On the Table

I feel somewhat guilty for reducing a holiday of the significance of Thanksgiving down to the food we plan to consume. Maybe if it were Secretaries Day, I wouldn’t feel the shame.

Still, I trust everyone to know I understand that the personal and historical importance of Thanksgiving Day dwarfs the paltry meaning of something as petty as what we eat tomorrow. Right?

Perfect. On to the food.

The beauty of having Thanksgiving two hours away from your kitchen is that the expectations for your contribution to said meal go way down.

Wait. Check that.

I don’t really know that the expectations of what I will provide go down. But my delivery of actual food meets a pretty low bar each year. Whether that’s because the expectations are really lower or only because I’ve been married long enough for my in-laws to be acquainted with the unburnished realities of Me: you be the judge.

In any event, you deserve the reckoning of my contribution to our gathering.

Pecan pie. Simmie’s Pecan Pie, to be precise. This recipe is, by my calculation, completely perfect as long as you round up that 1 1/2 cups of pecans to an even 2 cups of pecans. (Okay, with a few extra throw in. How could that hurt?)

Cranberry Orange Relish. I know there are people out there who would rather have so-called “Cranberry Sauce” that comes schlumping out of the can just like a batch of gelatinous Alpo contaminated by a vat of Red Dye #5.

But I choose not to dwell on the idiosyncrasies of the insane. Life is too short.

Listen to me carefully. Put 1 package of fresh cranberries and a seeded orange (with the peel still on) into your food processor. Pulse until minced. Stir in 3/4 cup of sugar. Then spread this on your turkey and say good-bye to the can forever.

It’ll be good for you.

Finally, because we’ll be staying at my parents house overnight, I’m bringing a couple of pans of Caramel Pecan Rolls — an incarnation of Pioneer Woman’s Caramel Apple Sticky Buns, except without apple and with loads of pecans.

These will not be good for you. Or me. At all. Except maybe for our souls.

And who couldn’t use a little caramel-and-pecan-doctoring on their soul once in a while?

Happy Thanksgiving!