Thanksgiving Day is about to end and people have celebrated it or are currently enjoying a big and fantastic dinner with family and friends. This being the second time I am experiencing this celebration, it offers me a unique opportunity through which to manage a variety of relations: with our friends and neighbours, with my family at home, friends at home, as a reader and recipient of messages, as a producer of messages. Food and drinks become the means through which to reach and engage with people thus enhancing or adding value to relations.
First comes the co-ordination in preparations and mutual agreement on who cooks what and who brings what to to the table. This is not easy to achieve, as my neighbour states. Not all people are willing to cook. It takes a good and strong relation in order to be able to ask for particular contributions and be sure that people will carry them out.
Next comes a full commitment to the fulfillment of the cooking contribution to the celebration. This is the spinal cord of the issue, as far as I have lived it and this is my own interpretation of the celebration. Such a commitment is based on a successful negotiation between one's "resources" and peoples' expectations on high quality food both in taste and in appearance. To be more precise, I here mean that one has to make do with whatever is available in terms of cooking utensils, instructions, cooking facilities and potential mal- or under functioning, with time and most of all, with experience. On the other hand, one has to be aware of the recipients of this message- cooked food. So, a good background- a sound knowledge of tastes and preferences or allergies is a sine qua non to this cooking experience. The variable here is that of experience. Lack of experience becomes an impediment to this negotiation , adding anxiety and nervousness to the person. I found myself in such a position this very day and struggling to master the kitchen and all that comes with this notion.
Detailed instructions and a thorough study ahead of time are the best predicament to this impediment. This is easy to imagine. Yet, detailed instructions that will sound and appeal to the person are hard to find. One has to match himself with them. Here is then the result to all these moments shortly before taking it out of the oven and while standing on the buffet, waiting for hungry people to appreciate it!
The other side to this celebration regards first look comments upon receiving cooked food, opening the lid and checking the turkey: praise and encouragement for more similar achievements are implicitly accompanied by eagerness to taste so that the test is complete. The senses are working towards evaluation and the person can look forward to enjoying a good face among friends as a cook. Conviviality, in other words, needs this kind of solid base: a highly evaluated person and his cooking skills. Now all people can enjoy each other's food and trust that there will be more moments in the future! The tender moment comes when people with special preferences set themselves to " have a bite" , just as promised and come up with happy faces. This is a ramification of the whole set of relations which I particularly enjoy: I see such people as a difficult audience to win, so even this small engagement with my cooking is a big step forward.
Photographs are indispensable to this celebration, given that I am not familiar with all kinds of food included in this special meal. On the one hand, I want to treasure such moments and, on the other, I want to transmit them to my family at home. Most of all, they need to look at my own accomplishment lining up with other peoples' cooking and inspire them to more comments. Evaluation , appreciation, admiration, and further challenges are part of the game of photograph interpretation by those who have never seen this side of myself nor tasted my food. I, too, am re-interpreted and placed in new contexts and new places.
While celebrating this very day and rising glasses of red wine, feeling grateful for being alive, for having good friends and neighbours, I feel grateful for being given and grasping the opportunity to read through a roasted turkey and interpret it under a new light....
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