It’s been a tough year for lots of people. I’ll be happy to leave 2023 behind on January 1st, and my troubles have been small compared to those of many others.
As I have written here before, our annual harvest dinner is my favourite meal of the year to cook. The opportunity to create a feast from the end of season bounty of local foods, and then to gather friends and family around the table to eat, drink, talk and consider all we have to be grateful for fills me with joy and, even though the cooking spans several days, it never feels like work.
Despite my affection for this meal, in late August I told myself that we would skip it in 2023. Not because I was feeling particularly ungrateful, but because we were about to put our house on the market and – if everything went as we thought it would – we would be mid-move.
However, interest in our house has been less than lively. While we made arrangements to stay elsewhere initially — to make it easier to keep the house in its state of artificial perfection — eventually we – and our cat – needed to come home.
When we did so, we made a few adjustments to the staging, so the house would be functional while also attractive to potential purchasers. In doing so, we discovered that we had rid ourselves of a few items we might wish to have kept. Who sold the wheelbarrow at the garage sale? I swear it wasn’t me, but my partner continues to look at me with a suspicious eye every time he wants to use it. Did our favourite soft blanket – perfect for an afternoon nap cover-up – somehow get tossed into a bag of clothes that ended up at the second-hand store? Were we a bit over-enthusiastic when we got rid of our TV tables? Why did I think I would only need one roasting pan and one pie plate in my new life?
Fortunately, we still have the potato ricer.
Where is . . . ?
We now live in a state of somewhat suspended animation, as we make the house work for us on a daily basis while also being about to ready it for a showing on a moment’s notice. The cat finds it all a bit overwhelming and, truth be told, so do I, with my cat-like fondness for routine and regularity.
Where did we decide to put the toothbrushes this time? The bagels? The book I was reading? Dare I cook bacon, with its lingering odour that might be off-putting to a vegetarian purchaser?
Where, says Kitty, did they put my catnip sock today, and who are these strangers traipsing through my house?
God forbid a potential buyer might think people actually live in the house they are considering purchasing!
The feast
Once we realized we would not be spending the long weekend painting our new apartment, we put the harvest dinner back on our agenda, albeit with a somewhat smaller crowd than usual because some of our usual guests had made alternative plans.
Our status of people-living-in-a-house-that-is-for-sale created a few challenges as I prepared for our gathering.
When we decluttered the house, in my optimism (or foolishness – I’ll let you decide), I assumed we’d be moving in no time so would not be hosting more social gatherings where we live now. As a result, I packed away all our candles and most of our candle holders and kept only a bare minimum of tablecloths and napkins. The lack of napkin rings, long since gone to the storage locker, allowed me to get creative for our harvest meal.
There were a couple of cooking challenges, too. One of the traditional four desserts I make for our harvest feast – the other three being pumpkin pie, pear strudel and maple ice cream – is Anna Thomas’s incredible apple pudding, the recipe for which appears in my very tattered edition of The Vegetarian Epicure.
I reached for it in my kitchen bookcase, but it wasn’t there. A minor panic set it. It was in much too well used to sell, even at a yard sale, so had I – in the permanent state of downsizing that occupied me in late August – thrown it out? Fortunately, I remembered that when my daughter curated our bookcases for the house listing photo session, she had put the cookbooks she deemed too worn to be seen in a drawer in the kitchen. Sure enough, there is was. Not only do I still have my apple pudding recipe, but several other old favourites as well.
(Before I found the cookbook, I did an internet search for the recipe, which led me to the discovery that, while Anna Thomas was first known for her vegetarian cookbooks, she has since become a well-known screenwriter, with the films El Norte and Frida among her works.)
Despite the hitches, our meal came together without any major catastrophes, and we had a lovely day playing Uno and Qwirkle with our grandsons as the scent of roasting turkey filled the house. As always, we took a few minutes at the beginning of our feast to reflect on all we have to feel grateful for. Then, we dug into the grub: turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, roasted vegetables, gravy and potatoes – riced, not mashed, for the first time.
After all, if that ricer is to be one of our 100 Things, we’d better start using it.
