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Feather

We bought a Thanksgiving CSA from our friends Tim & Charlotte, they have a small farm in town. I swung by Tuesday night (butchering day) to pick up my basket which, in addition to the heritage breed turkey, contained fresh eggs, pecans, tatsoi, bok choi, lettuce, pumpkin butter, grape jelly, onion prickly pear sauce, rosemary, thyme and sage for roasting the bird…and also this feather.

Steve and I don't live near either of our families so we have a long established tradition of hosting Thanksgiving (and Christmas too). We usually have anywhere from 12-25 people. And there is usually at least one person I've never met before at our table. This year the gathering was smaller but still an eclectic bunch… a punk rocker, a lawyer (the punck rocker's wife), an acupuncturist, a massage therapist, a plumber, an insurance agent (the lawyer's aunt visiting from Connecticut), two farmers, and a 7th grader. And us. Everyone brought lovely food and beautiful pies. apple. sweet potato, pear, pecan.

Bird

Heritage turkeys have really long legs which present a challenge when roasting, but I just extended the roasting pan with some foil to catch the drippings from the drumsticks. I usually like to free up my oven by using a countertop roasting oven, but there was no way this bird was going to fit in it nicely.

Bouquet

I am not a fan of stuffing the turkey so I simply fill the cavity with aromatics such as celery, onions, rosemary, sage, thyme and fruit, this year it was an apple. 

Dressing

My go to recipe for dressing Cornbread-Sausage Stuffing with Apples from The Silver Palate Cookbook. I realize as I stroke this is that I am totally dating myself with this cookbook reference. I was learning to love to cook when this cookbook was published in 1982. This book was key in my learning to cook with new to me ingredients and i loved the charming Moosewoodesque illustrations… which also dates me.

Dogs

I had a constant parade of dogs following me yesterday. Notice how they act all non-chalant when I turn around… "what, we're not following you."

Center

I felt the feather deserved a place at the table. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

syn·chro·nic·i·ty with a twang

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Earhart
Today being the 115th birthday of Amelia Earhart had me thinking of a song my father used to play written by Red River Dave McEnery, titled "Amelia Earhart's Last Flight". I have always been in love with this song and for some reason during my mid twenties I was on a quest to find a recorded version of this song. At the time I was living in DC and stepped into a small record store in Silver Spring, Maryland, just to browse. I picked up a copy of Freakwater's 1993 Thrill Jockey release Feels Like the Third Time.  My youngest sister, Jess was with me, saw what I had in my hand and said, "oh, I think you'd like them, I saw them at Iota." I flipped over the CD to see the track names and right there on track #10 there it was… my song! My heart flipped and I'm pretty sure I squealed. I could not wait to get home and listen to it. What happened next is that I also fell in love with the band. I was so pleased that my quest for a peculiar, seldom recorded song led me to find a band whose weird voices definitely struck a chord. Synchronicity. 

Fw

Catherine Irwin and Janet Bean have voices that are pretty in a Mary McCaslin, Alice Gerard and Hazel Dickens, Lucinda Williams, Victoria Williams kinda way. To me they are as crystalline and lovely as Allison Krauss and Patty Griffin, just a lot more honest, whiskey smoked and hard working. They are the voice of a woman who's tired like she's been waiting tables all day, has had it up to here with your shit, and has better things to do with her time. 

I remember going to see Catherine Irwin at a SXSW daytime show and recounting that very story of stumbling across her music while looking for the Amelia Earhart song that my father used to sing… she smiled. Awkward. This reminded me of a night years before when I waited on Lucinda at the Ausitn Grill in DC and told her that I'd just seen Darden Smith the week before at The Birchmere and he was raving about her just released Sweet Old World, she stared at me with her heavily-lined eyes without blinking and said, "can I have a Dos Equis?" Again, awkward.