Getting serious about Thanksgiving

Yep, it's that time of year again. Michael and I are heading into what has become our annual Thanksgiving ritual: Making a very large meal for a very large group of people. Well, fine, I suppose that's nearly everyone's Thanksgiving ritual. But ours happens to be all vegetarian and involves seven or so courses and three or so straight days of preparation.

It also involves lots of counting. You'd think that Thanksgiving is all about the food, but no --- this year it seems to be all about the math. How many people are coming? Fourteen. Okay, so how long of a table do we need to fit all of those people? A bit of wrangling with the tape measure indicates that we'll need about 18 feet of table. Well, we could do that by using our regular dining room table with the leaf plus an eight-foot folding table, or we could do it by using our regular dining room table with the leaf plus our card table plus the kitchen table, or we could do it by using our regular dining room table without the leaf plus plus two six-foot folding tables, or...

You get the idea. If you're interested, we settled on the latter plan, which necessitated the purchase of two six-foot folding tables from Lowe's. While we were there, we got two gel-cushioned "comfort mats" to put on our tiled kitchen floor, anticipating several days of sore feet and knees during the prep phase. And since we've got new tables, we need new tablecloths. But how much overhang will we want on a table that 6 feet by 3 feet? Back to the measuring tape.

There's also lots of counting to be done. Do we have enough cloth napkins? Enough plates? Enough glasses? Enough silverware? As of right now, the answers are yes, maybe, probably, and yes (finally). Yes, we are now the proud owners of a new set of silverware, service for sixteen (thanks Mom and Dad!), to replace our old and dishwasher-battered service for six and a half or so.

I've been just itching to get these out of the box and start using them; they're so sleek and elegant (and shiny!). But no, I will wait. They deserve a grand meal to kick them off right.

The napkin issue was solved last year when we had the foresight to buy a set for sixteen, and I think we should have enough water glasses and wine glasses for everyone. The plates, however, are posing a bit of an problem. We'll be having fourteen people, and we're planning on serving five courses, plus an amuse-bouche, plus dessert. That's at least six major courses at which we'll need plates (or bowls, or oven-safe ramekins in the case of the onion soup). We've got large plates and salad plates from our regular set, plus a set of square white plates that we bought a few years ago for this purpose, plus the ramekins. So that's four courses covered. To make up the gap, we acquired a new set of rectangular white plates, which should make for a lovely presentation of one of our more colorful dishes:

We've also inherited a set of china from my grandmother, which has been sitting in our basement waiting for just such an occasion to make its debut at our table. When we were first pressed into taking the china, we were worried about silly curlicues or garish flower patterns, but these are the perfect thing for Thanksgiving:

There's an interesting history lesson that comes along with them too. When we looked at the back to see where the plates were made, we found this:

So in addition to expressing a bit of family history, these plates also express a very particular period of world history, and one that's been almost lost, at least to my generation.

But nothing comes easy. We originally thought that the china set was service for twelve, but it turns out that there are lots of missing pieces. We do have the full complement of soup bowls, but there are only seven dinner plates and five salad plates. We should be able to put together fourteen plates of some size or other out of the lot, but it's a lucky thing that we don't need the whole set to do its duty all at once.

And, of course, there's one other type of math that I don't particularly like doing this time of year: adding up the cost. Michael and I love putting on this production, and we especially love picking out the best ingredients and pairing them with the best wine, but that sort of thing doesn't come cheap. New tables, new tablecloths, new plates, new silverware, extra kitchen tools, the floor mats --- and we haven't even started buying the food yet! Luckily, we're in a good financial position to be able to do all this, and that helps me feel all the more grateful that we can.