Riding the Wave, 10. Turkey Stuffing

Thinking about what to make for lunch, for some reason, the stuffing my mother used to make for our turkey popped into mind. 

My father was given a turkey for Thanksgiving, and another at Christmas, at the first company he worked at in Boston. He found a job there in 1964, when he was illegally in the U.S., and then he was re-hired when we moved there, legally, in 1969. He worked for that family-owned construction company until it closed, in the 1980's. 

The turkey was always enormous, enough to feed a family of ten. We were only three people, and there was always turkey in the fridge for at least a week. The good parts, the legs and the wings, quickly disappeared. The breast and the back would linger, strings of meat pulled off in an idle moment of "what's there to chew on?" The neck, my favorite, somehow, also disappeared quickly, as would the giblets. What barely made it into the fridge was the stuffing.

My mother, when first presented with the conundrum of roasting an entire turkey (When we emigrated in 1969, turkeys hadn't appeared in rural Spain just yet; chicken was the fowl of choice, and not roasted entire, either.), probably asked her brother and sister-in-law for help; they had been living in Boston for longer. I do remember that she would buy ground meat, cut potatoes in very small cubes, and chop onions. She would then fry it all in a pan, adding parsley and salt, and I think some other herb that I don't remember. Then, she would stuff as much of the mixture as she could into the turkey. What was left over, not much because she tended to measure well, went onto my plate.

My mother would arrange potatoes around the turkey, in the pan, and then cover it all with foil to place it in the oven. After an hour, the house would smell like the best restaurant. She would then take the foil off, and would baste the turkey from time to time. Sometimes, she would also put pepper slices among the potatoes, once the foil came off. I barely ate any vegetables back then, so I would fight against one of those slices making its way onto my plate, but the smell of everything together was more than appetizing. 

Once it came out of the oven, we would eat. And we would eat. Back then, both my parents ate plates filled with mountains of food that looked like they were about to topple over. My plate was much more modest, but I still ate heartily, especially the stuffing. Once the leftover platter of turkey went into the fridge, that would be the first to disappear. Even afterward, I would search out every little last morsel of potato or ground meat. The onions, not so much, though. Until I became a teenager, onions and peppers didn't enter into my repertoire.

In early years here, I tried to replicate Thanksgiving dinner, with a roast chicken, but it simply wasn't the same. The last Thursday in November is a workday here, and there's no time to linger over a large lunch. I've given up on it, especially since I don't have an oven any more. Now, my celebrations are much more Spanish. Our large family supper is on Christmas Eve, and the table will be as full as it can be then. Even if this year it will probably be just the three of us, like it used to be so long ago.

Life continues.