Happy Thanksgiving to all! and I hope everyone here has a nice long list of things to be grateful for.
If you're hosting the feast and have been struggling with Thanksgiving-morning multi-tasking, do read the article below when you can. It's a very funny, affectionate account of a family celebration where pie-making got totally out of hand over the years.
excerpts:
20 Guests, 19 PiesWhat happens when a Thanksgiving tradition gets completely out of hand."The pies cover the entire desk, and spill over onto a bookshelf. Several are held in reserve—just in case. (In case of what, no one knows.) In recent years, they have been labeled carefully by the grandkids. The traditional pies are there, of course: a pumpkin, a pecan, several kinds of apple. The line jostles toward the cluster of creamy pies: lemon meringue, lemon cream, grasshopper, and, of course, mocha chocolate crunch (about which more below). In the far corner are the pies that only my father eats: mince, minty sly, ecclefechan tart, and funeral. The two flat golden pies, derby and frangipane, are impossible to tell apart. Hardest to reach, in the center of the table, are the experimental pies: pomegranate, coffee maple-walnut, and crab-apple pie with cider vinegar."
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"In the late ‘90s, what had been an excessive number of pies started to become an absurd number. (The picture shown here is from 1998, before things got totally out of hand.) Her baking stretched to swallow most of the five days before the holiday. At a Thanksgiving about eight years ago, several guests canceled at the last minute, leaving us with more than one pie per guest. A threshold had been crossed, Ma says. 'That year there was a lot of discussion about there being too many pies, but there was also a kind of insane ironic pleasure expressed about it. I feel that since then I have ministered to that ironic pleasure.'
“ 'Now there is an expectation that I do it, but also that it is lunatic. On the one hand, you and the other guests are all rational people, and you recognize that it would be wise to cut back. But there is also pleasure in it, and you would be disappointed if I cut back.'
“ 'It’s perfectly true that this is a form of excess, and we live in a civilization that is excessive. [Your father] and I are generally frugal people, but this is our form of nonfrugality.'”
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2011/11/_20_guests_19_pies_my_mother_s_demented_glorious_thanksgiving_baking_extravaganza_.single.html
