Assignment 14: Flying Turkeys - Alex Wyllie

Ahhh, thanksgiving. The holiday that isn’t always celebrated. That time we went to Dublin for my grandfather’s 70th, we had naught but a burger and fries (and not fast-food). Two years ago, the Turkey got pardoned and we had fish. But we still have a normal thanksgiving every once and a while, like this year. We get up very early on thanksgiving, usually about 8 in the morning. Everything already bought, dad begins cooking, the rest of us watching, sniffing as the good scents of food begin wafting throughout the house. Dad begins with the stuffing, an elegant combination of bread, celery, onion, and other secret ingredients that when baked, yield the most appetizing smells and tastes of all of thanksgiving. Then, the mashed potato. By brother really likes the normal mashed potatoes, but the rest of us enjoy mashed sweet potatoes, so both varieties are boiled and mashed. Then he begins the cake, a luxurious chocolate cake - the Sacre Torte (German for “cake from the Sacre”, a former castle that is now a hotel in Austria, an ancestor who was head chef invented the Sacre Torte). Only a handful of people today know the recipe, and my dad is one of them. Then comes the free-range turkey, stuffed with carrots and baked to perfection. My dad also makes tomatoes and cranberries, and the gravy. We then set the table while dad carves the turkey in the kitchen, the bird itself won’t come out to our dining room table. And thence commences the eating. After dinner, we sit around and talk for about an hour before the cake is brought out, and is served with a scoop of ice cream. That’s my thanksgiving. Being the only close family in the US, we often celebrate it without family, and often our friends travel away to celebrate it with family. We aren’t religious, and we know each other pretty well, so we do skip some of the things that other families do before eating, but other than that, it is far more traditional than that of our Canadian relatives (who celebrate in October).

Note: The other posts are being reposted because for some reason, nobody can see them, and I can't fix it. They'll have the original post date and time here, below the main post.