Read Online A Catered Thanksgiving by Isis Crawford - Free Book Online

she’d brought and sewed the cavity shut and tucked the legs close to the breast. “I hope you’ll be delicious and you won’t have died in vain,” she said to the turkey as she put it breast side down in the pan so all the juices would flow into it.
    Of all the methods Bernie had tried for roasting a turkey—basting it every fifteen minutes, putting an aluminum tent over it, covering the breast with cheesecloth—this one seemed to work the best. You roasted it breast side down and then turned it breast side up for the last three-quarters of an hour of cooking time so the skin could brown. Bernie rubbed the skin with a mixture of butter, oil, salt, pepper, and paprika and slid the bird into the oven, which Libby had already preheated.
    â€œHere we go,” she said to Libby as she set the timer she’d brought with them.
    Libby just nodded as she began peeling the potatoes for the sweet potato casserole. She loved sweet potatoes. They tasted great, were extremely good for you nutrition-wise, and came in pleasing shades of orange and yellow. What was there not to like? But putting marshmallows on top of them? No. She didn’t think so. She realized it was an American tradition, but a relatively recent one. After all, marshmallows didn’t become popular until the 1930s. They reached their high point in the 1950s, their use waning in the 1970s, when the food revolution hit American shores.
    However, in those forty years they managed to find their way into a multitude of places they didn’t belong. Libby still remembered a particularly ghastly salad she’d encountered that had been made with tomatoes, romaine lettuce, blue cheese, and marshmallows, and since the person who had made it had been an aged relative, she’d had to eat it and smile. Even worse had been the scrambled eggs and marshmallows her best friend’s mother had whipped up for a late night snack.
    She still shuddered at the memory of that. So really, looked at in that context, a sweet potato marshmallow casserole wasn’t so bad. And even if it was, it didn’t matter, because the truth was that in this business you gave the customer what they wanted—within reason, of course. Otherwise, you’d be out of business.
    Bernie looked over to see her sister staring off into space. “What’s going on?”
    Libby shook herself. “Nothing. I was just thinking that if we had enough sweet potatoes left over after the casserole…”
    â€œWhich we do,” Bernie said.
    â€œI was being rhetorical. Anyway,” Libby continued, “I was thinking that we could sauté the extra potatoes up with some pickled ginger and serve them as another side dish.”
    â€œI didn’t see the pickled ginger in the cartons,” Bernie objected.
    â€œI tucked it in my backpack on the way out the door. It was kinda a last-minute thing.”
    Bernie laughed. “Well, the dish seems a little avant-garde for the Field family, but why not? The worst that can happen is that they won’t like it.”
    â€œMy thoughts exactly,” Libby said.
    Bernie gave her sister an appraising look. “You know, you do have this missionary streak in you when it comes to food.”
    Libby shrugged because it was true. She fought against it, but for better or worse, it was there. “I’m not denying it,” she said. “I think I get it from Mom.”
    â€œI think you do, too,” Bernie agreed, remembering her mom’s story about how she’d gotten their dad to eat garlic.
    And on that note she and Libby went back to work. They spent the next hour making a pumpkin bisque, which they planned to serve in small sugar pumpkins with toasted croutons floating on top; peeling chestnuts and combining them with Brussels sprouts, to be finished off on top of the stove; making a salad of arugula, endive, and watercress with a sprinkling of toasted hazelnuts; plating the hors