Orphan's Thanksgiving

I allowed some people from work to talk me into having a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for them, and, since there's no point in cooking turkey for 4, we invited 10. While we had a lot of fun last night, there were a few snags.

First, there's the oven. Our oven makes the Black and Decker toaster oven that I used through college look rather grand. It's waaay too small to cook a real traditional 25lb turkey; I'd have had to hack off the legs and cut it into quarters to fit it. This actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise, though, because, at £75 ($150), that was the most expensive turkey I've ever encountered.

Next, there's the size of our house. Although everyone who came marvelled at how big our place is (and I guess it is, as compared to many homes in London), it is not the sort of place acustomed to hosting 12 adults and 4 children. Once again, we had to press into service the card table and folding chairs my grandmother gave us years ago (thanks, gran!), along with a small play table for the kids and one of the chairs from our patio set. Incredibly, not only did we fit the turkey into the oven, we fit all the guests into the kitchen, with seats.

With everyone around the table, though, and the wine glasses, there wasn't quite enough room for all the food, so we had to pass the platters around and then remove them once everyone had some. This system worked fairly well until someone wanted seconds, at which point, several people had to mobilize in order to let him out.

Thanksgiving is, hands down, my favorite holiday. There are no gloopy cards to send, no expensive gifts to buy. All you do is ruck up to somebody's table and eat. It's an entire holiday about conspicuous consumption and tryptophan. Oh, yes, and giving thanks.

My non-American friends were well impressed with the quantity of food laid out (a number of positive comments about the quality were also made). Several people brought vegetables, desserts and salad, all of which were fantastic and much appreciated.

But the real success of the evening were the guests. I think a good party is at least as much about having the right mix of people as about the food, the wine or the venue, and last night's crowd was first rate. I hope everyone had as good a time as I did (despite the extensive clean up).

The cranberry sauce was the hit of the evening, so here's the recipie (props to uncle Kevin for this one):

Red Onion Cranberry Sauce
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 red onion, sliced
2 large shallots chopped finely
1 pack (14ounces) fresh cranberries
1 cup red wine
1 cup chicken stock (or turkey stock if you have it)
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1 cup sugar
salt and pepper

saute onion, cranberries and shallots in oil until most of the berries have cracked
Add remaining ingredients, reduce until thick and glossy.

This can be served hot or cold, and if there are leftovers, makes a great sauce for pork.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Back to Reality

I've just returned from a short stay in Key West, Florida. For those of you not familiar with Key West, it is an island, it has palm trees, and it is the southermost point in the continental US. There's a marker intended to identify the actual southernmost point; but, while my map reading skills may not be my greatest strength, I am somewhat skeptical of the marker's location being the actual southermost point, since even a casual read of a map of the island shows any number of other spots which are, well, more south.

No sense quibbling over a few hundred yards, though, the marker itself is largely symbolic. Symbolic of the sheer enormity of the political experiment that gave rise to one of the most powerful nations on the planet. Symbolic of man's triumphs against nature - it is situated near the origin of an underwater cable that was laid to Cuba across 90 miles of open water to Cuba in the late 1800's. Symbolic of man's eternal idiocy, as it seems to be a favorite site for both graffiti and public urination. Evidently, it's something of a rite of passage to relieve oneself while carving something profound into the marker, like "Bob + Shaniqua" or "OJ Simpson wasn't here".

Key West itself is surprisingly (well, to me anyway) not nearly as schlocky as one might expect of a popular tourist destination. This is not to say that it's entirely schlock-free: there is no shortage of ersatz-nautical-theme restaurants featuring such maritime staples as Cap'n Dave's Grilled Chicken Sandwich, and shops selling cuted-up t-shirts ("If you think I'm cute, you should see my mom/aunt/cousin/sister/babysitter/granny") - but there's an interesting mix of the sanitized and the real here that you don't get in a lot of other seaside communities. Beach bums sleep in beat up cars outside ornate Spanish villas. The eccentric and the insane share the streets with the beer-bellied and the Hawaiian-shirted. Men with arms like Popeye row into town for supplies from their boats anchored just far enough out that they can live for free, but not so far that they are completely isolated.

I went to attend the wedding (actually a renewal of wedding vows) of my oldest friend, Mike. I first met Mike in 7th grade, when we were gawky teenagers. Our concerns then were about whether we'd pass the math test and whether anyone would figure out that it really doesn't take 90 minutes to hook up a microphone for a school assembly (we learned early the benefit of arcane knowledge unshared). It's interesting to see how we, and the others that we know from that same era, have grown up without, I think, growing old. I certainly don't feel as old as I expected to now that I've sailed well north of 35. We still like our parties, but we manage our responsibilities, too.

I also met some really warm, interesting people - friends and family on both sides - who made the trip really enjoyable. Props to Tim and Jessica for hosting us so graciously on so many evenings (I know firsthand how trying that can be...), to Greg and Cris for admirably balancing the needs of the party with the needs of a baby, and to all the others in whose company my visit felt even shorter than it was. But thanks especially to Mike and Ali for giving us all a reason to get together in such a beautiful place to participate in such a wonderful event.

And now, back to the routine of daily life. Come on, retirement.

The Hype Cycle

The introduction of new technologies seems to follow a common trajectory, called the hype cycle. This cycle includes both over-inflated expectations and a realistic view of what the technology can actually do. I think this cycle applies equally to living in another country. We are now firmly in what one would call the trough of Disillusionment. It is at this point where all the newness of the experience has fallen away and we realize that, while dramatically different from our previous life, this new life is, well, just life after all.

It includes such mundane realities as paying taxes (40% income tax, 17.5% sales tax and property tax, even though we don't actually own any property, and NHS fees, even though we pay for private insurance so we can actually see a doctor). It includes commuting (50 minutes each way minimum, all of it in standing and in close proximity to irritants of all varieties - bad breath, body odor, cell phones (many now have a feature whereby the owner can play music through its speakers. What misanthrop thought this would be a good idea?), loud talkers, loud breathers and slumpers - those who think that my body is something they can safely lean against. It includes an endless cycle of baths, laundry, sandwiches, carrot sticks, cookies, markers, crayons, bits of paper. It includes gum on the sidewalks. It includes little eddies of leaflets, swirling on a current gritty air. It includes a great deal of strawberry jam.

London is noisy, dirty, chilly, damp, expensive, inconvenient and impersonal.

So why do we still love living here?