Reflections on Holiday Past

Imagine it’s the week before Thanksgiving and you are putting together that list of all the items you will need for dinner, knowing of course you will forget something (this time it was the jellied cranberry sauce and you can see it’s not important to the author). Then you see an email from Seasons 52 and you think a wild thought – why not make reservations on “the day” and be brave to try someone else’s thanksgiving fare. Excellent idea – but because there will still be three more days of personal time, proceed with the shopping plans because what is thanksgiving weekend without leftovers.

Now it is Thursday and you decide to bake something for the weekend’s menu and all is good. Fast forward to Friday and you begin to prep the dressing – can’t wait to begin those wonderful smells of celery and onions in butter but the stove top doesn’t turn on – check the breaker – top works but nothing from the oven. What a lovely time for that to happen – probably punishment for making dinner reservations on “the day” – so not your norm. Calls to the repair companies in town – will they be open, can they come out on short notice, is the old oven and top worth repairing if it can be repaired – yikes, the lovely remaining days don’t seem so fun now and you have groceries to prepare a small bird.

Suffice it to say, no oven for the turkey and fixings – solution, shove that bird into the tiny grill – my honey is so creative. Stove top worked so now we can make all the rest. Now the only decision is what to purchase – and based on space we ditch the double oven concept but decide on a new stove top as well as bringing me out of the dark ages with a convection oven. Remember too, that I am finishing up the remaining pans of fudge for the holiday mailing to our clients – no problem, but we didn’t do our homework so well and come to find that all our pots and pans, as well as the magic Corning Ware fudge pan, are no longer functional on the new induction stove top.

Imagine the look of pain and anguish as I stare at my problem solver, who immediately ordered me a hotplate to finish the fudge, since I am at that stage in life that I won’t change what tools I use for the fudge “because it won’t come out the same and that isn’t acceptable after 46 years of the exact same process”! I could now happily stir to my heart’s content, finish the fudge and the hotplate will just be one more tool to break out when the next calling for the little chocolatey delight arrives. We do have our priorities. And as for convection baking, all those years of whining about cookies and cakes coming out all wrong and never getting the time and temperature right, cookies were flying out of the oven – they were looking like real treats – you can teach an old dog new tricks!