THAT MOMENT

There used to be a Fairy Tale about a king who could smell what was cooking in every kitchen, from great to small, from manor to humble, all over his kingdom.   He’d be enticed by an especially delicious aroma, and would invite himself to dinner, surprising many a citizen by his appearance at the door.  

And right now, I would imagine that he’d have had a field day in our

country, with all the lovely scents of Thanksgiving preparations going on.   I imagine the pies are being baked today (ours yesterday, on Caro’s day off), and the vegetables prepared right up to the cooking stage.   Many a bowl of stuffing is being tossed to await the anointment with stock or broth or drippings for baking tomorrow---whatever kind of bread cubes, toasted or left to dry, tossed with their many differing ingredients, according to recipes old and new.

Enough skillets and pans of cornbread are baking right now to feed armies, and the keen fumes of onion, the nuttygreen aroma of celery, the musky curls of sage and those little poufy  dust-bunny shakes from the McCormick’s can, the boiling of stock and gravy---all those scents are rising like praise to Heaven.

There's one charity group in town which feeds 25,000 people tomorrow, and imagining the bubbling pots and laden chopping boards in those kitchens would boggle even that Old King, I think.

Lots of folks like to sauté the vegetables first, and that’s certainly a delicious way to make dressing, with those caramelly onions and celery and perhaps even a mirepoix with carrots.  But there’s a moment there, a split-second of the preparation, when the scent of the cornbread crumbled into the big bowl, and the tiny mince of raw sweet onion and just-cut celery, along with a generous scatter of fresh-ground black pepper and a good shake of the McCormick Poultry Seasoning---leaning over that bowl for the Fall’s first scent of Dressing-in-Progress---smelling those unmistakable, can-be-only-that-one-thing aromas---that’s when the Thanksgiving Dinner begins.

Not when I’ve  polished up the silver, or got out the pretty cut-glass dishes gathered from so many tables not my own, or when the sweet potatoes go in to bake, or folks packing to go to Grandma's, or getting those pies nestled safely into the trunk of the car---but at THAT MOMENT, that inhaling of the scents old as the South, readily available for centuries and compiled of the essence of the dish---THAT’S the instant the clock turns to Thanksgiving, no matter what the calendar says.