Poor Man's Feast —

Okay. I know.

What the hell is a clip of Danny Kaye in Hans Christian Andersen doing on Poor Man’s Feast? No, this post is not going to be about herring or Aquavit. Or jaunty seafarers singing jaunty songs without (apparently) moving their lips.

This post is about Thanksgiving–the one that I know, the one that I have the clearest memories of. And Danny Kaye singing Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen (see above).

No matter how old I get or where Thanksgiving finds me (this year, in Florida with my cousins and my cousins’ babies), I invariably start to feel a little bit draggy for a few days before turkey day, and before I am jettisoned into a tryptophan-induced drooling stupor that makes me look like I’ve been hypnotized. I know where this comes from; for me, Thanksgiving was one of the smaller hints of normalcy that I had in my house growing up, and for the first fifteen years of my life (and no matter how big the cold front was that settled down into the space between my mother and father), it was spent the exact same way: my grandmother, who lived right across the street, would come over at around 7 am; she’d start roasting giblets for the gravy, and this is the smell that would yank me out of bed; by 9, the turkey (which was always far too big) was in the oven, and the countertop assembly of the side dishes — sweet potato with marshmallows, cranberry sauce (from a can, with the ridges embedded in the sides), asparagus — had begun. By 11, the mood was light, celebratory, even. And by noon, I was sitting in front of the little black and white television in my bedroom, watching Danny Kaye and Joseph Walsh on their way to the Salty Old Queen of the Sea. I’d sit there with my arm around my Airedale and together we’d sway idiotically back and forth while staring at the glow of post-War Hollywood and a back lot somewhere that had been marvelously transformed into nineteenth century Denmark. And it made me happy, for years.

When things started to go sour in my house, my grandmother was still there, roasting the giblets and the turkey and the sides, while the silence around us was so thick you could slice it like pate. Eventually, I’d spend the mornings at a friend’s house a few blocks away, and come home in time to eat; I’d miss Copenhagen and Danny Kaye and his infernal happiness, and it meant nothing to me. When my parents eventually divorced, I started spending every Thanksgiving with my father’s family: there were games and toys for the younger kids, tons of cousins, and constant laughter and a frenzy to get all the food doled out to everyone at mostly the same time. And it made me happy, for years.

We’re all older now; my aunt is 91 and my baby cousins are scattered around, and there are newish babies involved; their parents live in Virginia and in Florida, where Susan and I are spending our holiday this year, and we can’t wait to see everyone. But it’s hard, even at 46, to not want things to stay the same even though we know that they can’t. Not even on Thanksgiving. Just as Susan’s beloved childhood Christmases no longer involve Spike Jones and a turkey that has been cooked to the consistency of balsa wood, my Thanksgivings no longer involve Danny Kaye and my grandmother’s sweet potato pie with marshmallows, or a ton of cousins all growing up together more or less at the same time. And really, that’s totally okay.

Because wherever we are, we have new memories to make, and a lot to be thankful for.

Clara Elice’s Cornflake Marshmallow Sweet Potato Pie

At once cloying and irresistible, this is the Thanksgiving food of my youth. It’s fine to pick off the marshmallows (which must be full size, and store-bought) first, and then eat the rest of the pie. If it had been me making this 35 years ago, I would have added a pinch of cayenne, or maybe some curry. But my grandmother never knew from such things.

Serves 6-8

2 cups cornflakes

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, and divided

3 12 ounce cans unsweetened sweet potato

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 tablespoons orange juice

3 tablespoons light brown sugar

1 bag marshmallows

1. In a large bowl, mix the cornflakes together with half of the butter and toss well. Spoon into the bottom of a medium casserole, and set aside. Warm the sweet potato in a medium sauce pan set over a low flame. Fold in the butter and combine well.

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Add the nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla, juice, and brown sugar, and stir to combine well. Fold into the casserole, top with marshmallows, and bake until lightly golden. (Alternately, bake without marshmallows for 30 minutes, then top with marshmallows and return to oven until lightly golden.)

I’ve often heard it said that once a person serves in the military, it changes them forever. I’m not sure if this is actually true–I’ve never served in the military myself–but I do know that, until the day he died, my father clung very fast to the years he spent in the Navy as a night fighter pilot flying off The Enterprise during the last days of World War II. He entered the military when he was eighteen, and learned how to fly a plane before he knew how to drive a car. When he died in 2002, I spent hours tearing through long-sealed boxes in search of his discharge papers so that the VA would provide us with a flag for his coffin. We are not military people in my family, and my father was not a military man in any way, shape, or form; but his service had to be recognized as we laid him to rest. That’s what he would have wanted, above anything else.

Whether appropriate or not, my father saw fit to share with me countless tales of his experiences in the Navy, as a Brooklyn-born Jewish boy away from home for the first time in his life. It informed a lot of our conversation and even our vacation time; on a trip to Vero Beach, Florida when I was in high school, we had dinner one night at a seaside restaurant called The Ocean Grill. Waiting at the bar for our table to be set, my father peered out the window and smiled; about half a mile out were the skeletal remains of the Breconshire, a British vessel that had gone down in 1894. Its hull was just visible through the water’s surface.

“We used that for target practice,” he told me, while the bartender nodded. “And this place was my officer’s club.” That night, sipping on what was one of the last Shirley Temples of my youth, I could have sworn I saw ghosts wearing their dress whites. My father drank to them with a gin Gibson.

As proud of his service as he was, my father was unaccountably even more in love with Navy food–so much so that he used to make it for me on a regular basis. Most kids would wake up on Sunday mornings to French toast or bagels and lox. I woke up to creamed chipped beef on toast– more affectionately known as S.O.S.–and a dish that may actually have its roots in the World War I-era Boeuf le Creme de Argonne [sic], in which roast beef was prepared with a cream gravy and rushed up to the front lines in France. I was fifteen before I found out what S.O.S. actually stood for; this doubtless accounted for the many looks of horrified dismay that were cast my parents’ way when, at seven years old and on a trip to California, I stood on my chair and loudly ordered a plate of the stuff at Chasen’s in Beverly Hills. They actually made it for me, and even there, with Fay Wray sitting at the next table, it still looked like shit.

A few years later, my father excitedly returned from one of his early Sunday morning dog-walking jaunts, plunked a brown paper bag on the kitchen counter, extracted an odd, rectangular can from its depths, popped the lid, and began frying up what could only be described culinarily as glorified pet food.

“I haven’t had this since pre-flight school,” my father exclaimed, while our Airedale drooled so badly that it looked like he was swallowing shoelaces. The little slabs of god-knows-what fried up crisp and brown, and by the time my mother emerged from the bedroom, I was sitting at the breakfast counter, eating Spam and eggs like they were blini and caviar.

My parents divorced shortly thereafter.

Although my father’s wartime reminiscences were geared more to what he saw, ate, and drank than the innate horrors of the situation, my father died with the honor of Naval duty coursing through his veins. An hour after his funeral, when his family and friends had dispersed and the limousine had taken me back to his house, the driver–an older man with a cough and a flat top haircut– helped me out of the car and handed me the detritus of the funeral home, all stuffed into a green plastic shopping bag: the signing book, assorted cards, and the rolled-up flag that had been draped over his coffin.

“Hold this end tight,” he said, unrolling the flag, and handing me one of its edges. He folded it in half lengthwise, then corner over corner, until it was a perfect triangle. And then he handed it to me, and saluted.

I honestly didn’t know what to do. But somehow, I felt as though I’d known him for years.

S.O.S.

There are no decent words to describe in detail the way this dish looks when made correctly, but it is, in fact, delicious. If you have the time, replace the dried beef with ground chuck and the toast with mashed potatoes. But then it wouldn’t be S.O.S.

Would it.

Serves 4

1 4 ounce jar dried beef

1 tablespoon unsalted butter or margarine

1 tablespoon flour

1-1/2 cups milk, low-fat

4 slices toasted white bread (buttered, if you have a death wish)

1. Place the contents of the dried beef in a colander, and rinse well with cool water. Pat dry with paper towels, chop, and set aside.

2. In a medium-sized, stick-proof skillet, melt the butter or margarine, and add the beef to it. Saute until lightly brown. Sprinkle with the flour and stir well to combine.

3. Drizzle in the milk and whisk continuously until the sauce is smooth. Serve over toast.

A Different Thanksgiving

S.O.S. and Spam: Remembering My Aviator Father

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