Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

My mother left this afternoon--I went with her to the airport, where I asked for and got a gate pass so I could accompany her and have a little more time together. She could have managed on her own, but I know she benefited from having me there to tell her what people had just said.

It was a very good visit, though I am somewhat tired, and cattitude moreso. He and my mother both love, and like, each other, this was mostly about having had someone here from Tuesday afternoon through Saturday afternoon.

On Wednesday, I got notarized photocopies of my birth certificate and passport, to accompany my (re)naturalization application. Most of the questions were straightforward, but she had me email one of her oldest friends to ask the name of the town where my mother and her family lived in France in 1939-40. There are also a couple of questions where we decided the right answer is for my mother to go to the German embassy in London with the not-quite-completed form and ask them what to put there--including at what point in the Nazi regime my mother and her family lost their citizenship.

cattitude, adrian_turtle, and I had our usual Thanksgiving dinner together yesterday. Our Belmont apartment has a kitchen big enough for all three of us to work in together, which is very nice. (Cattitude and Adrian did most of the work, because I was feeling oddly unwell for a couple of hours.) The apple crisp came out unusually well, as did the plate of roasted roots, though Cattitude and Adrian had to do without Brussels sprouts this year, because when we got to that point in the food prep, he discovered that the sprouts weren't food.

For dinner tonight, Cattitude invented a very tasty dish involving leftover turkey, bacon, celery, and canned white beans. He is writing it up, so he can remember how to make it again. *smile* There's probably turkey soup in my near future, and maybe a curry or pilaf; even a small turkey leaves a lot of leftovers when shared by three middle-aged people.

Tonight, I made a curry with leftover cooked turkey, leftover roast vegetables (small amounts each of carrot, sweet potato, and rutabaga), and coconut milk instead of cow's milk or cream. I multiplied my usual curry recipe by 1.5 (onion, apple, spices, broth, coconut milk, and lemon juice), sort of eyeballing the turkey and roasted vegetables.

The rutabaga seemed underdone on Thursday, so I cut it smaller and simmered the pieces in the broth for 20 minutes with the apple, onion, and spices. The carrot, sweet potato, and turkey went in near the end, with the lemon juice. I didn't use raisins (or dried cranberries), which may be why the curry came out a bit more liquid than usual.

I was pleased and not really surprised that this recipe works quite well with coconut milk. The flavor isn't markedly better than milk or cream, so I probably won't buy coconut milk if I'm cooking just for me and cattitude, but adrian_turtle can't eat dairy, and she knew that using coconut milk would be a straight substitution. (It didn't curdle, but I took the same care to temper it as I do with cream, and when I do that the dairy milk or cream usually doesn't either.)

The roast carrots were really nice in this, maybe enough so that it's worth roasting some to use in this and other recipes; so did the sweet potato, but the carrots were a nice contrast with the softness of the cooked apple and turkey. (The rutabaga was okay but nothing special.)

Eight (volume) ounces of raw rice wasn't quite enough for the three of us; use nine next time I do curry for three.

Part of why I will probably use dairy milk most of the time is that making this as dinner for three people (without side dishes, though there will be dessert in a bit) used 4.5 tablespoons of coconut milk, or 2.25 fluid ounces; a can of coconut milk contains six times that much. I saved some coconut milk in the refrigerator, but don't know if I will use it; we have a similar container of tomato puree, which was an ingredient in today's lunch. That's in addition to the things that feel like leftovers: some roast turkey; a good supply of the cranberry-orange relish; some roast potatoes and Brussels sprouts; and the dumplings we didn't have room for last night.

We is me, adrian_turtle, and cattitude.

The feasting (as distinct from ordinary food while visiting) started yesterday with a chocolate pecan pie. The basic recipe is something Adrian found in the NY Times, modified by using coconut oil instead of butter, and with the work shared around. Parts of the process were frustrating, but the pie is good. We had a little last night, more after dinner tonight, and there will be some left for tomorrow or Friday.

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah, so Adrian made latkes for dinner. They were quite tasty; we had a sausage each with them, by way of protein.

Tomorrow we will have the traditional turkey, and the traditional cranberry-orange relish (ideally without the part where we leave it in the refrigerator until halfway through dinner), and so on.

I had gotten confused about the whole Thanksgiving-on-Hanukkah thing, and thought tomorrow was the first night, in which case it would have been too complicated to combine the holiday feasts, but latkes and turkey on consecutive days isn't difficult.

I've had a mostly cozy few days with cattitude and adrian_turtle: Turkey, cranberry-orange relish, the green beans Adrian always wants, Cattitude's excellent glazed onions (which we really ought to try more than once a year), and a few other things, including a rice and tangerine salad that appealed in the cookbook, then seemed rather odd at first bite, which I wound up having thirds of. And then repeating that reaction, both halves, with some of the leftovers last night.

We went to the Cambridge Museum of Science on Friday, which was fun, including an impressively large kinetic and sound sculpture on the first floor, and a number of things that got strong "I've seen this" reactions from me and/or Cattitude. The dioramas of local flora and fauna aren't just in the same general style as the New York ones at the American Museum of Natural History, they're labeled in the same fonts. There's a math exhibit that's good but I thought "needs updating" (specifically reacting to a label that describes fractals as a new branch of mathematics), and Cattitude told me that he had seen this exhibit, quite a few years ago, at IBM Watson (where his father used to work). We'd have liked more dinosaurs, of course. And some more proofreading: they misspelled "theropod" and "vertebrate" in different exhibits. This was just a low-level annoyance: writing "therapod" and "vertabrate" doesn't confuse people about meaning. But I can't help noticing these things.

Other than that, we dealt with some errands, and Cattitude assembled a new desk chair for Adrian, and we had sushi and talked and drank tea and played Scrabble. Cattitude went home yesterday afternoon, giving me and Adrian some time to ourselves; I'll be heading back to New York today.

This is the third year adrian_turtle has had Thanksgiving dinner with me and cattitude, and the second that it's been just the three of us. There's nothing like a standard menu yet, and I expect and hope there will always be some variation, but the roast bird (I carve), the cranberry-orange relish, and the maple-glazed onions are settling happily into place. Some sort of green vegetable is good, but a salad fits that niche as well as green beans. There will be dessert, but it may not include chocolate mousse.

Clearly, if other people join us at the table, there may be foods they insist on as essential to Thanksgiving, or that they just like and are happy to cook or bring.

In at least one regard, this is feeling thoroughly traditional: the menu thus far is going to be More Than We Can Possibly Eat, and I am proposing additions.

Other than that--the physical location is new, the mix of people will be a little different, but cattitude and I are sharing the holiday with roadnotes, as is our established custom.