I am Grateful for Family Cooks

We are at my parents for Thanksgiving. We had our big meal last night. It was worth the 2.5 hour drive full of noxious stimuli.

The kids were fighting, crying and whining on the way. There was red licorice drool over faces, hands, shirts, pants, toys and upholstery. Two gum packages were consumed in under 15 minutes with some of the chewed pieces still unaccounted for. A last ditch attempt to drown out the noise by blaring "Eraser", "7 8 9" and "Allergies" by the Barenaked Ladies was unsuccessful. I finally resorted to a threat of dropping all whiners off at the next shoulder and not returning for 30 minutes. This achieved results. This decreased the decibel level by 50%, which was manageable, until we reached our destination.

I attempted to cook a Thanksgiving dinner, once. It was to be a warm, fuzzy experience. Instead, it was an unpleasant reality check. I recall shouting, "What do you mean I didn't leave enough time for the turkey to fully thaw?" and "How do you cook the pie when the turkey's hogging the entire oven?" and "How do you serve everything HOT at exactly the same time??" Think about it - there are 2 or 3 vegetables with different cooking times, potatoes to mash, gravy to prepare, stuffing to retrieve, turkey to carve. How does 1 person perform all of these daunting tasks? My father had functioned as family cook for years and I had never pondered how he seamlessly orchestrated our feasts.

My parents aren't the "told you so" types, which I much appreciate. They calmly watched, that day, as I scurried haphazardly around the kitchen. At one point my mom asked, "How is work going?" to which I curtly responded, "Mom, I can't cook AND converse at the same time!!!" My parents exchanged glances and gracefully excused themselves for a few hours. They stated they needed to attend to some shopping that they had allegedly forgotten to do. They included my sister in the rescue. They returned a few hours later to a prepared feast, albeit with some of the fixings luke-warm and others piping hot, and a sheepish daughter.

When our turn came up a few years later to again host Thanksgiving, I passed off the cooking duties to my calm, easy-going husband. I have now been permanently demoted to "assistant cook" and it makes for a much pleasanter celebration all around.

To all the family cooks out there (with a special shout out to my dad): I salute you! I appreciate and acknowledge the hours of work it takes and the talent you possess to serve a delicious, hot meal ALL AT THE SAME TIME!!