We are hosting the family Thanksgiving Day extravaganza this year.  It rotates through the three females of the eight siblings , all but one living in the same county.  Our 91 yo matriarch will be the Grand Marshal.  We divide the work up.  We, the family, divide the work.  Wife ( she told me she prefers anonymity) will provide home, tables and chairs, dishes, linen, and silver, drinks( except for the wine), music, turkey, stuffing, potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, pumpkin cheesecake, and assorted accessories for the expected 25 attendees, all with big smiles and bigger appetites.   Sisters bring salad, wine, cranberries, chargers and decorations for the tables.  Brothers get to bring beer if they want,children, and the TV football schedule.  Did I tell you I  cook?  Yes I “get” to do the shopping, do the turkeys, stuffing, and gravy, peel the potatoes, and open the French fried onions for the green been cass.   I really do enjoy it, though my enjoyment would increase if wife did not threaten me with bodily harm if I ” mess” with the traditional, tried and true family recipes.

See, I am an experimenter in the kitchen.  Here’s the story.  My earliest cooking experiences came during high school when my mother was hospitalized for heart surgery, a long stay, even longer convalescence.  My sister, two years my senior,  was away ( Indiana) in college. My Dad and I shared kitchen duty in NJ. He contributed what he remembered of his Polish immigrant mother’s cooking (Brooklyn), and I tried to imitate to the best of my minimal ability the dishes my mother and her mother made, Midwestern farm fare.  It was an interesting combo, but satisfying.  We had many well meaning neighbors.  But both Dad and I got tired of the ” just throw it in the oven for 45 min.” casseroles delivered every day or two, often discovered on the back stoop when I came home from my after school job.  So, weedays, I would fare for myself, as my father would stay down in Philadelphia, near the hospital, weekends we shared the duty, at home.

Phase two in my culinary arts self education,  was college, after a freshman year of prepaid, mandatory college dining hall food, I began to share some meals with a few friends in our rudimentery frat house kitchen, again, “interesting” but filling.  We shared shopping duty, costs, kitchen efforts, and ideas about how to keep it tasty, fast, and cheap.   It worked for us in our northern New England men-only college.  We got mixed reviews from our non-cooking buddies and the occasional female weekend guest.

Phase Three.  Medical school, internship, residencies interrupted my “training “for ten years.  But, in my first years of practice, with a growing family in the Berkshire Hills of MA, new incentives to my continuing education arose.  Wife 1.0 suddenly updated herself to Wife 2.0, forbearing meat, and we started our own little homestead with large gardens, composting, wood heat, the whole thing.  Or at least as close as the free time left over from an 80+hour work week would allow.  We loved it, our three children thrived. BUT, I was not a vegetarian, was not about to become one, and we decided to let the children decide about it when they were older.  If I wanted meat, including seafood, and wanted the kids to have it, I could darn well cook it myself.  Thus the expansion into the world of international cuisine ( beyond the Polish/Midwest American starting point) began.  I had three hungry judges( at times they felt themselves subjects) who were surprisingly open to new tastes.  What could be better, a big country kitchen, a profusion of fresh, home canned, or home frozen produce, and a good meat/seafood market owned by a family of grateful patients.  Wife 2.0 had made herself into a good baker whole grains used in large quantities.  I learned after a while that I could combine some of her vegetarian dishes with my omnivorous style to make meals all could enjoy, and probably a healthier diet, too.  More imaginative use of dairy products, including cheese, whole grains, and legumes resulted.  Voila, everybody happy.  At least with the food.  Other influences caused Wife 2.0 and I to split up.

Begin Phase Four.  After a period of trying to “homestead” on my own, I moved to a lakeside bachelor retreat that the kids and I used as a party palace on weekends.  The situation spurred me to greater efforts at providing even more special experiences, including food, during the shorter and more infrequent times we got together.  They were soon off to college in different states, but a new opportunity to show off my increasing skills in the kitchen arrived…girlfriends.  (About this time my friends began to say that I would someone a great wife, ha ha.)

I have skipped a few phases, but this post has gone on too long. It is a long way around to why I call myself an experimenter. Never satisfied with a recipe, either borrowed or invented, I add or change ingredients, seasoning, cooking method, etc.  I am often asked to make something again and again, but find it difficult to comply completely, feeling a certain change might improve the result.  Wife ( present and forever) has remarked that I should write things down more often so that  a sauce or dish would turn out ” the same as the last time.”

That is why I am under orders: Don’t mess with the turkeys, stuffing, gravy, etc. , no surprises whether they taste fine or not!