Thanksgiving special orders
Dear Friends,
Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday - the feasting, the day drinking, the tryptophan induced nap that kicks in midway through the Cowboys game. Thanksgiving has always been low stakes. The kickoff to the holiday season proper, it serves as a rest stop on the road to year-ending celebrations.
Christmas by way of contrast always felt a little bit desperate to me with its aspirations to some unattainable Rockwellian perfection. Christmas is the last stop on the holiday train beyond which there are no more gifts, no more eggnog, no more gathering of the clan with festive lighting and laughter. In a few days you get New Years and then it's all dreary January weather, short days, cold nights, and everyone scurrying to get back to work or school. Think about it. Thanksgiving is simply the better holiday. It falls on a Thursday. The holiday season to come is all out there in front of you and you get a long weekend thrown in for good measure.
Anyway - maybe it's our recent election and all the accompanying "news" stories about the gender gap. Or maybe it was just Hulk Hogan ripping off his shirt at the Republican convention. But this year as I meditated on the idea of Thanksgiving, the memories that came back to me all had a distinctly patriarchal flavor. As a kid, I mostly remember the moms working in the kitchen fussing over the turkey while the dads set up shop at the dinner table where they modeled how Thanksgiving was to be conducted. I guess that kind of got me thinking about some of those dads.
I didn't understood it when I was young, but I think my father has always been quite devout. And he has particularly loved the rituals of the Episcopal church. I recall him once taking me along for an afternoon service at the Episcopal cathedral in Seattle where something akin to a high Catholic mass took place including an entire liturgy in Latin. As the priest and assorted clergymen chanted and proceeded up the nave, they held long poles from which they gently swung the metal incense burning thuribles connected by long chains. Thick plumes of heavy smoke wafted through the enormous hall, giving the proceedings a medieval flavor - the smell of the incense enchanting and lingering, almost hypnotic.
So I suppose it's not all that surprising that when I recall formative memories of my father at Thanksgiving, what springs to mind is a picture of my father dressed for the occasion in formal tweed suit pants and vest, with a starched white shirt and a tie, bent over the dining room table engaged in that most patriarchal of tasks - carving the bird. I don't recall ever speaking with him about it directly, but I believe he was moved, even in his younger days by Thanksgiving's roots in his Christian faith and in the Hebrew Feast of Tabernacles and that he genuinely treated the holiday as an opportunity for reverence and giving thanks to God. It was only after I got older that I began to realize how much my of father's sense of the sacred had rubbed off on me.
photo by Alan Pogue
Unfortunately, I suspect that in those days, my brothers and I were probably kind of awful, taking every opportunity to show that we were not about to take this high holiday stuff too seriously. Instead, we were more impressed in those years when the family would sojourn up the road in Dallas, spending the holiday with my mom's large extended family at my grandmother Lois's big house on Edmondson Avenue.
In Dallas, my Uncle Byron would hold sway and set the tone for the day and I'm afraid he and dad probably didn't see eye to eye on many things.
While I'm sure my uncle attended church now and then, he also had a deep and abiding love for the things of this world - fast cars for instance, and Dewer's scotch, and getting out on the boat and teaching the kids how to kick off one ski and stay upright on the other while Waylon Jennings played on the 8-track. Tall and handsome with a full head of hair and sideburns that were a clear nod to Elvis, we kids couldn't get enough of him.
So Uncle Byron didn't have much trouble getting our attention once we were all gathered around the long walnut dining table in my grandmother's rarely used dining room. He would clink his ice cubes and lean into a very specific and rehearsed set of directions. "Now kids" he would start, his voice a deep baritone directed to us down at the end of the table. "What you do is, first, you push your potatoes into a pile and make a bird's nest. Then you put your peas in the nest. After that you spoon your gravy on the top..."
Well, I don't think a Thanksgiving goes by that my brothers and I don't have a laugh about pushing our mashed potatoes into a bird's nest and putting our peas in the nest. And Uncle, though you may be long gone from this earth, you will always live in my memories of Thanksgivings gone by.
Anyway - I hope all of you have a fine and lovely Thanksgiving holiday. May you be as fortunate as I have been, to dress up in your finest and commit the day to reverence, and a keen awareness of the miracle of being alive for the brief time that we are allowed on this beautiful planet. But I hope you will also have a laugh, and make a bird's nest of your mashed potatoes, and spoon your peas into the middle. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
bon appetit,
murph
PS -
Gift giving in one fell swoop
If you're looking forward to gift giving before the end of the year we have put together a few options. For a limited time we are offering the option to purchase cookie tins by the ten pack. Each cookie tin includes 4 dozen assorted holiday cookies, a flyer listing details of each of cookie flavor and each tin will be boxed up (ready to ship, individually).
Bulk cookie tin orders will be available for pick up the first week of December. Choose from our printed color Texas French Bread logo, plain white tin with no logo, or send us your logo and we will add it to the tin. Place your bulk orders early - cut off for bulk cookie tins is NOV 24th at midnight.
Shipments - Gift giving made simple
Let us ship gifts for you! The bakery is humming with activity around our annual cookie tins. Each cookie tin contains dozens of delightfully dainty cookies and a flyer with each cookie description. Now shipping anywhere in the US - visit our site to ship a cookie tin off to your loved one and we'll include a handwritten message on your behalf.
PPS - a quick update on our efforts to rebuild the building. Although it may not appear so, we're very close, but the process has been arduous. As of this writing, we've got a detailed set of plans that are ready to go. But we don't yet have a deal with a contractor lined up and we now understand that we will need to do some additional fundraising to get the project over the finish line. Keep the faith. We will find a way.
art by David Regone