The Case for Lingering

The singular joy of not being a holiday crank.

One of the chief pleasures in cooking for friends and family is not the actual meal itself but what happens afterward. The day spent chopping and stirring and worrying whether you should have cooked something different because it’s all looking and tasting like a debacle has been proven wrong for at least a majority of your offerings. All that remains now are dessert crumbs and probably an open bottle (or two) of wine. So you kick off your shoes, serve yourself to whatever sweets are left, and fill a glass. For the first time in the evening you actually take time to savor what you made and taste the wine you hope heightened your guests’ enjoyment of the meal. And…ahhhhh…how luxurious is the feeling of finally experiencing the incredible joy of this gathering of people you love around your table.

Not sure these people are wine drinbkers but it looks like they have some mighty fine desserts.

I am not a particularly easy conversationalist even among friends and relations. I remain socially awkward and vastly incompetent with small talk. There’s also the way my brain works, resulting in strings of non-sequiturs that amuse the charitable and befuddle everyone else.

This is why I insist on hosting dinner parties and holiday feasts. My kitchen is my escape hatch, the one place I can politely exile myself when my internal flashing red warning light for being overwhelmed goes off.

Anyone who attempts to follow me into my kitchen is met by mumbling.

“You’re mumbling,” one intruder said to me recently during a family meal.

I stated the obvious truth, “I’m talking to myself.”

The main problem is that people outside my kitchen are certain that I know exactly what I’m doing at the stove. I do not, especially when I’ve convinced myself that it’ll be fun to choose an untried recipe listing 18 rare ingredients and has 24 steps. Hence, the necessity to pay attention to the little voices in my head desperately trying to counter rising panic.

My son and his soon-to-be wife have wrestled from me control of the Thanksgiving meal. They believe I am tired and for once should spend the day with my feet up. This is very sweet of them but deceptive. They let slip that her family is not going to be around for the holiday, and they really want to cook pernil, her family’s traditional Puerto Rican holiday dish. I love pernil, and it fits right in with my husband’s well-known turkey revulsion. They’ve placed me in charge of putting together my family’s traditional stuffing recipe. I was sure I’d control desserts but was just told I am not.

This here is a fine example of a crisp skin pernil.

Regrettably, my son has inherited my aversion to having people around him, most definitely in the kitchen. He’s even worse since he has inherited his father’s tendency to be slightly testy when provoked while concentrating. Pernil takes as long to cook as a good-size turkey because there’s the requirement for leftovers to make sandwiches for days afterward. So what am I supposed to do with myself for four to five hours? Where am I going to hide when guests arrive? This could be a historical disaster! Pat retreating to the bedroom pretending she has a headache kind of disaster!

The only thing that will help is if I keep in mind what awaits for us all at the end of this good meal. We’ll linger around the table, loath to leave behind pie and cake crumbs, the last of the wine, and the bond of joy of between friends and family, even to the most rattled among them.

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For more adventures in the Willard Thanksgiving saga check out:

The live turkey year 
The turkey butt year.