GIVING THANKS FOR VEGETABLES

Every year at this time I feel obliged to admit that Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday and never has been. Even as a child, I thought the all-American feast was incredibly tedious, with no presents to liven things up and a lot of really boring food—dry, overcooked turkey, dressing that had a number of suspect bits hidden in it, cranberry sauce from a tin, its plump shape indented with lines from the can, lime Jello salad, and too many things mashed like baby food, potatoes, turnips, squash, not to mention the mashed pumpkin in the pie, plus boiled onions.

What’s to love? Crisp celery with Philadelphia cheese smeared down its middle—that’s what. Especially if it was cream cheese with chopped green olives.

Stuffed celery, however, is not sufficient fare for a celebration.

My mother was an excellent cook but somehow Thanksgiving seemed to try her skills—possibly she didn’t like that food any more than I did but felt she had to prepare it, for tradition’s sake. Every now and then, something delightfully different would happen, like the year she decided on a succulent pork roast instead of turkey, or the time we all voted for lobster and no cranberry sauce at all. But honestly, when I think back, the best part for me was the cut-glass relish dish handed down from Grandmother Hathorne. One side held the celery sticks, filled with cream cheese, and the other had pimento-stuffed olives. Later another innovation, served in an equally time-honored heirloom dish, was a salty, crunchy mix of mini pretzels, peanuts, and cereal bits that I thought for a long time my clever mother had invented. But no, surfing the internet, I discover it has a name, this mix, moreover a “registered” name: it’s called Chex® Party Mix (check it out at Chex.com). The original was developed by the mythical Betty Crocker, doyenne of General Mills, back in 1955. That original has since mutated and you can now find online recipes for Gluten-Free Tropical Island Chex® Mix and Kentucky Bourbon Bacon Chex® Mix along with a host of others. But I like to think the original, with its elusive flavors of Worcestershire, seasoned salt, and garlic and onion powder, is the true classic cocktail mix of American Thanksgivings.

Having rejected all these venerable traditions, I have perforce had to come up with something that will make the feast a feast. And because with the passage of time my collection of family and friends has become eclectic in their food choices, including outright vegetarians but not yet vegans, vegetarians who also eat seafood, meat-eaters who don’t eat pork, meat eaters who don’t eat red meat, gluten-free pasta eaters, and those who will only touch the turkey if it’s certified free-range, fed on organic meal, and butchered in a humane manner, I increasingly rely on vegetables to feed them all.

incomparably and obviously, Caravaggio, winter fruits & vegetables

The season being now, of course, autumn vegetables are what’s called for, but the beauty of this time of year, with summer just over and real winter not yet kicked in, is the variety that’s present in farm markets and supermarket fresh departments. And the beauty of vegetables on a Thanksgiving or any other festive table is the panoply of colors and fragrances they offer. Deep jade Brussels sprouts, the blistered leaves of lacinato kale and spinach, cauliflower’s alabaster dome, onions in dozens of shapes and sizes (my favorites, the squat, flat-topped cipollini), all the tumbled variety of squashes from giant blue Hubbards to stripey delicatas (such an appropriate name), brilliant carrots, dark red beets, pale leeks and rosy Tropea onions, and the gnarled exuberance of celeriac, aka celery root.

So have your turkey (or your roast pork, your lobster, whatever you want as a statement-making center of the table, even Bud Trillin’s famous pasta carbonara), but surround it with as many vegetables as you have time and space for.

I was launching my campaign to change the national Thanksgiving dish from turkey to spaghetti carbonara—which I believe the Indians, having had some experience with Pilgrim cuisine, must have brought with them to the first Thanksgiving.

Calvin Trillin, in a long ago New Yorker

And speaking of time, in my experience one of the most anxiety-ridden questions surrounding Thanksgiving is how to get all that food on the table at the same time. So another beauty of these vegetable dishes is that many of them are as good at room temperature as they are steaming hot off the stove. And many are even better if they’re prepared a day or two ahead and left to concentrate their flavors over 24 to 48 hours, freeing up the kitchen for more demanding tasks.

I’m putting these in the order I think they should be prepared but please do not for one minute think I’m suggesting you make ALL of them, or even more than one or two. Play around a bit in the days to come and decide which of these belongs on your Thanksgiving table. And if you end up thinking none of them fits the bill, well, I’ll never know, will I?

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