Giving Thanks and Food Poisoning

I consider myself an elevator cook. I have my ups and downs.

A Thanksgiving dinner guest once declared my dressing the best he’d ever tasted. He wasn’t being polite. It was flipping amazing.

Another dinner guest at another Thanksgiving dinner suggested my turkey made him physically ill. He wasn’t being rude. It was a gastronomic toxin.

Ups, downs and health concerns aside, I remain eternally optimistic in my attempts at entertaining. Although chances of the meal tasting delicious are slim, the odds of the night being memorable are very high indeed.

My emotional state undoubtedly influences my cooking. One day, I might wake up in the chef zone. Cook books and written recipes are not only unnecessary but actually get in the way. Instinct is everything on these days. I can open the fridge, grab this and that, and effortlessly throw together a proper meal. I will find exactly the right spices in the back of a drawer. I can slide aside a bowl in a lower cabinet and discover I just happen to have the weird shaped pan or ridiculously specific gadget required to make the dish in mind. And if not? I will inexplicably demonstrate a complete and expert understanding of how I might substitute one thing for another resulting in never-before-tasted culinary perfection.

Everything feels magical. And, of course, the flavors are divine.

Other days are a nightmare.

Like a TSA dog, I will smell trouble. But then a surreptitious sneak will throw me a bone and I'll ignore all my instincts and training and tail-wag the bad guys right through security.

If I stand at the stove on these no-good days, I'll feel as if I'm wading ankle-deep through a kind of marshy mucky swamp. And with every move, I'll sink deeper. My earlier and rather modest menu ambitions, suddenly seem to me like a multitude of Homeric odysseys. Separating egg yoke from white? A wholly unnatural act that the universe can and will thwart at every attempt! Whipping cream to lovely thick consistency? Ha! No matter how diligent I am, I will accidentally overdo it and churn up a bowl of lumpy butter. Roasting chestnuts in the oven? I will forget the crucial act of slitting the shells with a knife and they will explode like a score of tiny dirty bombs leaving nut-guts all over the glass oven door.

Everything is a nightmare and my kitchen becomes a torture chamber to which I am securely chained.

And dinner guests are on the way.

When it comes to cooking, I am as reliable as a soufflé. I will rise to impressive heights. I will collapse into a soupy mess.

And the worst part is that I never know which me I'll be. OK, the issue is arguably worse for the dinner guests expected to eat the results.

In an ideal world I would, on a good day, impulsively invite people over to share a meal and we'd eat, and talk, and eat some more. And everyone would leave feeling not only satisfied but also deliriously impressed by the food.

What a fine cook and delightful host, I imagine them saying on the drive home.

This ideal world would also involve my ability to rescind at a moment's notice any invitation to dine at my table. Even if that means rescheduling Thanksgiving to Tuesday, or eating figgy pudding in July.

Instead of feeling angry about the inconvenience, the last-minute uninvited guests would delight in the spontaneity! They would feel as if we were but a circle of creative kooky artistes (with an e) who not only understood such meal mishaps but used them as fodder for their muses.

Soon I will be heading to the beach to share Thanksgiving dinner at the home of good and generous friends. Last time, I brought an apple pie. The pastry could not have rolled out more impressively if it were an Academy Awards' show red carpet. I'd gone to the farmers market the day before to select the perfect variety of fresh and crunchy apples. After slicing them in even wedges, I layered them in a beautiful spiral pattern. Instead of a plain closed-top crust, or even an open basket weave style, I decided to get holiday-fancy by cutting out perfect little pastry leaves to place directly atop the apples in decorative glory.

It looked gorgeous.

I even texted a picture of my pie masterpiece to my daughter who was obviously so impressed, she responded almost immediately.

"Why would you top a pie with turkey feathers?"

Happy Thanksgiving!