skinny girls & mayonnaise

I was sitting in the dentist chair a few mornings ago, trying to find my Zen place as the hygienist plunged Medieval devices of torture into my mouth. I was feeling thankful that I only had to do this twice a year. Although these days, all things in the world considered, there are a lot of worse places I could be.

Saltimbocca-style turkey

“Maybe if you re-branded teeth cleaning as a kind of ‘spa day’ for your mouth,” I said to the dentist, “people would be less apprehensive about it. You could call it a ‘denticure’.”

The dentist liked that idea.

“I am thankful for you!” my son’s guitar teacher, Dan — who also happens to be a friend — emailed me the other day.

We have much to be thankful for, not least of all friends and loved ones. May we remind each other with urgent frequency.

I am thankful for modern medicine and the additional time it gives us with those friends and loved ones versus, say, a hundred years ago — when the median life expectancy might’ve already had me tucked comfortably into the dirt.

I am thankful for the promise of dumplings and oysters on the half shell in San Francisco’s Ferry Building in the coming days.

I am thankful for the country, culture, people and cuisine of Mexico.

I am thankful to my family for entrusting me with Thanksgiving dinner, and giving me the latitude to add my own stamp to the meal — oyster and biscuit pie, turkey saltimbocca and confit, wild mushroom risotto, deep fried brussel sprouts… (Early in our relationship, my wife’s family entrusted Thanksgiving to me. I cooked a German feast, with roast duck, spaetzle and wild mushrooms, sauerkraut… I couldn’t be sure they were thankful for me that year, but I was thankful for them.)

I am thankful for butter.

I am thankful for beer.

I am thankful I survived the foolish choices of my youth, so that I may now warn my own children against the very same things.

I am thankful to the people who figured out that  if things sit for awhile and ferment, they often become even better things.

I am thankful for all of you, my readers, for sticking with me through months and years of culinary musings. Hopefully you have been rewarded with a moment of levity here and there, or a new recipe added to your repertoire.

Happy Thanksgiving!