Tasty Day

The Feast Table

Everything ready at your house? I have to prepare in stages, otherwise Thanksgiving is a mammoth amount of work and seems over too soon. This year, my daughter and a friend are bringing mashed potatoes, two vegetables, rolls, cranberry sauce. I have ordered one dessert and some dips. All that’s left: cheese board with various crackers, topped baguette toasts, roasted pecans, then onward to garlic flan, and then the roast chickens (no one here likes turkey), my Aunt Mary’s cornbread dressing, cream gravy, a squash dish with maple syrup, an ambrosia palate cleanser before the apple cake and the lemon tarts. Seems like there should be more. Thanksgiving is all about more!

First thing out of the oven: roasted pecans

I love setting the table. This year, no mums, no pumpkins, or colorful leaves. The plain white linen and the Indian paisley in fall colors will stay in the drawer because I found in the bottom a folded treasure given to me years ago by a friend who was emptying her mother-in-law’s huge house. She gathered some friends and said to take what we wanted. The mother-in-law was a Duke, very big name in these parts. She had some cool old furs and coats, evening gowns and purses. Even the men got into it, coming out of the attic with suits from the fifties, great Panama hats, and big wooly sweaters, some with moth holes. We had a fun day and ended with a big supper in the grand dining room, the last event of that family in the old house.

In Mrs. S’s dining room, I found a very old, quite fine linen tablecloth with embroidery that must have put out the eyes of the maker, lace panels, tiny flowered borders, and big tassels. A work of art. I chose that.

Because my table is round and the lavish tablecloth is long, I never used it. Only took it out now and then to admire the delicate work and to wonder where it came from—Italy? Spain?

Today I spread it across the table and found that it almost fit—just lacking an inch or so. It has a few small spots, some long ago dribble of port or a slosh from a toast of an old Burgundy. I set the table with the gorgeous Herend from my family—my daughter’s pattern, and also the pattern of my two sisters. How long have I collected linens? I took a stack of huge old monogrammed napkins and the silver I’ve used every day of my grown-up life. (Yes, it always has gone in the dishwasher.) At Trader Joe’s I selected flowers in the colors of the china. Thanksgiving is more about memory than about the big bird brought in aloft. The candlesticks, my mother’s, the salt cellar in the shape of a hand, from my friend Ann, now gone, the platters collected from Italy, the water goblets a gift from my friend Susan—so many invisible ones also have a place at the table.

I hope you have a very tasty day with many toasts and fine memories.