Local magic

The setup happened a few weeks ago, but the magic began last night.

A random email from by my friend Patti inviting us to Thanksgiving piqued my interest. We never really celebrate this all-American festival, because, well, we’re not all American. Sure, Darling Husband loves stuffing like nobody’s business, but he didn’t grow up surrounded by the holiday and all the trimmings: maiden aunts pinching your cheek, Mom melting down over misbehaving pie crust dough, arguments over giblets in the gravy, and sitting at the card table until your knees were up to your ears. My tiny family is nowhere in evidence this year, so we immediately said yes.

The setup is a potluck among friends who’ve never met, but who agreed that it was to be a local feast, in celebration of the turkeys Patti was growing. If all went according to plan, they were slaughtered this Monday, along with a few chickens for her freezer. Someone else will bring the pumpkin pie, so we will provide the stuffing and alternate pie. Sourcing is easy: My family loves bread, but the rotation means that we don’t always eat the whole loaf before it turns to stone. The odd ends get pushed to the back of the bread box all year, and we haul them out at Thanksgiving. By this time each year, it’s hard to fit even a single loaf in the breadbox, but this year, there’s room for two, so I bought an extra loaf to dry out.

It’s clear that my traditional water chestnuts stuffing isn’t sourced locally, so I asked around: truly Northwest stuffing, it seems, contains oysters, of both the shellfish and mushroom variety. I hunted on the Epicurious, that wonderful site that saves me digging through piles of magazines, and if gave me quite a few ideas (and a chuckle from the one cook who said “this stuffing was too much work; next year, we’ll go back to Stovetop.”).

Our first Thanksgiving as a couple, I made a pumpkin pie (that’s a story in its own right), and my Darling then-Boyfriend gobbled most of it up. And was sick, no surprise. Now I make sure there’s a second pie just for him, usually pecan, usually (gasp!) purchased. The rest of us enjoy my homemade pumpkin pie, sweetened with molasses and spiced with ginger. But pecans are not local, and filberts don’t cut it. So I thunk and I thunk until I got it. Those peaches from last August will be the alternate pie. A sprinkle of cardamom and cinnamon (we agreed spices were a worthwhile exception to the local rule). With flour from Stone Buhr, butter from Wilcox, we’re bringing peach pie and ice cream (vanilla bean, from Alden’s).

Before I went to bed last night, I dug in the freezer: out came the bag of peaches (weren’t we smart to slice them up!), a pound of sausage for tonight’s sgabhetti, and a small package of smoked chum salmon from Fishing Sensei, which will pair with a local goat cheese as a small appetizer offering both tomorrow and Friday evening, when we’re invited to British Neighbor’s for drinks. I also tucked a few bottles of Columbia Valley Semillon (Fidélitas, 2006) in the fridge to honor the birds.

This morning, when I got up, I climbed in with Little One, who rolled over, and said in a voice unfuzzed by morning sleepiness, “When we die, we go up and become part of God. And then we fly around and we’re fairies.” Indeed, the Tooth Fairy also paid a visit last night, to an increasingly skeptical but nonetheless affectionate Number One. The air is positively thick with magic, which bodes well for making pie crust.