Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

Food, General, Laura Grimes

Spreading out the fond memories

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It's just a tablecloth to some people, but to us it makes Thanksgiving special.By Laura Grimes

More than a year ago Mr. Scatter’s parents moved to an assisted-living facility.

By then, the seven children were making choices for them and the parents weren’t sure where they were. The little cottage they had lived in was cleaned out.

A very few favorite items went with the folks, a few basic kitchen items and furniture pieces stayed, and the rest was spread out in the garage to sell. I’m not sure what because I wasn’t there.

All I know is that when I arrived a few weeks later by myself in the middle of the hot summer the place was an eerie ghost of its old self, empty and echoey. The familiar pictures were gone and the walls were a fresh new color. I immediately checked my feelings at the front door, knowing this had been a long time coming.

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Food, General, Laura Grimes

A galaxy of recipes and remembrances

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Gingerbread drawing that inspired "Star Pie," Small Large Smelly Boy, Nov. 24, 2001.

By Laura Grimes

A little-known blog fact: The Scatter family has a hand-made recipe book.

Nearly a decade ago, we started collecting our favorite recipes that went with some of our favorite food stories. We loaded them up in notebooks and gave them to our close family and friends for Christmas. It’s called Star Pie: A Galaxy of Recipes and Remembrances.

It got its name because exactly 10 years ago today I wrote down a conversation I had with the Small Large Smelly Boy, who was not so large and not so smelly at the time. In fact, he was downright adorable. He was 4.

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Food, General, Laura Grimes

Cooking up steroids, I mean stuffing

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By Laura Grimes

My mom is swimming her way south and the meat marathon has begun. Look what we got cooking on the stove:

Cooking up turkey broth.

We bought turkey wings just to make turkey stock just to make turkey stuffing just to go with Grammy’s turkey breast.

When Mr. Scatter asked The Meat Guy for “two turkey wings, one for each side,” the guy replied, “I don’t know if I can get you a matching pair.”

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General, Humor, Laura Grimes

‘You can’t do that when Grammy’s here!’

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Norman Rockwell's "Cousin Reginald Catches the Thanksgiving Turkey" (1917), copyright 1917, The Country Gentleman and Curtis Publishing Co.By Laura Grimes

At the time of this typing, my mom’s ETA is 45 hours and counting.

The early missile warning system is now in effect. I repeat. The early missile warning system is now in effect.

In my last post, I promised a concussive blast. Reading on? Don your helmets! Duck and cover!

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

Freeze: We have a meat emergency

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Turkey Lurkey is on the job in the "Chicken Little" book I had as a kid. It's blurry because I once left it in the rain. Pictures by Marjorie Hartwell. Thank you Whitman Publishing Company for some good times growing up.

By Laura Grimes

If you’re wondering about Mr. Scatter, he’s been busy with paying gigs so we can afford all this meat we’re cooking for Thanksgiving. If you read the last post, you know by now that even though most of us in the family are vegetarians, somehow we’re cooking both a whole chicken and a turkey breast.

OK. OK. No somehow about it. I’ll admit it. It’s all because I’m an advice column failure.

But forget that for a moment because we have an emergency. The meat in our freezer is multiplying. And we don’t even have the whole chicken or the turkey breast yet.

The freezer already contains several kinds of elk meat and antelope sausage (which Mr. Scatter fondly keeps calling “gazelle”), which we got in exchange for pickles. And now — hold your breath — we have a giant turkey. More precisely, we have 21.12 pounds of bird, or $35.69 worth. It was FREE.

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Food, General, Laura Grimes

Meat: It’s what’s for dinner

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"The Order of Good Cheer" by Charles William Jefferys, 1606/Wikimedia Commons

By Laura Grimes

My mom’s coming for Thanksgiving. I’m pretty excited. I’ve already talked her into making pie (it didn’t take much).

We have to get a turkey breast just for her, though. None of the four Scatterers eats turkey. We had a long conversation at dinner one night just to solve what to do about meat for Thanksgiving. The one carnivore in the house, the Large Large Smelly Boy, said he didn’t like white meat, and he wasn’t interested in turkey legs or thighs. He requested chicken. We dreamed up cooking a whole chicken, which is not a small thing in the Scatter house. We were relieved to have a plan, and even kind of excited. We could make stock, just like we used to. We could freeze it. We could make all kinds of things for the Large LSB. Boy, that chicken decided it. We were going to get the whole house cooking! Bring on Thanksgiving! Could it come sooner?

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

O Christmas tin, O Christmas tin

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Some people drink Santa cocoa while they listen to "Santa Baby." It's been known to happen.By Laura Grimes

While the rest of America cooed about golden-roasted turkeys and football scores yesterday, the Scatter family was concerned about deeply more important matters. Hot chocolate.

Ah! Scatter regulars just knew that line was going to be about pickles. They know the fourth Thursday in November is not known as Thanksgiving in the Scatter household but as the Grand Unsealing of the Pickles.

But the Scatters are a multi-complex family. They go way beyond cranberries. Like the United Nations or a mixed-faith family, they are very liberal about accommodating many cultural needs. The Grand Unsealing of the Pickles day is a multiple bonanza.

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

Thankless holiday cooks up a flood

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Gobble gobble

By Laura Grimes

Today is a REALLY big day in the Scatter Household. The special holiday hot chocolate comes out, the Christmas CDs make their debut and … drumroll … it’s the Grand Unsealing of the Pickles.

We’ve been sharing our disaster tales of Thanksgivings past all week.

Some years back, Mr. Scatter’s family (notice how the disaster stories are always Mr. Scatter’s family?) wanted to get together for a large gathering. The trick was finding a place big enough.

No one had a house the right size. (Except us, and we lived too far away.) A restaurant didn’t suit our need to sprawl over several hours. Finally, I booked a condo and reserved its community room, which had a kitchen.

Somehow, we had the largest family with the smallest kids, and we traveled the farthest, made all the arrangements and hosted the event. No, wait. Come to think of it, I made all the arrangements and it wasn’t even my family.

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

Thankless holiday sets off an alarm

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We might have to fall back on this because we're resorting to Plan B and planning our Thanksgiving meal at the last minute./Wikimedia CommonsBy Laura Grimes

Here at Art Scatter World Headquarters we are counting down to the day of the Grand Unsealing of the Pickles* by telling all our embarrassing and disastrous tales of Thanksgivings past.

For some reason, giant black clouds hover over us this time every year, though we always manage to have a wonderful holiday.

This year, we had planned to drive to the Olympic Peninsula to spend several days with relatives, but our trip was canceled when 6 to 12 inches of snow dumped there and roads turned treacherous,** Felix/Martha came down with a nasty cold (which isn’t like him), and the half-wild She Cat, who usually disappears for days and eats god knows what, badly injured her front paw and is camped out on a fluffy blanket on the couch.

This morning, the He Cat made barfing sounds on the dining room rug. I grabbed him around the middle (not so good) and was juggling him (also not good) while unlocking the front door, when his whole body convulsed and a wet hairball flew out of his mouth and landed on the rug near my feet.

Thank you, Thanksgiving.

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

Thankless holiday goes up in flames

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This oven looks freakishly like Mr. and Mrs. Scatter's old one that caught fire. Many thanks to the Small Large Smelly Boy (Felix/Martha) for the splendid design that cleverly covered up the baked-on grime on the bottom. Wikimedia Commons and Felix/Martha

By Laura Grimes

Two days to T-day!

Mr. and Mrs. Scatter love planning Thanksgiving dinner, even if it’s just them and The Large Smelly Boys. They love writing up the menu, ferreting out the special recipe file, taking stock of ingredients, making lists, shopping, splaying out the bounty.

Then on Thanksgiving day, they put on music and start chopping. They put out a nice spread of appetizers and pour some wine. They both happily bustle around the kitchen, nibbling and testing. The big feast is a time of thanks, good food and good friends, but, really, it’s the long, slow process of getting there that they savor. Basically, it’s Norman Rockwell meets Currier and Ives, if only their paintings could also convey the cozy warmth of a fuzzy blanket and scratch ‘n’ sniff cooking smells. Yes, that’s exactly the Scatter household on Thanksgiving day.

WAIT A SEC! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! Back up to the “splaying out the bounty” part.

A handful of years back, Mr. and Mrs. Scatter were at this point in the process, a few days before T-Day. They had just finished the exhausting list-making and marathon shopping. They had just unloaded all the bags and set out all the food.

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