I wonder what Julia Child would think of using frozen pie crusts. The empress of the American kitchen was very particular about using fresh, homemade ingredients and I’ll bet you never found a package of instant ramen in her cupboards, much less frozen pie crusts in the freezer.
On the other hand, most of us are not classically trained chefs and when it comes to cooking for a big crowd, as we’re bound to do over the holidays, we start to wonder if we could save ourselves a little time and effort. And if we do, does that make us a bad person? As Rachel Ray would say: there’s no shame in cream of mushroom soup.
This is the time of year when so many home cooks start stressing over what to prepare for holiday meals. There is such heightened expectation — magazine ads and internet sites displaying festive table settings that rival Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Foods we never heard of a generation ago are now go-to menu staples. Until 10 years ago, nobody could even pronounce “charcuterie” and now they’re mandatory.
I love to cook but I have long believed there’s too much hoopla around the holiday season. It’s crazy to ramp up your food plans for a month, host spreads that can set you back financially as much as a Riviera cruise and knock you off your feet for the rest of the week. And then, come January, after you’ve gained 15 pounds, you have to go on a starvation diet and hock your pearl earrings to pay the bills.
None of it makes sense. When you need a hotline to talk frantic cooks off the ledge on Thanksgiving morning just because they’re trying to get the perfect meal on the table, you know something’s out of whack. Norman Rockwell didn’t do many of us a favor with his idyllic portrait of the family meal. Life is more like the Simpsons than not.
Instead of worrying about the perfect meal maybe we ought to consider that the point of Thanksgiving is giving thanks. And most of us have plenty to be thankful for, even if the recent past did not turn out the way we would have liked.
Maybe when life doesn’t happen exactly the way we want is an especially good time to think about those things — to remind ourselves that life isn’t just about one episode and there is still plenty to be grateful for. Such as our health (good or bad), our families and our friends (good or bad), our pets (always good), being able to pay the bills, caterers, Marie Callender and so on.
Hedberg may be contacted at khedberg@lmtribune.com.
