Turkey-Apple Stew. 12″ x 12″ gouache and watercolor pencil. Sharyn Dimmick
Thanksgiving Day found me with my family in the house where I grew up, preparing traditional Thanksgiving dishes with my mother. At eighty-three Mom still does the heavy lifting, so to speak: she makes the dressing, stuffs it into the turkey. She makes her never-fail pie crust, which we fill with pumpkin, eggs, evaporated milk, brown and white sugars and spices and with sliced Pippin apples (The Gravensteins are long gone by Thanksgiving Day). I make rolls from my Grandmother’s recipe, only pausing to sneak a half cup of healthy whole wheat flour into the dough. Wednesday afternoon we peel potatoes and snap the ends off fresh green beans from the Bay Fair Farmers’ Market and boil and peel chestnuts for the dressing, cook whole cranberries with a little sugar and water. Thursday afternoon I make salad dressing and whip cream while Mom prepares a simple brown gravy from pan drippings, flour and water. We roast yams in the oven after the pies come out, cook the green beans in the microwave and the potatoes on the stove. I scoop the dressing from the bird. Bryan carves the turkey and lays slices on a platter.
Gravenstein Apple Pie. 8″ x 8″ gouache and watercolor pencil. Sharyn Dimmick.
At two o’clock we sit down to a bountiful table, the three remaining Dimmicks and our guests Johnny Harper and Art Peterson, who will play music in the living room after they have eaten their fill. This year I am struck by how long this has been our family tradition, how many years Mom and I have made this meal together, dividing our tasks and cooperating to get the food on the table in a timely fashion. We do have skirmishes: I am a careful baker, sifting the flour into a cup on a flat surface, heaping it high and leveling it off with my hand, but I find that I cannot sift easily with my recovering wrist. When I ask Mom to sift, she holds the cup in the air, occasionally shaking it to settle the contents, and hands me cups that I don’t think are full enough to level. We laugh about this later, after I have told her how much I like making this meal with her every year. We are the last two generations of our family and we do not know how much longer we will get to do this together. I enjoy the simplicity of a day spent preparing a feast and the routines we have developed.
The day after the holiday finds me with many fall tasks undone, due to a thirteen-week hiatus with a compromised right hand. My winter sweaters need hand-washing. It is time to start making cookies for Christmas and for an early Chanukah party. Add to my schedule three hours of hand and wrist exercises per day and I wonder, like many of you, how I will ever get everything done. The only answers I can come up with are to keep it simple and to just do the next task, to jettison things that seem too much for this year, as I work to transform my injured hand and wrist to new strength and health.
At the same time as I celebrate old family traditions, a new opportunity has arrived: my friends Maia Duerr of Liberated Life Project and Lauren Ayer of Quilts of Change have put together a Virtual Holiday Faire for 2013, where you can purchase my Paris CD and two original watercolor paintings, plus notecards, quilted bags, coaching services and other offerings. Please visit the Faire to have a look for yourself. Your purchase will help support independent artists and consultants.
Last, but not least, Susan of Susan Eats London, kindly sent me a care package to raise my spirits: she went to her favorite bulk bins and picked out aleppo pepper, dukkah, farro, Puy lentils and Nigella seeds, none of which I have ever used, plus blue cornmeal, fresh fig jam and three kinds of chocolate! I shall be having some cooking adventures in the future. If any of you want to provide suggestions or links for using these ingredients, the Comments field is open. I am thankful for all who enjoy reading The Kale Chronicles and grateful that my hand will allow me to type a blog post for you.
thekalechronicles 
Welcome back to the blogosphere, Sharyn, and I’m so happy to hear that things are looking up in November. It sounds like you had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast with family and loved ones, and the new opportunities sound great. Wishing you continued healing and only good blessings from here on.
Thank you, Betsy. Thanksgiving was lovely, traditional, simple. The Faire website launched without a hitch and I washed the first two sweaters this morning. Cookies to come. I hope you are enjoying your Thanksgiving weekend.
Sharyn — I’m so glad you received the package and that your wrist is healing! Your Thanksgiving sounds like it was wonderful. Dukkah is an Egyptian spice mix that is used to season flatbreads and olive oil for dipping; it’s also a wonderful vegetable spice. Aleppo pepper is that indefinable ‘something’ in Turkish and other Middle Eastern food. It’s robust but not very spicy, lovely in marinades and added to mince for kebabs and in soups. When I first ate nigella seeds I had an ‘aha!’ moment of “so that’s what that was!” — toast it lightly in a pan as you would cumin seeds and use it to season vegetables and curries. No need to pound it in a mortar and pestle unless you want to. It’s got a nutty, savory flavor. And use farro as you would risotto or barley. It has a wonderful texture and flavor. An ‘ancient grain.’ Can’t wait to hear what you do. Susan xx
Thank you, Susan. I appreciate the suggestions for the spices and seeds. I don’t know when I will start real cooking again, but I have just started slicing easy foods: mushrooms, peppers….
Wow, three hours of exercise sounds so excessive? I feel for you, I can’t imagine having my daily activities limited by an injury like that. Sending you blessings to heal quickly! xx
Thank you, Barbara. The exercises are already paying off — I can play guitar a little, use a kitchen knife a bit. Thanks for your good wishes.
The way you describe the two generations coming together to prepare such a lovely meal is really beautiful, Sharyn. Although the dinner is always served at my house, and i do prepare the turkey, my mom also does all the “heavy lifting” of the bountiful side dishes. We try to encourage her to let us do more, but she holds onto those traditions, and is probably entertaining memories of her own. It’s true we don’t know how long we’ll all be together in just the way we are now, and I try to savor the moments.
I’m so sorry to hear that your healing has taken such a toll. The rehabilitation of your wrist sounds like a very big task and a toll on our time. And your new opportunities sound like they are well-timed, Sharyn. You have some good friends. I’ll look forward to checking out the link! 🙂 It’s good to see you back in print. ox
Thank you, Debra. It is special to make holiday meals with my mother (and just the kind of thing I could take for granted). My wrist and hand are improving, responding nicely to hand therapy and exercises.
Pumpkin and apples in the same pie?!?!? Sounds delish … and your mom sounds like an amazing woman!
My mother is capable and smart, Tiffany. We don’t put apples in the same pie as the pumpkin custard, (I was a little worried about that sentence) although I have read about combination pies like that. We are big pie-eaters in our family and never want to limit ourselves to just one flavor.
It is so lovely to hear of your Thanksgiving. I can really envision the sifter conversation: I’ve been privy to a few Dimmick cooking commentaries in my time! Here’s to tradition and our fine, old-timey friendship. Glad to hear that your hand is getting better. Ihave missed your writing via the blog and in email. And a painting!
Hey, Suzanne. I was wondering if you were back from your desert adventure. Let’s talk soon. Thanksgiving Day was grand, went smoothly. Hand rehab is helping. The paintings are previously published work, put in to brighten up the blog.
Wonderful post.
Thank you. It was a wonderful day. I hope your holiday was enjoyable, too.
That’s the best part of Thanksgiving. This holiday is steeped in family traditions. There are no elves or bunnies, just family and friends. Great that you and your Mother can share and enjoy cooking together every year. It sounds wonderful, Sharyn.
It is one of our two family holidays, John — Christmas Day is the other. I like them both and am grateful to still have family members to share them with.
Hi Sharyn, I have been absent from commenting on my favorite blogs for some time and have missed reading your posts. Canadian Thanksgiving is long gone now so it was lovely to share in yours. I will need to dig deep into my neglected emails to find out what happened to your wrist and hand but I am happy to hear that it’s healing and understand your frustrations…must have made playing music difficult along with everything else. As ever your tenacity and love of life is inspiring and just want you to know you are always on my mind despite my silences…
Thank you, John. I am behind in my blog reading as well and have a busy couple of months ahead. I broke my wrist in a fall at the end of August, but the first x-ray did not show the hairline fractures. Hands stiffen up when wrists are immobilized, but I am making great strides in hand therapy. I am about to leave for a restorative zen retreat in cold, cold New Mexico, but I will be back later in December.
Three hours of hand and wrist exercises per DAY? Sheesh… that’s no small amount. I’m surprised you have time to get anything done at all after all that!
Nice to hear from you Sharyn, and to know you’re still on your blog, albeit less frequently these days :).
Um, Charles — I don’t have time to get much done: a little laundry, meals, brushing my teeth, a few hours of odd jobs a couple of times a week. When hand therapy is working, the hand therapist piles on the exercises so that you can get better faster. Thanks for stopping by.
Good to read of a festive and loving pause in the midst of your journey. It must be a year of transition. Much change here too. We adapt, Don’t we? Be well.
We adapt, MacMurray, but sometimes we kick and scream and whine a bit in the process. I try to do one thing at a time and hope that will be enough. Thanksgiving was lovely. I’m on the road (and planes) tomorrow for a week in New Mexico with Natalie, the last time she is teaching at Mabel Dodge Luhan House. I’ll be back at the blog later in December. Cheers!
Hi Sharyn, I am sorry to hear about your hand, I do hope it recovers quickly. I too love family traditions and you are indeed very fortunate to have your dear Mother around and spry enough to still work in the kitchen; so many elderly are immobile because they just haven’t kept up, my 90 year old FIL sleeps 20 out of 24 hours a day, so sad really. I’m also glad for you that you and Johnny are going strong. Happy Holidays to you.
Thank you, Eva. My hand and wrist are improving every week since I started hand therapy — in another month or so I won’t know anything was ever wrong. Mom is going strong at nearly eighty-four, although I know that everyone slows down eventually. Johnny and I have big plans — more about this in a December blog and a January one. Meanwhile, thanks for stopping by and Happy Holidays to you and yours.
Great reading your blog again sharyn!
Thank you, Lauren.