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Okay, Ms. Waldman, I came readily to your defense on the homework question, but this is a different matter. You are not among the legions of the hungry who might reasonably expect that any resplendent meal that comes their way might be the last for a while. You can have more whenever you want it. Whether you fall on a Thanksgiving meal like a starving Great Dane on a month's worth of Alpo is your own affair, perhaps your therapist's if you've got one...I bet the therapists of this nation are ready to projectile-vomit after listening to their clientele's post-holiday-blowout self-detestation...but I don't get why it's supposed to be of general interest. One more chapterette in the very long treatise called Sick American Attitudes toward Food. This brand of American angst has been going on for a very long time and is dreadfully stale by this time. Sometimes I think that about five years of mild material deprivation would pull us-as-a-society back into balance and help us spare ourselves a wealth of bad behavior and bad conscience. It's unfortunate, at least from that angle, that the shortage coming our way is most likely going to be a shortage of petrochemicals rather than sugar and meat.
In the interest of balance and justice, I also don't know why people are so intent on promoting wretched excess that they cook til they drop for these holidays. It's bad for everyone involved. This practice allows the host/hostess to watch the guests eat through his/her own haze of exhaustion, too tired to enjoy the company. I also don't get why people insist on preparing so much more than is necessary, or why such emphasis is placed on a great abundance of the kind of food that kills. My mother used to work herself to exhaustion and hysteria over holiday meals, and I decided it would be different when I could make it that way. Now I am the designated holiday hostess for my family and social circle, but as such I make the rules and choose the menu, and we're going to have turkey for the meat-eaters, lobster newburg (out of a can from the Vermont Country Store) for the fish-eaters, spinach, whipped potatoes, asparagus, and cheesecake. That is, a pleasant, sufficient, slightly opulent meal, and the pleasure of coming together on a holiday. Not the kind of blowout that will clog my guests' arteries or knock me on my ass with exhaustion for days thereafter, or send anyone reeling home queasy with self-hate.
