The food of the Friday after Thanksgiving, for which the food of the Thursday of Thanksgiving was made Ah. Today is the day of the celestial left-overs. A Thanksgiving meal should always be planned around the idea that there should be plenty left over and that the food is of the sort that tastes better the day after. The Thanksgiving dinner itself is but a preliminary step, though a thoroughly enjoyable one.

There is a turkey, of course, with the proper stuffing. Bread, onions sautéed in butter, celery, thyme, heavy on the sage, etc. Nuts are acceptable. You people who put liver or oysters or other abominations in your stuffing? Infidels, every one of you.

Mashed potatoes. My mashed potatoes. Do not tell guests how much cream and butter is mashed into them. Are they delicious? Yes they are. Do they taste like the the Ur-mashed potatoes, the Platonic ideal of purée de pomme de terre? Then you don't want to know how much cream and butter has been mashed into them. Just shut up and eat. Yes, you may have seconds.

Cabbage salad. Non-traditional, but there is a reason for it, as you will see. Shredded green and red cabbage, scallions, and carrots. Sesame oil. Seasoned rice vinegar. Salt and pepper. I don't measure, I just do it. Preferably made on Wednesday evening. Good for Thursday dinner, but even better on Friday.

Then, the simplest steamed peas, perfectly plain. Cranberry sauce - the chunky kind. Gravy, flawlessly executed by the man of the house. I don't know if this is a general custom, but my father was the gravy master, and I take it as a rule of nature that the making of gravy, like the carving of roasts, is properly a masculine undertaking. I don't remember if the spouse came to our marriage with this understanding, but if not, he has been successfully catechised.

Wine - something plain and good. "Comfort wine", I guess. The local grocery had a serendipitous sale on the non-vintage Roederer Anderson Valley sparklers, and my frugality was rewarded. The brut went down easy, as always, but the brut rosé, which I hadn't tried before, delighted me because it provoked one of those taste/olfactory memories that are so fleeting but so powerful. It had a crisp, simple, festive taste, and a beautiful peach color - but there was something in it that reached down and yanked a long forgotten senstation out of the neural storage basement. What it was was the taste of those inexpensive sparkling wines that people drank on holidays, in the days when Americans of my demographic didn't drink wine except for a glass on holidays, or perhaps the bottle of Mumm's for the bride and groom.

And like all olfactory memories, it drove me mad until I could name it. At first I thought, the Lancer's Rosé! But no, that wasn't it, wasn't it precisely. Then I hit it - yes! A tiny green-tinted liqueur glass, in the shape of a very tiny martini glass, containing a tablespoon or so of wine, that would be served to us children on the great holidays. The taste was the taste of Cold Duck! What exquisite childhood memories recovered, by the retrieval of a taste note from a beverage that a yuppie would snicker at...How many of y'all out there remember Cold Duck? Is it still bottled? I googled, and discovered that Cold Duck itself was an agent of the hegemon, sent abroad after ravaging domestic tables into the '60s:

The dreaded Muckie Beastie, or, as Americans call it, Cold Duck (R.I.P.), swept the land like black death in the 1970s almost driving the rest of Australia's sparkling reds into extinction. Although not really related to other fizzy reds that had roamed the country with no natural predators for almost a century, Cold Duck soiled their habitat and drove the indigenous sparkling Australian red underground. And, yes, it was the United States' fault!

I wonder what it would taste like now? Sugar water with a drop of synthetic rosé essence? Maybe I could obtain a bottle and do a blind test with a few sparkling rosés or blanc de noirs in the $20.00 - $40.00 range. Wouldn't it be embarrassing if I couldn't tell the difference? Wouldn't it be fun? At any rate, a flute full of the aforementioned Roederer brut rosé, sipped before and during the potato mashing process, ensures the correct attitude in the masher and thus the perfect consistency for the potatoes.

Now dessert: I made some damned fine pies, if I say so myself. With creditable crusts, even. Not the crusts of a master, such as one of my elder sisters, but certainly edible. I've observed that the very best cooks I know handle the food very little, and without fuss - and nowhere is this Zen-like simplicity and mastery more evident than in the hands of the makers of excellent pie crust. My sister's pie crusts are so delicate and so flaky that only a Master could fit them into a pan without disintegration. I'm convinced, really, that she handles all the crust ingredients with no more than a touch or two of the tips of her pinkies. But in my humble apprentice fashion I produced fine pumpkin and apple fillings. Freshly grated nutmeg, and twice the usual amount, for the former. A very sharp note of both lemon zest and allspice for the latter. What is the pumpkin pie for? Breakfast on Friday morning, of course. Pumpkin pie is is best for breakfast.

And after a long morning walk we get to the whole point of the preparation of the Thanksgiving day meal. The leftover mashed potatoes and peas may be set aside, to be used later to fill out a dinner. Early afternoon is the time for the creation of the Leftover Sandwich. You have these dinner rolls, see, that you do not make before Thanksgiving dinner, but rather on Thursday evening. This is the Special Leftover Sandwich Bread. Heat up the gravy (never enough leftover gravy!), and the stuffing. Get out the cabbage salad, the cranberries, and the turkey. Cut a dinner roll in half. Now you are ready to build. Spread a thick layer of the tangy, sesame-oil flavored cabbage over the bottom of the roll, followed by a slice of turkey. Smear the cranberries on top of this, and then the stuffing. Now pour on the preferred amount of hot gravy. Smush the top of the roll over all this, rather in the manner of the classic Tampa Cuban sandwich. It will be a mess, but it will be what Thanksgiving food is all about. Take to the table, or the football game on TV, or where you please. Not recommended as sitting-in-front-of-the-computer food. You will want to stay close enough to the kitchen to acquire seconds. Leftover pie afterward optional. You really, really don't want to go shopping today. Enjoy.

Posted by Moira Breen at November 29, 2002 02:17 PM