THE NATURAL PERSPECTIVE -- Vic Leipzig and Lou Murray

The last Thursday in November is traditionally a time for giving thanks.

For Vic and me, it’s a time to gather with family and friends and eat the

traditional foods of our people, who were mostly Midwesterners. That

means we chow down ungodly quantities of turkey, stuffing, candied sweet

potatoes, mashed potatoes and gravy, and traditional round cranberry

sauce -- round because it’s straight from the can!

Everything but the cranberry sauce is made from scratch, the way my

mother and aunts and grandmothers made Thanksgiving dinners.

I spend the day before Thanksgiving baking pies. I mix the ingredients

and flute the crusts just like my mother showed me, and her mother showed

her. Our son, Scott, hates pumpkin, so I bake an apple pie with crumb

topping as well as a pumpkin pie. Some years I bake a whole pumpkin,

scraping out the cooked meat and mashing it, rather than using canned

pumpkin.

Cinnamon apples were my grandmother’s specialty.

She made them every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Now I’m a grandmother and

I make them. I pare and core whole cooking apples and simmer them with

half a bag of cinnamon Red Hots and half a cup of sugar. The apples,

which are served chilled, turn a brilliant translucent red.

Nobody in my family likes them all that much, but they’re beautiful and

traditional, so I continue to serve them, anyway.

Some things you do just for the sake of carrying on a tradition, like

having Jell-O.

Our culinary tastes have expanded beyond Jell-O, but it’s Thanksgiving

and you have to have it.

I confess to having made some modifications. I don’t actually use Jell-O.

I gel cranberry juice with Knox gelatin and add Mandarin oranges.

Vic and I usually cook the dinner together. Early in the morning, I boil

the turkey neck and giblets, along with sage, fresh from the garden, to

make broth for the stuffing.

As the turkey roasts in the oven, the kitchen fills with wonderful smells

that quickly permeate the entire house. We chop oysters and crumble

Saltines for the scalloped oysters that are a tradition in his family.

Vic makes the gravy and candied sweet potatoes. We spend the morning in

the kitchen, cooking, talking to each other, and snacking until our

guests arrive.

My 88-year-old mother, Lucile, who moved to Huntington Beach two years

ago, brings homemade cloverleaf yeast rolls with butterscotch bottoms

that are angelic in their lightness and sinful in their richness. She

also brings green beans that she dresses with fried onions and bacon, the

old Midwestern way.

Our son, Scott comes up from San Diego with his girlfriend, Nicole. Our

son Bob lives in Seattle with his wife and children. The distance is too

far and they don’t join us. Like so many modern families, ours has

scattered.

My parents’ entire extended family lived within a 60-mile radius in

Indiana. When I was growing up in the ‘40s and ‘50s, all my aunts,

uncles, and cousins on my mom’s side of the family would gather at my

maternal grandmother’s house.

There were nearly 20 of us. I have no idea how we all fit in my

grandmother’s small house, but it didn’t seem crowded then. The day after

Thanksgiving, we had leftovers at my paternal grandmother’s house, which

was even smaller, and there were even more people. It still didn’t seem

crowded. It was family.

Most of my aunts and all of my uncles are gone now, and my cousins have

dispersed across the country, but I still remember the warm gatherings we

had on cold winter holidays back in my grandmother’s house in tiny

Spencer, Ind.

Vic and I are thankful for the memories of the past and for the friends

and family of the present. And, of course, we’re thankful for the

opportunity to live in a town as wonderful as Huntington Beach, with its

community of people who so strongly share our appreciation for protection

of the natural world.

We hope you all have a good meal, whether you’re having turkey or tofu,

kielbasa or tamales, sushi or spaghetti.

Remember that your Thanksgiving dinner this year becomes part of your

memories for the future. So turn off the football game and enjoy the

people and the real world around you.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].