Welcome back to The Shitshow Room! We’ve got some popcorn, pretzels, toast, and jelly beans for you. Also, Donna Summer’s “Dim All The Lights” is a Thanksgiving song, thanks to Bob’s Burgers.
Every once in a while, I will have a week or two when I think I have regained control of time and am feeling productive. Then POOF that feeling is gone and I wonder what I have actually done over the past day or week. Sometimes, the only way I can keep track of the days is by recounting what I cooked for dinner. I made Sunday Sauce and pasta on—you guessed it— Sunday. Monday I made something The New York Times called “vegetarian skillet chili” with some leftover sauce and eggs and loads of cheese. Tuesday, I … Well, you get the idea.
Early on during the pandemic, I stopped working full time and was still feeling so ill and that I slept most of the day. I had bad vertigo and was too dizzy to focus my eyes on more text than is in a simple recipe. But when I felt a bit better, I would cook dinner and make bread as much as possible because it made me feel like I accomplished something. I could plan a meal and follow directions and feed my husband and stay upright for a few hours before I needed to crawl back into bed.
The crushing fatigue and vertigo mostly went away and I continued to cook dinner most nights to give my days some kind of structure. But then, like many other people, I kind of hit a wall. Even though I was physically feeling better, I was still depressed and anxious. I didn’t feel like cooking was as grounding. Many days, cooking felt too overwhelming. Many days, it still does.
The incredible Helen Rosner wrote about being sick of cooking as we approach the US holiday basically devoted to cooking and eating during a global pandemic. “Simple, repetitive, semi-creative tasks like kneading dough and chopping dill are supposed to thaw us when we’re frozen with existential dread, to ground us in the tactile world, to give us a sense of power and control over the small universe of the cutting board and the stovetop. This makes sense, I know it’s true, and I guess I remember living it, and believing it. But lately it feels awfully far away.”
I also miss eating in restaurants and sitting at bars with friends after work. I worry all the time about food and drink establishments and the people who work in them and how places will survive the pandemic. I carefully tiptoed into the world of outdoor dining about three or four times before it started getting colder outside and the sun went down earlier and COVID numbers started getting scarier and scarier.
I don’t feel like cooking on Thanksgiving this year. Like many families, we are skipping the family gathering. My mom, who lives in Florida, is not making her regular trip up north. We will all celebrate our own homes, rather than gathering in Queens, where my talented, culinary-school graduate sister Alison and her professional-chef husband Tony plan the menu and take charge of the food and just overwhelm us with deliciousness all day. The spread is outstanding, but that isn’t the only reason it is disappointing that we can’t all get together this year.
When I was a kid, Thanksgiving was not a big deal for us. We didn’t have a lot of family around. My dad was working. My mom was not inclined to do a big dinner for herself and four kids who were super-picky in four different ways. Maybe we spent one at the restaurant? I do recall a couple of holidays after my parents split up that my mom and us kids were invited to spend the day with my dad’s cousins — a big-hearted family that had so many kids themselves, they clearly didn’t mind a few more.
Oh! And there was one Thanksgiving spent at my mom’s friend’s home that came with an unexpected per-head fee imposed for the honor of eating mediocre food on paper plates. For a long time our only Thanksgiving tradition was for us to talk about how shitty that all was.
Our first Real Thanksgiving happened the year after my dad died. Craig and I were in year three of living in Austin. In my memory, it had been about 100 degrees since May, and I was cranky from the heat and homesick for New York and missing my siblings. Craig suggested we fly my sisters and brother down for the holiday. Alison was in charge of the menu. I don’t recall everything we ate. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, and probably some kind of pie, and a dreamy cornbread stuffing from a Martha Stewart recipe.
But the most memorable thing about that Thanksgiving was this feeling that we were doing something special together. We were beginning a tradition in our tradition-less family. We were the adults now. And so, Thanksgiving became ours.
Over the years, there have been guest stars at the meal: Roommates, dates, wayward coworkers. We eventually “allowed” my mom to come (If you have read this far, I am just kidding, Ma! Love you!). Eventually, our Thanksgiving cast of characters became fixed. We called ourselves The Sibs and the Plus Ones. There are now little kids who made place cards for us and insist we go around the table to say what we are thankful for, like we are some kind of normal family. Thanksgiving is just about my favorite day of the year.
It is hard to have to take a break from our tradition, especially when the pandemic has so many of us feeling at-sea and desperately in need of rituals and traditions. But we will hopefully be back at it next year. As for tomorrow, there is talk of a Zoom pageant featuring my nieces and nephews performing. Craig and I will probably get take-out Peking duck from a Chinatown restaurant and eat it at home. I will probably make a Boulevardier or two. (Another bit of brilliance from Helen!)
And maybe, on Friday, I will make the cornbread stuffing.
Here is Martha’s recipe if you want to do it, too.
SIDEWORK: Thank you for reading The Shitshow Room! You can sign up for The Shitshow Room for free, but if you if you do decide to become a paying subscriber, $5 a month (or $50 a year), I will be donating half the proceeds each month to a few charities that help struggling food-service workers and Americans experiencing food insecurity. I will let you know when we make a donation, how much it is, and who we are helping. Our next round of donations will go to No Kid Hungry. Last month, readers of The Shitshow Room sent $1,000 to World Central Kitchen!
Follow me on Twitter: @lisatozzi or email: lisatozzi@gmail.com