the way. With layovers, it took about three and a half hours from the time Emma and I boarded the first train, and Emma was a real trooper, making the best of the trip.
Laszlo followed by car from his job, carrying our suitcases and a crate of supplies for fruitcake, which would be another big family project for the weekend.
They had spent a couple days in NYC before we arrived, with Jay working from the New York office of Universal Music. We had the opportunity to visit the beautiful building near Columbus Circle the following Monday when we returned a charger he had borrowed from his co-worker Stephen. It was a nice excuse to wander around the heart of the Big Apple in the beautiful holiday season.
Before that stay in NYC, Jay and Sasha had been to Florida to see Whitney and Adam get married in an official ceremony primarily for the benefit of grandparents who would be unable to make the trip to Portugal for their destination wedding next summer. It turned into something of a snafu due to weather delays of flights, and we could tell that the trip had been a drain on their usual high energies.
On Thanksgiving morning, we watched the Macy's Parade and then had the dog show in the background as most of us played cards while Julie prepped food in the rental house kitchen with very limited counter space.
Amy arrived but was soon off to take Jay and Sasha to an Indian market to buy spices which they had inadvertently left in Whitney's refrigerator the night before. The kids had started a tradition of eating Indian food on Thanksgiving --- a bit ironically in my opinion --- on a prior Thanksgiving at Gina's sans parents when they found it easier to get reservations (no pun in intended) for Indian food than a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.
I did manage to arrange a group photo after they returned. Amy's boyfriend was back at her condo with his parents, who were also preparing food, but it is still a nice family photo. Perhaps someone with Photoshop skills could put put Lukas in the picture behind Amy, who for some reason looks taller than me (which she isn't).
This would also be our first opportunity to meet Amy's boyfriend's parents, Winfried and Silke, who turned out to be extremely nice. They brought wine as well as some great homemade vegetable dishes including squash soup, Brussels sprouts and pumpkin pie, all of which were terrific.
Complimenting Silke on the soup, she said Winfried had actually made it, indicating he, like myself, enjoys cooking. They certify organic vegetables for a living, so it wasn't exactly surprising that their food was healthy as well as tasty. They also brought organic pies and apple cider from upstate New York where they often host Amy on long weekends away from the City.
Laszlo's brother Szilard and their parents Z and Ria drove in from Nanuet, NY, bringing much needed folding banquet table and chairs which allowed everyone to have a seat at dinner rather than eating in shifts. The dinner really could not have come off as successfully as it did without them providing that table. They also brought some wine as well as Ria's delicious homemade cranberry sauce. It is always a great pleasure to see their smiling faces. Ria commented how thrilled she was to have such a large family gathering, including the opportunity to meet Winfried and Silke, who as immigrants from Germany who recently earned their US citizenship are kindred spirits, since Z and Ria's family also immigrated to the USA.
Silke paid us all a great compliment by saying what a happy family we had.
With Julie already pulling together a complicated meal including both gluten-free and Vegan options, and the huge portions of mashed potatoes and Winfried and Silke's dishes being heated, Jay and Sasha began Indian food and rice. It was rather chaotic in the kitchen, to say the least, and any time I wandered over to lend a hand I was immediately banished, which allowed me to enjoy some wine and light conversation with our wonderful guests.
After putting the not-quite-done turkey back in the oven for an extra hour when it turned out the oven wasn't as hot as ours back home, it finally was perfect and ready to be carved, which is my annual task.
Actually, I have one other task, which is to turn the turkey over about halfway through, because Julie cooks the turkey upside down for a couple of hours so that the juices from the dark meat drain into the breast to make it all succulent. Mission accomplished!
The whole meal turned out fantastic --- including my personal favorite, Julie's stuffing with spinach (adapted from her sister Cheryl's recipe) --- and it turned out everyone liked each other.
We enjoyed diverse conversations, card games and a rousing game of Taboo, where I felt like I was a couple of steps behind Emma on that game's learning curve. She played as well as the adults.
How blessed and thankful we are to have such wonderful people in our lives.
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