Like many families, mine enjoys gathering over good food. Most of us, across the generations and with a range of styles, are good cooks. One of my brothers is a restauranteur, the other has a background in culinary arts. My sister is a fantastic and prolific baker, my mother, the teacher of us all, roasts the best turkey around and my son is meticulous and has a great sense of flavoring. The rest of us love to experiment, and we each have our own repertoire of special dishes. Needless to say, we take the preparation (and eating) of the annual Thanksgiving meal seriously. Everything is made from scratch, using garden-grown herbs and the freshest of ingredients. It’s ritualistic and traditional.
But this year, we didn’t cook a single dish. Instead we decided to break with our own previously set-in-stone style and eat out. This is the year that we let the chefs at Highlawn Pavillion do the work, the wait staff serve us and someone else do all the dishes. It was delightful and delicious.
This radical break from tradition had been creeping up on us. We live in a medium-sized home in Glen Ridge. It can handle a sit down dinner for 10 or so, and accommodates many more for casual parties, but the last time we hosted Thanksgiving dinner we had 29 people and numerous family dogs. We’ve done it before, many times, but it involves removing all the furniture from our living room, cooking for weeks, and a general level of stress. My husband — the pragmatist of the crowd — finally blew the whistle.
Although I fought him tooth and nail at the beginning, he encouraged me to consider opting out of the Thanksgiving rat race. With blessings from the other family members, we dined at the elegant West Orange restaurant, and had the most relaxing Thanksgiving day I can remember. We whittled down our numbers to 10 people, and invited the larger crowd to come for brunch on Friday (looking at the clock, I’d better finish this post and get into hostess mode). We’re still not really cooking for the crowd, but relying on Fairway Market in Paramus for platters of smoked fish and The Watchung Deli for a giant Italian hero.
It was a painful severing of the traditional ties, and I’ve felt mildly bereft these past few weeks not cooking and organizing, but all in all, it was a brilliant idea. I’m not sure what’ll happen in years to come — whether we’ll return to home cooking or stay the new course. For this year, though, a more relaxing holiday dinner has never happened in the history of my family of cooks.
