A Far Side Thanksgiving 2016

Before launching into the usual diatribe, we want to offer our US readers (wherever you may live) a somewhat belated, but nevertheless heartfelt Happy Thanksgiving!  May your plates be full and your hearts be grateful throughout the coming year.

For our non-US readers, perhaps a bit of background on Thanksgiving, which happens to be the biggest holiday of the year here at the Far Side Global Headquarters (FSGHQ).

The legend, perhaps even myth, is that early European settlers in North America were suffering from a poor harvest and faced almost certain death in the coming winter.  They overcame their xenophobia and befriended some of the local heathens, who in turn showed them what flora and fauna were good to eat in the local food chain, including a heretofore unknown plant called "maiz" or what we call "corn."

Being saved from certain starvation, the European settlers pulled together a massive feast, inviting some of the local heathens to join in before they started the wholesale genocide.  This event went on to become a tradition known today as Thanksgiving.

The true story is a bit different.  President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, seeing that the rights and freedom of the Southern States were about to be fully and successfully trounced by the evil Union Army, declared a national holiday of Thanksgiving, to whatever god it was he worshipped, to celebrate the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of humans.

Granted our interpretation is a bit skewed, favoring the side of liberty, States' Rights and freedom, but the facts remain.

So anyway, Lincoln declared that Thanksgiving would be held every fourth Thursday in November, and in the intervening 150 years, it has become one of the most insane holidays in America.

It begins with a massive feast, traditionally involving turkey, dressing/stuffing, cranberry sauce and any number of side dishes, topped off with pumpkin (Yankee) or pecan (normal people) pie, and an on-going war between those who must have sage stuffing in the turkey, and those who prefer to foul the fowl with cornbread stuffing...or even worse, those who don't stuff but serve on the side as "dressing."

The day is marked by massive parades of commercial messages and marketing displays filled with celebrities earning kajillions of dollars to endorse various brands.  These parades are followed by sporting spectacles in which pituitary cases purchased in slave markets called "drafts," suit up in quasi-military uniforms and beat each other senseless over a ball.

Thanksgiving is immediately followed by Black Friday, in which consumers throughout the land, drunk on liquor and tryptophan, run out and max their credit cards in an orgy of consumption, ostensibly buying Christmas gifts, but really just taking advantage of the sales to fill their houses with all-new crap, like the latest giant-screen TeeVees on which to watch the sporting spectacles.  It is called Black Friday because this is typically when retailers finally pay off their taxes and regulatory expenses and actually become profitable (in the black).

This consumer orgy officially launches the "Holiday Season," which actually started after Halloween when the Xmas decorations started going up in stores.  The original "Holiday Season" included Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year celebrations, but now is further stuffed with made-up events like Kwansaa, so liberals can feel like they are being oh-so-inclusive and diverse.

Though forms of thanksgiving celebrations are held all over the world, and have been for millennia, the American version is a distinctly American holiday of commercialism, since most Americans haven't worried about things like harvests and surviving winter in generations.  The overwhelming message from American media is that each citizen has a moral, ethical and traditional obligation to spend as much money as the banks will let them have, based on income, assets and other demographics.

Here on the Far Side, things are little quieter, more dignified and more traditional.  Turkey is far too expensive, requiring a bank loan guaranteed by the title to my house and a day-long hunt to find the one store in Jakarta that sells Butterball.

Instead, we get a couple of freshly slaughtered and hand-plucked chickens from the neighborhood bazaar, steam up a mess of cauliflower and/or broccoli, whip up some sage stuffing and homemade cheese sauce, while my wife fixes some Indonesian favorites like sapi rendang and opor ayam, and we make a tank-full of tropical fruit juice spiked with tequila.

There are no parades or football games on the non-existent TeeVee.  No girding for battle at Bloomingdale's or Macy's.  No consumeristic orgy.  Just a few friends and family gathered for a feast to remind ourselves of how truly good we have it, and how great it is to have a few friends and family to share it with.

Thanksgiving is our favorite holiday, even though we don't really get a holiday here, just the regular weekend rest on which to hold our feast.  The local heathens enjoy the smorgasbord of exotic foods and flavors, and appreciate the idea behind the celebration of being thankful for the good things in our lives, even if they have never experienced winter or the possibility of starving to death for lack of food.

Although I suppose we can be grateful that another year has passed without earthquakes reducing the house to rubble or the local volcanoes roasting us in our shoes with pyroclastic clouds and searing-hot lava.

Yes, it's a wonderful holiday here on the Far Side.  We enjoy good food and great company as we remember all the blessings in our lives, even if we are just one of a handful of homes in the entire country celebrating, and even if the Krismis decorations at the copious malls studiously avoid anything having to do with Christ or Christianity, as they attempt to entice us with American Cultural Imperialism to spend ourselves into oblivion.

Oops, the chicken is burning in the tiny electric oven, so we have to run.

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all of our loyal readers out there in Cyberland.  See you on the Far Side!

Is That A Drumstick In Your Pocket?

Well, here it is Thanksgiving once again.  Here on the Far Side, we're busily preparing for yet another feed of magnificent proportions.  In just a couple of short years, the Far Side Thanksgiving has become the social event of the season.  Folks have started inviting themselves from far and wide, which is an Indonesian national pastime when free food is involved.

This year, we're switching things up a bit for two reasons: 1) turkey is really expensive here (though it's dropped since last year), and 2) I made an unholy mess on the porch last year.

You may recall that last year, reader Teka reminded us of the tried and true frying method, which we had nearly forgotten about.  Well the turkey came out spectacularly good, but the oil drippings on the tile porch took nearly two months to finally clean up.  Not wanting to repeat such a fun and exciting time-waster again this year, we're moving turkey day to Christmas up at the mountain house.  This will protect My Precious from the hordes of freeloaders who stripped last year's bird to the bone and left nothing for turkey sammiches the next day.

It will also allow me to cook outside in the glorious mountain air where oil splatter don't matter, and where the house doesn't arch overhead in the event of an oil fire, which I am expert at causing.  I did, however, buy a good fire extinguisher for both the city and country houses.  Pyromaniacs, oil and fire are a combination best left to the great outdoors.

So this year, we are doing up a massive batch of the world-famous Far Side Spaghetti sauce, with the added bonus of real live meatballs that are such a pain in the butt, it has to be a special occasion for me to take on that task.  The meatballs will include fresh rosemary, onions and bell peppers from the Far Side garden - which is quickly becoming the Far Side edible forest.  The big twist this time will be the handmade pasta shells that I have been working on for nigh on a week now.  Major hassle, but makes for a fun meal.  You have to take pinches of the pasta dough and smash them on your thumb, then roll them on a lightly moistened backside of a cheese grater.  You end up with cute little curly sea shells that really hold the sauce, which is their major advantage over string pasta.

The wife is doing up a big batch of kangkung, a leafy veggie with a mostly inoffensive taste.  She'll also be throwing down some fresh green beans and other vittles.  My veggie contribution will be broccoli and cheese cassarole with a blend of three cheeses (homemade white cheddar, smoked gouda and brie), sour cream, butter, and topped with a layer of bread crumbs.  Of course, there'll be the legendary mash potatoes with chicken gravy and a fresh garden salad.

We'll wrap things up with an apple cobbler made from the brother-in-law's orchard in Tegal and the uncorking or my first batch of mango mead (preliminary tests show great promise with a specific gravity of 5.6).

All in all, it should be a magnificent feed with enough for all the interlopers who inevitably show up, drawn by the smell and the steady stream of folks coming in the door.

As in the past, we'll have an eclectic gathering with local friends and family, and a nefarious group of foreigners from disparate parts of the world.  I'm figuring on using nearly 4 dozen tomatoes, two pounds of butter (real...not margarine), a half dozen bell peppers and onions, two heads of garlic, about a pound of cheese, a quart of sour cream, fifteen potatoes, a handful of hot peppers, nearly a kilo of ground beef, two dozen apples, and a partridge in a pear tree.  We're planning on about 20-30 people.

And it's all halal.

As much hassle as Thanksgiving is in the preparation, serving, and worst of all, the clean up, it remains my favorite tradition.  Taking time out to think about all the good things in life and sharing the wealth with friends and family brings a pleasure that is hard to match...especially when everyone is rolling on the floor in misery wishing they hadn't taken that last helping of apple cobbler.

Thanksgiving is unlike any holiday in Indonesia.  Idul Fitri comes close, but doesn't often come close to the gross amounts of food and libation in a good holiday spread.  Another idosyncracy about Indonesian feasts is that they all sit on thick blankets on the floor.  If I were doing this full Indo style, all the food would be served off of platters in the middle of the blankets with everyone using their hands, but I prefer the table and utensils (at least for serving), thank you.

Another concession to my surroundings is that Thanksgiving will be on Saturday, instead of tomorrow.  There's no public holiday here for the feast, and it would be unfair to ask folks to work the day after gorging themselves on a meal that will take a week to fully digest.  And no one is sure yet what the residual effect of the mango mead will be.

One thing I miss about Thanksgiving back home is the cold weather.  There is something soothing about a roaring fire while feasting that just completes the event.  Somehow, torrential rain and lightning just don't make up for that part.  I never have watched football, so that part doesn't bother me at all.  And the parades have become so commercialized that they are mockeries of the originals, so that part is not missed either.

I will raise a glass to absent friends.  It's been five years since I've seen any of the homefolk, and for the most part, I miss them.  Especially dear, old Mom whose own legendary turkeys inspired and trained my love of cooking.  It is her tutelage that ensures I always use fresh, real ingredients...nothing canned or artificial in my feasts, thank you.

Of course, I was also inspired by Julia Childs, or at least the part where the chef gets sauced on gin while whipping the food into submission.

Thanksgiving is a great time to take personal inventory and realize that no matter what, there is a bright side to everything if you look for it.  I am thankful for my children, for my host country, for my good friends, for the ability to have nature retreats in the mountains and the jungle, for relative good health and another day to enjoy it, and for the massive feedfest that will shortly ensue.  I am thankful for my Mom, who taught me how to read, write and cook, and for my Dad who taught me how to think and analyze history and current events.  In fact, I am thankful for all the teachers who have added the skills and developed the talents I have that allow me to put on holiday feasts and have mountain retreats.

I am thankful for the great readers and listeners of Life on the Far Side, who send such great messages, offer fantastic suggestions and donate to the cause so we can build up this effort into something meaningful for folks.  I am also thankful for the invention of the internet that allows us to have the collected knowledge and experience of Mankind at our fingertips and in the comfort of our homes and offices.

But mostly I am thankful for a beautiful and supportive wife who takes such great care of me and the family, and makes our house a home.  She is my friend, my lover and my partner; who could ask for more than that?

Finally, I am thankful for a world that, despite the best efforts of a select few, continues to offer so much wonder, beauty, bounty, and diversity.  As long as we continue to look with childlike wonder, the Universe will continue to offer those wonders.  And if we put forth a little effort to clean up our little part of it all, then our children and their children will receive the same benefits.

Happy Thanksgiving to all Far Siders everywhere.  May your feasts be lavish, may your mead be sweet, and may you enjoy the blessings of friends and family every day of the year.

Now, where' my fork...

A Far Side Turkey

Ah, the familiar wail of the Ghost of Thanksgiving Past.  If Dickens were alive today, he would still completely ignore this holiday.  It is uniquely American in every way, from the ancillary parades of gross consumption, to the absurd game of football, in which steroid abusers put on pads and pretend to get tough (rugby is a man's game, thank you), to the celebration with obscene amounts of food and beverage...emphasis on the beverage.

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday.  There's something about the ritual of preparing the exact same meal the exact same way year after year.  It really has nothing to do with the Macy's parade.  I've probably watched all of two of them in my lifetime.  It certainly has nothing to do with football, since I've watched even less of it.  It's definitely the ritual part and the fact that I never really eat turkey any other time of the year.

My first experience with a Far Side Thanksgiving was in Dublin, Ireland.  My father, in his strange, internally consistent but otherwise unfathomable reasoning, had moved my whole family to Dublin for a year to find our roots.

Mom had hunted down a turkey, not very large by our standards, what with six kids and assorted Catholic clergy hanging around.  It was obviously not the plump Butterball that was the ritual beast, either.  It was a scrawny thing, pale and lifeless, and sans giblets.  I don't know about you, but Thanksgiving is the only time of my life that I purposely eat internal organs.  I'm a flesh kind of guy, and I don't much like livers and hearts and other guts.  But, it's part of the stuffing ritual, so I do it and I like it.

At any rate, that Irish turkey came out dry, almost like eating a picture of a turkey, rather than the bird.  Mom cursed the Irish electric oven and the shipping for what is still one of the family legends: Mom is not an infallible cook despite all indications to the contrary.

My sister and I are the only ones who know the recipe and secret to the famous Mom Turkey.  For several years, she and I would meet at Mom's house on Wednesday evening for 'chopping night.'  Mom, in semi-retirement, had passed on all the prep to my sister and I, while she still performed the necessary magic on Thursday morning.

Sis and I would pop a bottle of wine and proceed to shuck and jive, building the stuffing, washing the bird and prepping the bird, paring the Brussels sprouts, on so on.  I was the knife man, Sis did all the stir-fry and mix-mastering.  Then I would take the results and shove them in a carefully predetermined pattern into the bird and place it in the pan for the mystical treatment the next day.

Later, when I had my own kids and family, we carried on the ritual, with Dad doing all the magic while each kid had their assigned task.  The hardest part of Thursday was waking up at the crack of dawn to start the magic show at 7am sharp.  The rest was simply overseeing the magic chemistry of heat + time = dinner.  If done right, it all comes out at the same time so that it's still hot and juicy when the serving line begins.

Now, one of the major controversies regarding Thanksgiving is sage or cornbread.  Some folks swear by, and the family Bible requires under pain of death, cornbread stuffing, and even (gasp) not stuffing the bird but cooking it separately!  My family is in the sage camp, and the stuffing must absolutely be done inside the carcass, or it ain't right.  Besides, that's an integral part of the gravy seasoning, not to mention the table-side battles for the burn end of the stuffing.  And frankly, it's just not stuffing if it ain't stuffed.

Now, I've had dozens of requests for the stuffing recipe.  Frankly, I don't have one.  I learned from Mom, who didn't have one.  It's a matter of knowing what to put in it, and the rest is smell and texture.  That's it.  The only way you can learn it is by doing it under close supervision of a Craft Master.  The other part of that is the careful placement of stuffing inside the bird.  It's a learn-by-doing operation.  No amount of recipe can teach you the Secret.

As for cooking time, my grandfather did several experiments and came up with the perfect formula, which I can't divilge, since it's a family secret and the patent doesn't run out for another 10 years.  But it produces a flawless bird, and it gets surrounded with boiled Brussels sprounts in butter with lots of pepper, cauliflower with Welsh cheese sauce, broccoli with butter, sour cream and cheese carefully arranged in medley, dinner rolls, pies (pecan, of course...weeze Texians), and the always untouched cranberry sauce that everyone hates.  But it's there, just in case.

So, flash forward to Indonesia.  I can count the number of Indonesians who have eaten turkey on one hand with four fingers tied behind my back.  Being a North American bird, there's no reason why Indonesians should have any knowledge of it.  Last year, my search turned up a lone bird, deep frozen, for $100.  This year, I turned up three of them, and the one I brought home was $40.  An improvement.  Last year, I gave up and cooked four chickens in the same style, which was pretty good, really.  This year, I'm going whole hog, except I can't find cauliflower anywhere, for love nor money.

If you read Thanksgiving on the Far Side last year, then you know that I bought an oven for the occasion.  Now understand that ovens just aren't a standard part of an Indonesian kitchen.  Here, everything is done on the grill or stove top.  So to say I have an oven is to say I have a breadbox with a heating element that will cook single slices of bread in 21.3 minutes flat.  Being a closet masochist, I'm going to attempt to cook a turkey in it this year.

This will be the first experience my Indonesian family has ever had with turkey.  They aren't prepared properly for the triptophan crash afterwards, because I don't know how to explain triptophan in Indonesian.  Oh well, they'll just have to discover it themselves.  At any rate, the blossoming guest list is up to about 30, and in the Indonesian style, free food usually draws a 100% inflation rate, so I'm figuring on 60 people raping a 12-pound bird.

The problem is, the bird will not fit in the oven.  Unless I can figure out a way to turn the oven into a TARDIS, the normal Laws of Physics won't allow it.  So, this week, my big ponder has been how to cook a 12-pound turkey in an oven that will only hold a 1-pound chicken.  What I've decided is that I will butcher the bird and cook the breast in the oven with the stuffing, which I won't be able to stuff.  The legs and wings and assorted other bits I'll throw on the barbie and grill with coconut shell fuel.  The remaining carcass will get boiled down into soup stock, which is usually reserved for the week after Thanksgiving, when the sandwich gods have had their way with the left-overs.

It remains to be seen how all this will work out.  I'd hate to introduce an entire country to a traditional meal that is boned beyond all recognition.  Also, I'm determined to add a new ingredient to the stuffing...green apple.  My apple tree is just finishing up its season, and I have about 20 apples the size of large plums that are a nice combination of sweet and sour, so what the heck.  Toss 'em in!

I may end up causing an international incident here if it ain't just right.  Also, I made such a big deal out of finding a turkey, with two-week hunt across Jakarta to boot, that it had better be worth it, or my wife will ban me from the kitchen forever.

In place of cauliflower, I am making my now-world famous spaghetti bolognaise (from scratch...no cans of anything).  And to make sure the Indonesians have something to eat, if they find the turkey unpalatable, there'll be black pepper beef, meatball soup and spicy chicken in sauce.  I've invited about 10 bule, only one of whom is American, in the sense that he is Hawaiian, but I think it's safe to say few if any have ever experienced Thanksgiving, much less on the Far Side.  If all else fails, at least there's a case of Carlsberg beer, or at least what will be left of it after chopping night on Friday.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that.  Needless to say, there's no holiday here for Thanksgiving, so I'll do the feed on Saturday, which ties in nicely with the Muslim New Year on Sunday...the year 1433, if memory serves me right.

All of this brings up one great mystery.  Since turkey is a North American bird, and it's more rare than argon around here, why is there a word for it in Indonesian?  I mean, if you don't have something locally, and the import of it is incredibly rare, why would a language bother to name it?  It's called ayam kalkun, which only translates as turkey, no two ways about it.  An alternative, but rare name is ayam belanda, or Dutch chicken, which makes even less sense.

Hi Ho!...in the immortal words of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Enjoy your holiday, and blessings for all of us.  Let's hope for the best as we prepare for the worst, and be thankful that we slid though another year relatively intact.

From the Far Side to you, Happy Thanksgiving!