Roll With It

A Holiday Roadmap

The sky not far from the kitchen

In times of trouble we turn to old friends. Some of those friends are real people who know our names and return our calls while others are “friends” who don’t know us at all. The days before Thanksgiving I turned to one such friend, for something, anything, to get me from funeral to holiday within seven days. I needed her reliable, no fuss attitude. I needed easy suggestions so I could build a baking roadmap, so the holiday could reliably take place. I needed a friend to tell me that an all butter pie crust was within reach without that friend asking about my feelings. I needed Deb Perelman and the New York touch that I will always trust because no matter how many years I live outside that city, it will always be my home. 

I relied on Deb and her famous Smitten Kitchen blog, to give me the most direct route from overwhelm to accomplished and she delivered like a New Yorker, like someone who understands what it means to survive. Deb knows about life even though she has no idea about me. Considering how I felt, that seemed best. Nobody needs an Auntie in tears at the holiday table. It makes for bad digestion.

I typed into the search bar for a pumpkin something, while I silently screamed inside, “I do not want to make another pumpkin pie nobody really wants to eat.” Instead, Deb offered me a pumpkin cheesecake. Perfect, I thought. Cheese is clinically proven to improve our mood. I switched out the pecans for pumpkin seeds and called it a winner recipe. You see, we can’t do nuts at our table because one of us is deathly allergic. That  is also why I had to stick with the program of baking, because even if you’re willing to pay, you can’t easily buy a certified nut-free cheesecake. Trust me. Those options are limited and generally sadder than almost anything. Almost.

Now satisfying tradition is really important and sometimes in our family that has been kind of tricky. Seeing as we were an immigrant clan a lot of these things we now make, the things the younger generation expect us to place on the holiday table, well they didn’t exist in our lives as kids. When my own, very patient, “American” aunt brought us a pumpkin pie, we all looked at it like we were discovering a new, confusing world. Look at what they can do with squash in this country! When a neighbor first gave us an apple pie, my mother asked if making the crust was like making a strudel. She quickly realized it was and it wasn’t. For years truth be told, we bought our pies because that was easier and that’s why God made pastry shops and disposable income. 

Fast forward a few decades and here we all are, trying to maintain a tradition that we spent some years happily creating like a group art project. Now we have this younger generation and they don’t know this is all smoke and mirrors. They have no idea how close they came to having a Thanksgiving strudel. They have no idea how many good bakeries from throughout the New York tri-state area are missing our business. 

Mom’s pie will always be better than mine, but I use the fancy plate to make up for it.

Sometimes the past really matters and sometimes it takes a backseat to the task at hand. This year, sort of like last year, we are faced with a challenge to be extra creative. We are faced with maintaining the tradition that underlies all the others: the one of sheer survival. 

Once the cheesecake and the pie were sorted I found myself exhausted but somehow not quite satisfied. I looked around and found Deb’s recipe for some rolls, pretzel rolls, parker house pretzel rolls to be exact. YES, I practically shouted inside. Yes. There was absolutely no way I was going to bake bread this Thanksgiving, or anytime during the rest of this year, but rolls, I could handle. Dad would have LOVED the novelty! 

Now, you might wonder why this is all such a big deal, but if you’re reading this blog I think you understand that food is always somehow a big deal, even when it seems like it’s not. If you’re reading this you know that food serves a purpose more than nutrition and even bigger than taste. Food is all about emotion and memories. I wasn’t ready to take on the bread baking, to think about that last time, the hospital time, still I wanted to honor this tie, this very personal tradition I was building inside myself. So I did what I could, and made a small pie plate full of these cute little rolls. When I was done, I had this sense my dad would have appreciated my tenacity, if nothing else. 

Finally, after a blur of flour the morning of Thanksgiving arrived. I packed up the car and headed to my brother’s. 

I will tell you that the pumpkin cheesecake was a hit. The apple pie had the best crust I ever managed. The rolls though, were definitely a solid mediocre. They were a little harder than they should have been and a little bit bigger. I had forgotten to cut them in the center so they looked less like pretzels and more like buns. To be honest, I almost left them in the car. I could have left them to their mediocre fate on the dinner table, too, but that felt cruel.

One by one, as the crew of family members assembled to baste the turkey and make the stuffing, I sliced, toasted and buttered and then toasted each roll a little more --- until they were golden edged and shiny. Then I cut them down the middle like little sandwiches and handed these little bites to whoever looked ready or willing. Roll by roll the plate disappeared. Roll by roll a little extra love got them past their flaws and into some bellies. Their toasting scent filled a small corner of the kitchen. The smell of survival was in the air.

The rolls were no big cure for the day’s hard truths. Dad was still gone and so was my brother’s wife, gone forever within fourteen months of each other. The holiday table was different for the rest of our lives. Of course, this is the nature of life, but right now these losses -- they are fresh and their impacts leave children without a mother and without a grandpa, too. Having learned a few tricks from my elders I stuck to tradition while doing it my way, the only way I could manage, since I am not what you would call a pillar of the old. I am, like a lot of us, a hybrid creature. The fact that I’m writing this to you at all, proves my point, since these are the things you do but never discuss. 

Cabbage from Dad’s garden made it to the table, along with his homemade vinegar.

Sometimes when we turn to old friends, we do it not because they understand us, but because we feel they understand life. I turned to Deb because I knew that somehow inside her database of recipes there was exactly that love of family, that warmth for life in all of its phases, that would help get us through this potentially awkward holiday meal. Deb did not disappoint. She did not offer me shortcuts that sacrificed quality. She did not give me instructions fit for a professional chef. Through her youtube she practically held my hand through the pie crust. When the video finished I too had this thin round, supple dough with visible chunks of butter, just like Deb. We did all this together without a word about my feelings. We avoided the problem of tears, not just butter, dotting the pie crust. 

This Thanksgiving our family told jokes and we laughed. We made mention of those we were missing. We gave the teenagers time to express their opinions at the table. We awkwardly figured where to sit first. We breathed in every bit of cuteness from my cousin’s young girls. We made no big speeches. We had no poignant memorial moments. We just kind of got on with it and went with it, with this thing called life, because that is what worked for us. The food and the tradition held us together and the small changes, the little spins on tradition did too. Like Deb says, sometimes the best, most real things, are “unfussy.” To prove that, let me point you to her rugelach recipe. 

One thing I can say, that I think my dad would agree to, is that it is not what you cook or where you gather, but how you cook and how you gather that actually matter the most.

Thanksgiving is now very over and the holiday season has moved into full swing. Whatever you celebrate, whatever your festival of light might be, I trust that you believe in the power of something bigger than yourself. It’s that bigger thing that makes the yeast and grows the pumpkins. It’s that bigger thing that fills in the spaces between the awkward moments with this thing we call grace. It’s this bigger thing we feel when a meal comes together despite the odds. 

The names and the faces of what you know to be your family will change. The strong will grow weak, the young will turn older. People will leave through circumstances beyond your control. The good dishes will break. Recipes will be adapted to new tastes or allergies. Piece by tiny piece, and sometimes in chunks,  nothing in your family will remain exactly as it was. The only constant in life is change. The only true tradition we have is love.  

This holiday season may love be on the menu and in your kitchen. 

May love grace your table and bless each one of its chairs. 

May your survival be delicious.

And may your friends, both real and imagined, be there in your time of need.