Not Until Today

Posted on January 17, 2015 by | 1 comment

We ate a lot of pancakes before we started dating. We’ve eaten quite a few since, too, but in the years when we were just friends, frequently meeting for theatre dates (or non-dates, to be more precise), we often grabbed a bite to eat at a diner before the show. Whatever else a diner may be good at, pancakes are usually a safe bet.

I like variety: fruit, nuts, what have you. Offering a flight of syrups? Let’s try them all in turn. Chocolate chips are most decidedly not ruined by their being tucked into batter, nor the other way around. Additional flavors can cover a multitude of sins. Usually, she’s a pancake purist: no add-ins; maybe a little peanut butter on top, but usually only butter.

She got up early this morning and started puttering in the office.  I rose a little later and joined her for a vigorous round of putting-things-in-their-proper-place. I brewed coffee and tea, and remembered that bacon had been a mid-week special at the market.  I set some to roast in the oven while the tidying continued.  Eventually the timer chimed and I announced that it was time for breakfast. We decided on pancakes to accompany the bacon.

She saw me segmenting an orange next to the griddle where banana-filled pancakes cooked beside her unadulterated ones.  She looked at me quizzically. “The orange is for both of us. Vitamin C.” (She’s been fighting a cold, and I’m trying to stay ahead of it.) “Bananas in the pancakes, maybe a little applesauce on top. And, yes, maybe a little syrup.” She raised an eyebrow. “Hey, at least I’m not putting strawberries in, too.”

We sat to eat. The bacon was a little crisper than I’d meant it to be, but she didn’t mind; it wasn’t burned. “Maybe next time you should put the bacon in the pancakes,” she said.

I thought about that for a moment. She did, too, apparently. “Chocolate chip, banana, and bacon pancakes?”

“There’s more batter,” I said.

She put aside a strip of bacon.  I did, too, and returned to the kitchen. I sliced a banana and chopped some bits off a block of good dark chocolate. The griddle was still hot.

She took a bite. Her eyes softened. I took a bite and nodded.  She was right.

Ever willing to experiment, I tried a bite with maple syrup. It didn’t improve anything. “One thing too many?” she said, then she tried a bite with peanut butter.  “Same with peanut butter.”

All those years, all those plates of pancakes, yet we hadn’t encountered this combination until today.

“Apparently chocolate chip, banana, and bacon pancakes are a thing.”

They are now. Maybe not an everyday thing, but very much a thing.

Pancake, not for traditionalists.

Pancake, not for traditionalists.

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In Transit

Posted on January 15, 2015 by | 1 comment

The first commuting days of the new year were long and frigid. Catching up on projects after a two week vacation translates to 10 or 12 hour days more often than not. Leaving and returning in the dark coupled with the “arctic air” temperatures in the single digits – plus whatever windchill factor is in effect on a given day – means that I spent the evenings of my first week back at work crawling out of the car and crawling straight into bed at night.

Trying to avoid a repeat of that during week two, we opted to have dinner in the city on Monday and Wednesday — the days when we are both on the evening train home from NYC. But being more interested in good food enjoyed at our leisure than in being served restaurant dinners, we’ve packed picnics rather than made reservations.

On Monday, two covered dishes of scalloped potatoes and spiral ham were packed into the bottom of my work bag, along with a ziplock of washed and trimmed green beans. He brought extra cutlery and a beverage later in the day, and took a subway to my office after class.

At home, the ham and potatoes might have been rough-chopped, tossed in a skillet to warm and crisp, then topped with some panko bread crumbs and served alongside the steamed beans. In the office, with only a microwave to work with, the items were mixed into servings, covered with damp towels, and steam heated to comfortable eating temperatures. We ate heartily while sharing details of our days, enjoyed a leisurely walk to the 8:03 train (with a pause to admire the Christmas tree still lit in Bryant Park), and arrived home free of the hangry-grumps with enough energy to make dessert sundaes from chocolate cake and raspberry sorbet.

Our Wednesday route is a little less neat. Grand Central makes a triangle with my office and his school, and he has the long side; if I secure seats for us both and he runs on a diagonal through Central Park, we can just make the 6:53 before the “All aboard” call. We did just that last night, slipping comfortably into our seats as the train made its way north, and he dropped our dinner bag into my lap.

Leftover pot roast had been chopped and mixed with a smoky-sweet barbecue sauce, than placed between slices of his homemade bread, slathered with a mayo-mustard concoction to keep the moisture inside each sandwich, then tightly wrapped to create a press. Small containers of cherry tomatoes, garlic cornichons, and corn chips were packed as accompaniments, and we fell to our aboard-train repast with enthusiasm.

Neither meal was gourmet, neither was served on either cheerful fiestaware or good china, and neither was actually eaten in the country house. But our life together is better for both.

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Shelving It

Posted on January 14, 2015 by | 2 comments

The First Great Sorting happened in August, when our kitchens merged.  Some parts were easy: it was clear which mugs we wanted to keep, which cutlery to use, which plates and bowls. Our pots and pans were not too numerous; her small appliances and mine didn’t overlap much; our serving pieces complimented each other’s; nearly all of the bakeware had logical uses.  Still, we ended up with a too-well-stocked kitchen.  The cabinets under the counter were full-to-bursting, and the ones above were just as bad. Nearly every time we cooked, we found ourselves taking some items out in order to get to the needed one behind or underneath–like one of those shift-the-tile puzzles I was never good at.

And thus began the second Sorting. Anything that wasn’t in daily use came out of the cabinets and took up residence on the dining table–a strategy designed to make sure we wouldn’t dawdle over deciding what to do with them.  She proposed assembling a set of shelves in a closet under the stairs. They’d be out of the way but still accessible, and less apt to get dusty than they would if we built the shelves in the garage.

If we were going to put more things in that closet, though, we needed to organize the things that were currently in it.  All the Christmas decorations–most of them unused this year–came out for examination.  Keep it, probably keep it, definitely not keep it: these were our categories. Plenty went into the latter: even allowing for thrifty repurposing, how many partial rolls of ribbon and slightly-used bows can one house hold?  Kitchy decor items that were gifts from students I don’t even remember?  No, thank you. It was freeing to know that we were keeping things that are actually beautiful, actually useful, or happily memorable, and saying fond farewell to items that weren’t.

By early January, I am ready to think no more of holidays. I’m not really all that fond of the Nativity set I grew up with, but it is the one I grew up with! When there aren’t any parents left to visit, it might not be the worst thing to hold onto items that remind us of them. Hers is beautiful, and much smaller. Maybe we’ll alternate: her set in odd years, mine in even?  We can decide later, over a cup of cider. Both sets are securely packed–along with tree ornaments we love, handsome stuffed bears who carry good memories, and a modest assortment of gift-wrapping supplies. What we need, what we want, and what we love.

Also in that closet now reside a well organized set of kitchen implements.  Yes, for a while we will have to go downstairs to fetch the waffle iron when we want waffles.  The same when we want the food processor for making hummus, the 12-cup coffee maker for company, and the muffin tins. Maybe we’ll realize we want the box grater closer than a flight of stairs away; if so, something else will take its downstairs place. Perhaps one of my mom’s mixing bowls or a piece of Corningware she rescued from her mom’s kitchen. It’s a work in progress.

One thing that will definitely be absent from the kitchen at the Country House: the cursing that comes when I can’t reach the measuring cup!

3 slow cookers might seem excessive, but they're really useful when you don't want to heat up the whole kitchen in summertime. If, on the other hand, I haven't made ice cream in six months, it will not make the next cut.

3 slow cookers might seem excessive, but they’re really useful when you don’t want to heat up the whole kitchen in summertime.
If, on the other hand, I haven’t made ice cream in six months, it will not make the next cut.

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My Semi-Debauched Life

Posted on January 8, 2015 by | 2 comments

It had been cold in the office on Tuesday–but my “office” in this sense is a corner of a very large multi-purpose parish center with 16-foot-high ceilings, so it’s hard to control the heating.  If I could move my desk onto a 10-foot-tall platform, I might benefit from the rising of warm air, but that seems more trouble than it would be worth, since the “desk” I use most often is a grand piano. But the “office” was quiet, and I got plenty of work done, albeit done while wearing a scarf and wishing I’d brought my fingerless gloves.

I thought about dinner on my drive home.  She’d had a ham-and-swiss sandwich with caramelized onions for lunch. I had planned to have one, too, but ended up in a lunch meeting with a collaborator–rotisserie chicken over salad greens.  The sandwich seemed like a great idea, and I’d be at home to eat it which meant I could toast the kaiser roll, heat the ham, and melt the cheese.

What would go great with that, I thought, is a nice glass of red wine. 

I arrived home, picked up the mail, found her for a kiss hello, petted the cats, and set about gathering sandwich fixings.

A nice glass of red wine.

I trimmed some green beans and tossed them in a sauté pan with a few carrot coins and a couple slices of potato from the pot roast. I toasted the roll. I set the vegetables on a plate to keep warm in the oven while I finished making the sandwich.  I went back to the fridge for a little mayo, still thinking, a nice glass of red wine would go great with this.

And then I saw a half-full bottle of Vitamin Water.

…or that would be just as good.

I poured half the bottle into a glass, topped it with tap water, put the glass and my dinner on a tray, and carried it up to join her.

Richard Rodgers was, from many reports, a heavy drinker.  Alan Jay Lerner was addicted to amphetamines.  Stephen Sondheim smoked a lot of pot.

And for me?

A glass of watered-down Vitamin Water. Zero.  Not even the full-sugar stuff! Half a glass of nutrient-enhanced kool-aid, watered down because it’s too sweet when I drink it straight.

I’m no Rodgers.  No Lerner.  No Sondheim.  No Eugene O’Neill.  No Tennessee Williams.

I ate a sandwich with a plate of vegetables, I drank a theoretically healthy beverage. I carried the tray back to the kitchen and put the plate and glass in the dishwasher. Apparently I’m no good at the whole tortured-artist thing.

No Tonys, no Emmys, no Grammys, no Oscars.  No rehab. No cirrhosis. Such is my semi-debauched life.

I guess I can live with that.

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Untraditional

Posted on January 4, 2015 by | 1 comment

This Sunday after New Year’s has been unseasonably warm. I’m not complaining, mind you; it’s not been t-shirt and shorts weather, just pleasant enough for a late-afternoon walk in a light jacket.  She wore gloves, too, and we enjoyed seeing that ours was not the only house in the neighborhood where Christmas lights are still shining.

The holidays were lovely, with bits that were quiet and peaceful and bits that were bubbly and full of company. Decorations were kept to a bare minimum–stockings by the fireplace, some lights outdoors, a sprig of mistletoe. We didn’t decorate a tree, but her mom brought a ceramic tea-light holder that’s sitting proudly on the mantle; it’s shaped like a tree, glows softly, and gives off a lovely evergreen scent when lit.  By the time the dust settled–literally, from the renovations–and was mopped away again, we were so happy to have the living room clean and serene that the thought of pine needles falling was just too much to bear. The candle holder is tree enough, this year.

None of the trappings of the holidays were extravagant, in fact. Decorations, gifts, travel, food–all were modest and joyful.  Especially the food: we had wonderful meals, but not banquets that took so long to prepare that we were too tired to enjoy them.

* * *

For some families, it’s not Christmas Eve unless there are seven sorts of fish on the table. For others it’s pierogi.  Or Yorkshire Pudding. Or a slice of pizza grabbed on the run between church services. We’re still working out what our traditions might become.

Many say that what one does on New Year’s Day determines how they’ll spend the rest of the year.  Others say that the state of one’s household on New Year’s Day indicates the state in which it will be for the rest of the year.  For them there is a New Year’s Eve observance called Hogmanay. We kept this custom with a flurry of activity that left the house beautiful and me a little cranky. I apologized, but probably not quite profusely enough.

We had fried rice for a late supper on New Year’s Eve with a friend we were delighted to welcome; but by this point the day had taken its toll. She was falling asleep on the sofa long before midnight, and I was not far behind. I looked at the clock and realized we’d missed the big event. I found a cat toy that lights up, and our friend made a quick video we could show her later: the New Year’s ball drop our way.

* * *

“We could have popcorn for dinner,” she said, in the early evening of January 1.  After more masses and a long afternoon run, I was in favor of a minimal-fuss supper.  Still, it didn’t seem quite right.  Although my family didn’t have any particularly strong Christmas-dinner traditions, something vague and grandmotherly said there should be pork (fat indicating prosperity?) and greens (the color of wealth, I think) on the New Year’s Day table. While the oil heated for popcorn, I sliced a little leftover pork into a skillet, then in tossed the spinach we’d forgotten to put in a lentil stew on the 29th. It was just a couple bites of each, sort of an appetizer before a bowl of terrific popcorn, but a little protein and some vegetables seemed healthful as well as honoring tradition. Making music, running, eating simple and tasty food, and spending time together: if this is what 2015 holds, it will be a wonderful year.

Today’s weather wasn’t what we might expect of early January; but, then, my cup of cocoa is a little warmer than expected, too. I may have added a pinch more cayenne pepper than I meant to.  Hers was made the same way, but she hasn’t objected. It’s just a little untraditional.

A tiny tree, some cheese and crackers, a snickerdoodle, and a mimosa by the fireside: maybe the most perfect Christmas luncheon ever.

A tiny tree, some cheese and crackers, a snickerdoodle, and a mimosa by the fireside: maybe the most perfect Christmas luncheon ever.

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Linen-White Christmas

Posted on December 22, 2014 by | 1 comment

“White Christmas” will never be my favorite carol. I love Christmas, but I’m no fan of snow. If I could find a way to have it fall only on parts of the world that are usually green, I’d be perfectly happy.  A snowy field?  Fine.  Frosted tree branches along the roadside? Beautiful. Just keep it off the pavement, power lines, and rooftops.  I don’t mean to be a Grinch about it, but there are places to go and things to do.  I’m no Scrooge, but offer me an icy windshield to scrape or a plowed-in car to shovel out, and my response is a hearty Humbug!

The same attitude doesn’t apply so strongly in the kitchen, but I think of white things there as a delivery mechanism for other foods.  Mashed potatoes carry gravy.  Rice is best with a pile of vegetables and a little protein.  Grits? Scrambled eggs.  Oatmeal? Lots of fruit and some crunchy granola. Whipped cream is a garnish for pie or cake; vanilla ice cream is best with some topping or other.

But at home? Let’s have plenty of white–on the walls, that is.  The painter worked incredibly hard this week, and finished the main floor of the house on Friday morning.  We swept and mopped and swept and mopped again, finally removing the hoarfrost of plaster dust every horizontal surface in the living room, dining room, and kitchen.  We wiped down the kitchen cabinets and removed the dust that had slipped inside them. We vacuumed the un-tarped furniture; she fitted the sofa with the new slipcover that’s been waiting patiently to begin its service.  Tables came out of hiding and lamps perched brightly upon them. A very few objects d’art were arranged on shelves.  She found the stocking hangers and hung the stockings (with care, of course) from the mantle.  Her parents arrived for a pre-holiday visit. There were comfortable places to sit, a table at which to eat, flowers arranged, and a fire crackling in the hearth. If there was to be no more Christmas than this, it would still be a beautiful celebration.

It looks a little like we’re just moving in–which, in a way, we are.  The walls are creamy, the floors are clean and shiny, and there’s nothing hung on the walls.  Some might call it bland, boring, or vanilla, but I won’t.  It’s calm and uncluttered and clean. There’s no snow in the forecast. It will be a linen-white Christmas, and that seems perfect to me.

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What Would Laura Do?

Posted on December 15, 2014 by | 1 comment

Every year, she reads Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter, a story of hardship during seven snowy months in South Dakota. The coal runs out, the woodpile expires, and food is scarce, but the heroine and her family survive.

We’re a week away from the start of winter, but, even more than usual, ’tis the season of work-nights and event-nights; ’tis also the week in which renovations will reach the open-plan living room and kitchen. The combination of late hours and a fine layer of plaster dust on every surface can be as daunting as the forecast of a blizzard. It’s the sort of schedule that demonstrates incredible potential to leave us ordering lots of takeout food or ending up with pints of ice cream and spoons on our nightstands. We wanted to avoid those contingencies for obvious reasons of economics, nutrition, and just plain good sense.

While I was at work last Sunday, she prepared a menu and a shopping list; we marketed together, and then we spent the late afternoon and evening chopping and cooking and packaging.

I spatchcocked a chicken and roasted it. The backbone went into the slow cooker along with onion, celery, and carrots to make stock. When the chicken cooled enough to handle, we ate a little and distributed the rest. The breast meat went into a curried chicken-and-rice soup that was more like a stew. The dark meat was tossed in a bowl with celery, grapes, pecans, shredded spinach, and a not-at-all gloppy dressing to make a bright-but-hearty salad–the sort eaten with a fork, not spread for sandwiches. The rest of the bones then joined the stock. The last of a loaf of Italian bread from her favorite bakery was toasted into croutons that she mixed with ground beef and pork, spinach, and goat cheese to make a meat loaf that is way more interesting than anything I grew up with. Root vegetables were roasted to accompany them. The chicken’s giblety-bits were sautéed with onion, red pepper, and a few grape tomatoes and packed with the last bit of rice for one day’s lunch. Crisp, sweet pears were softened just a little with a bit of water, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a cup of cranberries from the freezer, then tucked into triangles of pie crust and baked into turnovers for breakfast, with a pot of overnight oatmeal for alternate mornings. The house smelled fabulous, and nothing was wasted.

By bedtime we knew we’d miscalculated a little: the fridge was stocked for a family of four rather than two, but that’s a better problem than the other way around.  There’s enough variety that we haven’t gotten bored with our choices.   The power wasn’t disturbed and the home microwave is in good working order (as are the ones in our workplace kitchens), so breakfasts and lunches were well-organized and we never felt helpless to do anything but call for pizza delivery.

The calendar shows that our next seven nights will be just as busy as the last. And now that the ceiling has been repaired, the painter will start on the kitchen and living room walls. It’s time for her to start reading her yearly reminder of courage in the face of adversity. But we have electricity, insulation, and we live along an emergency route to a hospital; in case of a storm, our street will be cleared of snow right away.  If they could survive that winter, we can make it ’til Christmas…

We didn’t have time for a cookathon yesterday, but the toaster oven is set up in our office, and I could put the slow-cooker on my dresser. We can hitch up the wagon and get to town for provisions before The Long Winter sets in. There’ll be more daylight soon, day by day. There’s no cause for despair.

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Date Night Fish Tacos

Posted on December 6, 2014 by | 1 comment

“How would you feel about cod?” I asked, looking at the market’s specials.

“Go for it,” she replied.  “Crispy?”

Then, before I’d had a chance to reply, “Oh! Let’s try the cod the way we did that one time with the beer batter and crackers, then break it apart as the base for fish tacos!”

I may have smirked a little. “So batter and bread the fish, and then put it inside a tortilla?”

We were using iMessage, so she couldn’t punch me, but she did stick out her tongue.  Or at least her typing indicated she did.

I liked the idea of fish tacos–I always like the idea of fish tacos–but thought there might be a way to let a little more of the fish’s flavor come through. But lots of Californian fish tacos are made with breaded fish. Many chicken sandwiches are made with breaded chicken. And no Bayou restaurant would serve a Po’ Boy made with unbreaded shrimp. There are mysteries in the universe, I guess.

I picked up the fish, along with a pineapple (also a weekly special) and some other vegetables. If we were having fish tacos, we were going to do it right.

By the time her train arrived, I had assembled salsa and slaw to accompany the fish. We detoured on the way home to look at holiday lights; I would have shown her photographs of them, but my phone had crashed in the middle of the running route where I’d seen them. While she tried on some new clothes that had arrived in the mail, I set to preparing the fish–a bit of a risky proposition, considering that the fashion show was a lovely distraction from a skillet skimmed with hot oil.

The slaw was a little wetter than I meant it to be, and so the tacos were a little sloppier. Still, we both had seconds, so the mess didn’t seem to deter our enjoyment.

A drive to see Christmas lights, a fashion show, and–in her words–“freaking awesome, exquisite” fish tacos. Not a bad night in the suburbs. Continue reading →

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OK, Eat

Posted on December 2, 2014 by | 1 comment

The prudent course of action would have been go straight home and to bed after her train arrived: Monday had had a very early start (for a doctor’s appointment) and a very late finish (after a theatre performance). But we were not prudent.  There were some groceries and staples we needed that hadn’t been on sale yet–because we’d made a shopping list from next week’s supermarket ads–so we headed to the supermarket. As we saw the parking lot on the night before a winter storm, we realized it was also the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. The prudent course of action would have been to turn around and go home.  But we still weren’t prudent.  The place was crowded with shoppers just like us, along with those not-quite-frantically snapping up bread, milk, and eggs–because, apparently, the best thing to eat during a snowstorm is French toast.

We found most of what we needed and ignored the rest. Several items we’d come for still weren’t priced as we expected. We’d looked at the right ads, but misread the copy, and some things still weren’t on sale. It turns out that pork loin can be a Black Friday special, as easily as a big-screen TV.

It wasn’t so much later than usual when we arrived home and got everything unpacked, but it seemed that way. Despite just returning from the supermarket we hadn’t planned dinner. Emergency measures were needed: boxed mac-and-cheese to satisfy her, with extras alongside to keep me happy and use some things that might have spoiled otherwise. Even with that simple plan, I was scattered, the cats (who also wanted their dinner) were underfoot, she was working in the kitchen too, and the whole evening felt one dropped spoon from being a disaster.

Although it seemed to take hours, it was really just a few minutes before the gooey yellow goodness was on one side of our bowls with a few bits of sausage and a big pile of vegetables on the other. Our bodies would be sustained, but our spirits needed help: laughter was now in order. A band we like had released a new video, so we called it up on the big screen; one video led to another, and that one to a third, and then I realized she’d never seen my favorite TV commercial and a behind-the-scenes story about the commercial.  We giggled through dinner and the videos, and the evening ended just fine. The next morning’s snow was much less problematic than predicted–hardly worth the French toast run–and our Thanksgiving travel was smooth and uneventful.

They say to eat before going to shop, but I always thought that was to prevent buying things you didn’t intend to.  I’ll try to remember that it can also be a precaution against kitchen crankiness.

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The Problem with Thanksgiving

Posted on November 29, 2014 by | 1 comment

Her mom was roasting a brined turkey, Nana had baked pumpkin and apple pies, and we had traveled with a carful of side dishes: a New York cheesecake, potatoes, asparagus, and construction kits for Waldorf salad and the cornbread dressing I’d make that she assured everyone they’d love.  Drinks were served upon arrival, and while everybody chatted happily we set to work unpacking the cooler and assembling our bits and pieces.

“Does this look right to you?” she asked. I had to admit, the salad dressing looked watery and grey; it tasted like dill and vinegar and not much else. She wanted to try this version for my benefit, since I’m no fan of gloppy salads. She headed for the sink. “I’m going to start over.” I suggested instead that she whisk in a little mayonnaise.  She did; the dressing wasn’t quite where she wanted it, but it was closer.  A little more mayo, and a sprinkling of sugar, and the dressing held together nicely and tasted great.

Dinner was served and enjoyed. Family stories were told and political conversations defused. Many hands made the clean-up light, and the afternoon was a success. There were plenty of leftovers–particularly the cornbread dressing, which had sadly not lived up to its reputation.  “The stuffing wasn’t as good as last year’s,” she said softly to me. Leaving aside that it was dressing, not stuffing, since it had been cooked alongside the turkey rather than in it, I had to agree, but neither of us was sure why. Her mom had baked the cornbread, so we weren’t sure what was in it; I’d used pork sausage, which always seems like a good idea; the spices, such that I recalled, were the same, but the result was different.  Not terrible, but not as we’d remembered.

The problem with improvising is that, unless you have an extremely accurate memory or are meticulous about documentation, it’s nearly impossible to recreate what you’ve done.  Whether creating a piece of music or a Thanksgiving side dish, the pleasure of success is ephemeral.

The problem with following recipes, on the other hand, is that, unless you have a trusted source, it’s nearly impossible to guarantee that what you’ll end up with is what you intend.  Whether cooking or knitting, when the result is different than you expect, the temptation may be to chuck it in the waste bin and start over.

The problem with Thanksgiving–or any big holiday dinner, for that matter–is that a lot of pressure can be put on every component.  Far more than needs to be.   If the salad had been a total bust, there still would have been plenty of food.  If no one had touched the cornbread dressing, there would still have been laughter and joy.  If I had put the cheesecake in the cooler along with the sealed bags of chopped vegetables and it turned out they weren’t as well-sealed as I thought and the cheesecake tasted a little of onion, no one would mention it.

Her parents have accepted an offer to sell their house before beginning a grand retirement adventure, so this will be the last Thanksgiving in the house she grew up in. She was a little melancholy, but it was as joyful a celebration as I could want. I don’t know where we’ll be next November, but wherever it is, if the dressing is perfect or if we burn the turkey and end up with grilled cheese sandwiches, there will be plenty to be thankful for.

I did, by the way, put the cheesecake in the cooler, and it did taste funky. Nobody teased me about it more than I did. But I’ve never enjoyed a Waldorf salad so much. There was a pleasantly chilly late evening walk, and the first holiday lights of the season. And, seriously, Nana’s pies are better than any store-bought cheesecake.

Over the river and through the woods...

Over the river and through the woods…

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