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Thanksgiving, in its customary observance, remains the most candid American festivity: solely appetite, sans apology. Every other occurrence on our civic timeline implores us to recall something virtuous, or to grieve something unfortunate, or to fete something majestic or conceptual, yet Thanksgiving simply bids us to feel hungry jointly, and then to dine. In any given annum, this represents a compellingly simple avenue to concord; it may constitute the last genuinely cohesive occurrence accessible to us as Americans. This year, sitting down for a repast amidst a period and locale and a nation that appears to be vigorously endeavoring to turn more savage, more aloof, more inclined to inflict anguish upon individuals for the transgression of being impoverished or ailing or conceived in the incorrect complexion or to the incorrect progenitors or upon the incorrect facade of an arbitrary boundary, the incongruity of it all intensifies. We nourish others, we nourish ourselves, and what further remains? At the table, at the very least, we can exert command over something: the selection, the customs, whichever minor resolute convictions we harbor regarding the holiday itself.
Regardless of its designation, Thanksgiving, to my mind, pertains less to gratitude than to faith. I’ve abandoned faith in the narrative of the day, the sanitized fables of contented colonists befriending contented Native Americans, and I hold no desire to scrutinize excessively profoundly whatever might persist of any conviction that I retain in America as an ideal. However, I do profess belief in the less elevated reality of the meal proper: I hold the conviction that preference for the turkey legs ought to extend to those below the age of six, owing to the production of exceptional photographs, and that the bird’s chef and its slicer ought to secure their spoils—the most burnished fragments of skin, the most exquisite diminutive portions of breast and thigh—while they operate, not whilst the meat undergoes service. I maintain faith in extending to guests merely a solitary cocktail selection, and that it should possess potency and batch production. I deem it essential that you invariably make a point of complimenting either the cranberry preparation or the potatoes, that the suitable quantity of pies amounts to half the sum of guests plus one, and that whoever assumes responsibility for the washing of dishes ought to procure their plate first. I assert that soup holds no place upon the Thanksgiving table, wherein its gradual slurping stifles the cadence of both dinner and dialogue; should its service prove unavoidable, it ought to undergo ladling into minuscule teacups or robust diminutive glasses, and undergo sipping (sans spoons!) as a standing hors d’œuvre. I am of the opinion that circling the table and enumerating our sources of thankfulness constitutes a regrettable practice, inevitably competitive and an exemplar of deficient game structure: it unfairly disadvantages both the individual designated to initiate, who lacks the capacity to surpass anyone, and the individual who concludes, given the prior articulation of all evident big-ticket expressions of gratitude.
Transcending all else, I espouse that all Thanksgiving customs—the menu, the assemblage, the comprehensive pursuit of the Norman Rockwell reverie—exist as optional entities, and that akin to any ostensibly unyielding structure they furnish productive terrain for ingenious improvisations and deliberate defiance. Within the perimeters of the holiday convention, nevertheless, I profess belief in the supremacy of the turkey skeleton. Just as the agonies and inadequacies of the meal itself represent requisite stages toward the splendid leftovers destined to arrive, to my perspective the bird constitutes merely a prerequisite for its bones. For the preponderance of domestic cooks, a once-per-annum turkey epitomizes a gastronomic absurdity, gratuitously idealized, inevitably daunting to formulate. We ought to abstain from the preparation of a Thanksgiving turkey altogether, truthfully, excepting for the verity that, subsequent to its duration in the limelight, it metamorphoses into a turkey skeleton, and that skeleton stands as one of the supreme bounties of the entire consecrated annum, inasmuch as, immediately upon the carving of the meat and the picking of the fragments, you can hurl it into a pot and inundate it with water and situate it upon the stove and fabricate turkey broth. Few entities in the world surpass it.
I have documented previously regarding my affection for broth, and with each transpiring annum my ardor solely intensifies. I derive pleasure from the procedure of its fabrication, the metaphor residing within its pragmatism: nothing squandered, even the most thoroughly scavenged bones possessing residual contributions. Predominantly, I cherish the broth itself, shadowy and abundant and adhesively collagenous. A turkey’s flesh proves predominantly forgettable, chicken with the volume amplified ever so subtly upward, yet within water its gustatory essence transmutes and deepens to engender something of intoxicating, chest-thumping audacity. A recipe remains superfluous: amass all your turkey detritus within a capacious pot, contribute whichever vegetable or herb remnants appear alluring, incorporate frigid water, and set the mixture to simmer for as many hours as you desire. As the skeleton softens and yields, the kitchen becomes imbued, for the subsequent occasion that day, with a tepid, meaty fragrance—yet the apprehensive edge that accompanied the prior roasting dissipates. There is no commotion of pandemonium this instance, no clock surveillance, no spreadsheets to anxiously scrutinize. By the point at which the broth concludes—two or four or six hours subsequently; you possess the capacity to perpetuate it indefinitely, truthfully, merely skim the residue and replenish it with water should the level appear diminished—the leftovers from the prior meal undergo storage. Conceivably all the guests have departed; someone else, I aspire, assumed assignment of the unclean dishes. The simmering post-Thanksgiving turkey broth constitutes a meditation, a purification, a gentle repossession of the residence.
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We comprise a diminutive, mildly deranged fraternity, we devotees of the turkey’s magnificent secondary existence as soup. I enumerate amidst my brethren Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor and erstwhile Presidential aspirant, whose fervor proved so profound that he would solicit the bones from the Thanksgiving tables of kin and companions, and eventually from the populace at large. “Michael Dukakis would profoundly appreciate your turkey skeleton,” the Boston Globe inscribed in 2015. (Five years hence, subsequent to an overwhelming rejoinder, the city’s public-radio station delivered an update: “Mike Dukakis is no longer consenting to turkey skeletons.”) I’ve perpetually felt tempted to emulate his paradigm, perhaps by adhering a communiqué within the elevator of my domicile asserting that, should anyone possess turkey bones they shall refrain from utilization, I would gladly materialize and retrieve them. This annum, I anticipate I shall ultimately execute it. A neighbor’s thoroughly scavenged bird skeleton, preserved from the serene ignominy of refuse, represents a source of thankfulness. This, too, constitutes something I profess belief in: within the conclusion of one repast resides the inception of the subsequent. ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
