The Observer, November 16, 2007
Volume XL, Issue 11
Quarked: Good gravy, Thanksgiving is here!
As some of you might have prematurely realized, there will be no Observer next week. This is because one week from today the Observer staff will be recovering from Thanksgiving, meaning we will be lazily lying on sofas across the country and munching on leftover turkey sandwiches while watching Star Wars or James Bond on TV. There are always a few instances that not publishing the campus fun-page-with-newspaper-attached is justified, and commemorating the day the Pilgrims told the Indians, "Thanks! By the way, we want the entire country," is one of them.
I've always loved Thanksgiving for several reasons. First off, I've always liked how it's a premature Christmas without all the actual Christmas drama involved. No one gets upset if you forget to send them a Thanksgiving card, and you don't need to spend hours looking through dusty basement corners to find the Thanksgiving decorations. It's great.
The second reason I like Thanksgiving is because the holiday commemorates the first time I was introduced to proper gravy. The story goes like this: as everyone knows, it is your moral responsibility to invite friends who can't make it home to your Thanksgiving dinner, and during my first Thanksgiving home from college, my sister had a friend from California who accepted an invitation to celebrate at our house. That Thursday morning, my mother militaristically laid out the kitchen battle plan of the day's feast, including written instructions detailing what needed to be done at what time, and she asked my sister's friend if there was anything she wanted added to the plan of attack that wasn't already listed.
"Sure," the friend said politely, "Could we make gravy?"
We were caught a little off guard on this one. My family is first generation Hungarian-American, so while I was born in the United States, there are several foods ranging from tacos to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I was only first introduced to in the elementary school cafeteria. Gravy was one thing that fell into this category, and I had no idea why anyone would have a fondness for that disgusting brown stuff I spent countless lunchtimes isolating from everything else on my tray.
My mom responded first. "Of course!" she said, "Yvette, why don't you go online and find us a gravy recipe?" So I went into the den and logged onto our home computer, figuring if our guest wanted to pour questionable brown liquid all over her plate, I was not one to stop her. I printed the recipe that came up when I Googled "best gravy recipe," and headed back to the kitchen to help out.
Needless to say, I quickly learned that, like many other foods, gravy actually tastes pretty good when not prepared in the confines of a school cafeteria. You'd think I should have learned this a little earlier, but I keep discovering American dietary staples I am not acquainted with so this is par for the course.
But anyway, in case you were wondering, I do have a third important reason for liking Thanksgiving so much. I like this holiday because it's devoted to the noble idea that you should take a moment to reflect and be thankful for all the good things in your life. Speaking on a personal level, I have a lot to be thankful for. I have friends and family who I love dearly. I live in a time of relative peace and prosperity, in which they no longer burn intelligent women at the stake, and retain good health and more good days than bad ones. Meg Grady has yet to banish me from the Editorial pages despite my numerous transgressions, and you, dear reader, have found what I have to say interesting enough to read my column until the end. These are all things I am grateful for, and am pleased to let the record show it.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
When not doing something else, Yvette Cendes is a fourth-year physics major.
