Pre-Thanksgiving Post, 2013

This year, for the first time, Mary and I are having our extended family to our home for Thanksgiving. We are expecting thirty. This is far more than will comfortably fit into our three-bedroom rambler, but Thanksgiving is not about being comfortable. It is about being grateful for having enough food and enough loved ones to become uncomfortably full and close.

My homemade pancetta

We’ve lost some folks over the past few years, but on the whole our family has been lucky. Charlie tried to kill himself last summer by falling off a horse. He’s a mite gimpy now, but mostly okay. Otherwise, this year has been relatively benign for the Hautman/Logue clans, with no unanticipated passings, no broken unions, no new terminal conditions, no homes lost to natural disasters. For all that, we are thankful.

I’m the turkey guy this year. Gigantic birds frighten me, so I’ll be cooking two “small” turkeys (the inverse of “jumbo” shrimp) and making a half gallon of gravy. Also, a hen-of-the-woods-and-pancetta stuffing/dressing. Mary is doing pumpkin pies and wild rice. My brothers are bringing elk and a smoked goose. Vegetables, appetizers, wine, and chairs are coming from all directions. We will have four tables set up with a motley collection of mismatched crockery, glasses, flatware, and bourgeois wildlife-themed paper napkins.

It’ll be a little crazy and a lot of fun. I hope the same for all of you.