Simplicity

Happy Thanksgiving!

We’re hosting Thanksgiving this year, and I’m doing a lot of cooking.

But my smoke alarms won’t be going off, because I’ve pulled the batteries out of the ones remotely near the kitchen. Our stove has no outside-venting fan above it, just one of those cheap recirculating fans under an over-the-range microwave. Which means that it’s basically impossible to do real cooking without filling the kitchen with smoke. And because we have cats, you can’t just throw an outside door open. (Once the kitten tried to climb up a box fan in the window, and caused it to tip out and fall. He managed not to get hit by it; in any case even opening windows you have to be watchful.) Until we get an outside vent opened up and hooked up to the fan, we can’t realistically have smoke alarms downstairs.

The other week, one of the smoke alarms in the hall upstairs was doing that annoying short beep every minute or so, which I think they do when they’re either expired or low on battery. So I pulled it off the ceiling and took the batteries out and came back downstairs. But the beeping continued. How could that thing still beep without batteries? I thought. I took it downstairs just to make sure it was beeping. The beeping continued—but it was still upstairs. Hmm. Is the ceiling beeping? It sure sounded like it.

I started googling stuff like “removed smoke alarm ceiling beeping.” Everything popped up: a hidden second alarm jammed up in the ceiling. A detector in the attic (time to make sure the attic stairs still unfold?). A gremlin that resisted even shutting off the power to the house. A toy the kids somehow got up in there, or in a wall with the sound sounding like it’s in the ceiling. A smoke alarm in another room beeping, and the sound transmitting through the ceiling. Hmm…

I went upstairs to the guest room just in time to hear that alarm beep. It’s right off the main part of the hallway, and it really sounded like the sound was coming from the hole in the ceiling in the hallway. Luckily, wild goose chase averted.

I find it rather odd that these sorts of things just fall on every individual homeowner to figure out. Find out your smoke alarms are unusable unless you spend $1,000 on an exterior vent, which then requires you to gather signatures and submit the project with a sketch to your HOA board? Have some weird plumbing or electrical issue that nobody can fix? Just the way it is.

I can see some folks nodding and saying, “Yes, that’s adulthood,” or whatever. But I guess it seems like there’s more friction in all this than there has to be. Or less good information than there should be. Growing up in a relatively new, well-built home where things basically worked and there was enough money to fix big issues is one of those things you don’t realize was not necessarily the default until you’re the one in charge.

Luckily, with two years down, we’ve had no actual problems in this house, and even these little “adventures” are a kind of fun diversion. I’m thankful for that.

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We’re having the Popeyes Cajun turkey again this year—it comes frozen and fully cooked and this year it was $60. It’s a little pricey when the basic frozen turkey at the supermarket is around 30 cents a pound. But I’ve seen the Popeyes turkey described as “turkey for people who don’t like turkey,” and, yes. We’ve never loved turkey, or have never figured out how to cook it, so $60 is fine to have a tasty and low-maintenance centerpiece.

That frees up more time for nicer side dishes. The stuffing gets cranberries, fried sausage crumbles, and chopped chestnuts. Look at these wonderful chestnuts that separate from the membrane perfectly, from a farmers’ market in Staunton, Virginia:

I make the stuffing with real chicken broth from the bones I keep after deboning thighs. The sweet potatoes I roast until they’re completely soft, then whip with butter, cream, a splash of bourbon, and top with some chestnuts too. They’re so much more flavorful roasted than boiled. I’m also making my grandma’s old recipe that we call “rice stuffing”—parboiled rice mixed with chicken stock, sizzled ground beef, and sauteed onions, mushrooms, and celery. Asparagus for the big night, brussels sprouts to accompany the leftovers on Friday.

I’ve upped the Thanksgiving dinner game a bit because after the wonderful Italian antipasto we always for lunch on holidays, the big dinner is kind of underwhelming. This is hard to beat with turkey and vegetables:

So those little extra bits of effort make it shine. I think of it as the extra ten percent of work that makes the first 90 percent worth it.

What are your favorite Thanksgiving foods/recipes? Happy Thanksgiving!

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Related Reading:

Give Thanks To The Lord, For He Is Good

What’s Cooking?

The Thanksgiving Table and the Settlement Table

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