I made my first ever Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. It came out pretty well, given it was all planned in the eleventh hour. On Tuesday during work, S and I were texting about what we should do for the holiday. We didn't have any firm plans. Our friends informally invited us over, but they live on the other side of the city, and with nap schedules and all that, it sounded like too much of a hassle. (Yes, that's where we are at right now: We didn't go to our friends' house because they live in a different section of the city. They are still in D.C., but they live in the southeast quadrant, and we just can't be bothered to leave the northwest.) So we decided to just stay home, and then I had a brilliantly bold idea: I could cook Thanksgiving dinner. I didn't really know how to do this, but it couldn't be that hard -- right?
Turns out, that is in fact right. If you were expecting a Mr. Mom-style comedy of errors, in which I try to stuff the turkey with a loaf of bread and then cook it in the toaster, you are out of luck (and you should update your movie collection). I made a perfectly acceptable, decent-tasting turkey dinner. I overcooked the Turkey a tad bit because I was so scared of undercooking it and killing my family with salmonella. But I eat my turkey mixed with potatoes and stuffing and dosed in gravy anyway, so I hardly notice if it's a tad bit dry. And in my defense, I didn't have a meat thermometer. They were all out of proper meat thermometers at the supermarket, so I bought a soup thermometer and tried to sorta jabbed it in to a hole I cut with a knife. I think it actually worked, but I didn't completely trust the reading, so even though it said it was done, I left it in for an extra 15 minutes, which I think dried it out a little bit. But, like I said, no biggie. S liked it; Lil' S1 "liked" it (i.e., he choked down a piece we made him eat before he could watch iPad); Lil' S2 didn't really like it, but turkey is one of the few foods he doesn't like in general -- he ate everything else I made. I bought the smallest turkey I could find, and I'm still going to get five meals out of it and then likely throw some of it away.
The rest of the courses were fine as well. The mashed potatoes were lumpy because I mashed them with a wooden spoon (in addition to a meat thermometer, we apparently could use a potato masher). But I actually prefer my potatoes lumpy, so that's fine with me. Then I also made some green beans (gotta have something green), some stuffing, some bread rolls, and of course a pot of gravy. Good eatin'!
If I do this again next year, I'm going to try to snazz it up a bit. I went very conservative, because it was my first time, and because I bought everything in one supermarket trip two days before Thanksgiving. Some people like it simple, and I do too, but all things equal, I prefer it not simple. I'm the food asshole who ruins it for everybody. I'm the reason if you order a hamburger in D.C. it might come topped with saffron orange aioli, or if you get coleslaw it might have dried cranberries in it, or a club sandwich might come on focaccia bread. I'm the guy who loves all that fancy shit. So next year, I might try to do it up. We shall see.
As for the ritual of Thanksgiving, Lil' S1 went around the table and asked us all what we are thankfully for -- it was cute; he must have learned it at school -- but I'm not feeling too thankful this year. Yeah, sure, I have my family and my health and all that, but I would still have that if we didn't elect a crazy man to be our next president. A bunch of my friends on Facebook put up posts giving thanks to God, and, in light of our recent election, I was so tempted to reply with something snarky (they're all Trump haters), but I bit my tongue (held my fingers?). I hate arguing on Facebook, and I hate arguing about religion, so I probably made the right choice in not arguing on Facebook about religion.
Bill Maher said something I found funny (because it's true) on his last show about religion [paraphrase]: "It's hard to have a rational discussion about religion, because it's such bullshit." I'm nicer and less vocal about religion than Maher -- mostly because I'm not a comedian who makes a very nice living, in part, off of ridiculing religion -- but I agree with his broad assessment of it. It's all such nonsense. It's fairy tales. I've noticed I've become a much more staunch atheist as I've gotten older. This doesn't mean I've become more closed-minded or less accepting of people who think differently -- it's the exact opposite, in fact (live and let live is my motto). What it means is that, on a personal level, I don't hedge my bets with religion anymore. I admittedly have zero faith.
I was never a formally religious person, but when I was younger, I still believed in God. I still had a fear of God. I thought that if I disrespected him, even in my own head -- thought he didn't exist or thought his rules were bullshit -- that somehow he would punish me for it later. I also used to pray to God frequently, and believed that it worked in some sort of long-term cosmic way. Even though I didn't go to church or worship, I thought that I had a personal "understanding" with God, like you do with that old friend you haven't seen in a decade: You do your thing, and I'll do mine, but you know I love you, and if the chips are down, I always got your back. God and I were tight. He was just alright with me.
But something changed. At some point I realized that I hadn't checked in with God in a very long time, and that my life was absolutely no different. I realized nothing bad happens to you if you don't believe in God, and good things don't happen to you if do. I realized that my reasons for believing in God all required a presumption of God to begin with. It was circular logic. And once I stepped outside the circle, I realized how silly it all really was.
After all, there have been thousands of "circles" that people have been caught in throughout history; there have been thousands of gods and religions we all dismiss as absurd now -- sun gods, harvest gods, rain gods (oh wait), war gods, etc. -- but now we are supposed to believe that we've finally figured it out? It just so happens that we are living at a moment in human in history in which we've discovered the one real god and the one true religion? Yeah, I'm not buying it. Look, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Christianity or Judaism or Islam or Hinduism or Taoism or Pastafariansim really is the one true religion. Maybe. We shall see -- or we won't. My money is one the latter.
OK, I think I'll wrap it up here. S took the kids out for a little while, but they are due back soon, and I'm getting hungry. I'm not sure what I'll have for lunch -- probably turkey.
Until next time...
Turns out, that is in fact right. If you were expecting a Mr. Mom-style comedy of errors, in which I try to stuff the turkey with a loaf of bread and then cook it in the toaster, you are out of luck (and you should update your movie collection). I made a perfectly acceptable, decent-tasting turkey dinner. I overcooked the Turkey a tad bit because I was so scared of undercooking it and killing my family with salmonella. But I eat my turkey mixed with potatoes and stuffing and dosed in gravy anyway, so I hardly notice if it's a tad bit dry. And in my defense, I didn't have a meat thermometer. They were all out of proper meat thermometers at the supermarket, so I bought a soup thermometer and tried to sorta jabbed it in to a hole I cut with a knife. I think it actually worked, but I didn't completely trust the reading, so even though it said it was done, I left it in for an extra 15 minutes, which I think dried it out a little bit. But, like I said, no biggie. S liked it; Lil' S1 "liked" it (i.e., he choked down a piece we made him eat before he could watch iPad); Lil' S2 didn't really like it, but turkey is one of the few foods he doesn't like in general -- he ate everything else I made. I bought the smallest turkey I could find, and I'm still going to get five meals out of it and then likely throw some of it away.
The rest of the courses were fine as well. The mashed potatoes were lumpy because I mashed them with a wooden spoon (in addition to a meat thermometer, we apparently could use a potato masher). But I actually prefer my potatoes lumpy, so that's fine with me. Then I also made some green beans (gotta have something green), some stuffing, some bread rolls, and of course a pot of gravy. Good eatin'!
If I do this again next year, I'm going to try to snazz it up a bit. I went very conservative, because it was my first time, and because I bought everything in one supermarket trip two days before Thanksgiving. Some people like it simple, and I do too, but all things equal, I prefer it not simple. I'm the food asshole who ruins it for everybody. I'm the reason if you order a hamburger in D.C. it might come topped with saffron orange aioli, or if you get coleslaw it might have dried cranberries in it, or a club sandwich might come on focaccia bread. I'm the guy who loves all that fancy shit. So next year, I might try to do it up. We shall see.
As for the ritual of Thanksgiving, Lil' S1 went around the table and asked us all what we are thankfully for -- it was cute; he must have learned it at school -- but I'm not feeling too thankful this year. Yeah, sure, I have my family and my health and all that, but I would still have that if we didn't elect a crazy man to be our next president. A bunch of my friends on Facebook put up posts giving thanks to God, and, in light of our recent election, I was so tempted to reply with something snarky (they're all Trump haters), but I bit my tongue (held my fingers?). I hate arguing on Facebook, and I hate arguing about religion, so I probably made the right choice in not arguing on Facebook about religion.
Bill Maher said something I found funny (because it's true) on his last show about religion [paraphrase]: "It's hard to have a rational discussion about religion, because it's such bullshit." I'm nicer and less vocal about religion than Maher -- mostly because I'm not a comedian who makes a very nice living, in part, off of ridiculing religion -- but I agree with his broad assessment of it. It's all such nonsense. It's fairy tales. I've noticed I've become a much more staunch atheist as I've gotten older. This doesn't mean I've become more closed-minded or less accepting of people who think differently -- it's the exact opposite, in fact (live and let live is my motto). What it means is that, on a personal level, I don't hedge my bets with religion anymore. I admittedly have zero faith.
I was never a formally religious person, but when I was younger, I still believed in God. I still had a fear of God. I thought that if I disrespected him, even in my own head -- thought he didn't exist or thought his rules were bullshit -- that somehow he would punish me for it later. I also used to pray to God frequently, and believed that it worked in some sort of long-term cosmic way. Even though I didn't go to church or worship, I thought that I had a personal "understanding" with God, like you do with that old friend you haven't seen in a decade: You do your thing, and I'll do mine, but you know I love you, and if the chips are down, I always got your back. God and I were tight. He was just alright with me.
But something changed. At some point I realized that I hadn't checked in with God in a very long time, and that my life was absolutely no different. I realized nothing bad happens to you if you don't believe in God, and good things don't happen to you if do. I realized that my reasons for believing in God all required a presumption of God to begin with. It was circular logic. And once I stepped outside the circle, I realized how silly it all really was.
After all, there have been thousands of "circles" that people have been caught in throughout history; there have been thousands of gods and religions we all dismiss as absurd now -- sun gods, harvest gods, rain gods (oh wait), war gods, etc. -- but now we are supposed to believe that we've finally figured it out? It just so happens that we are living at a moment in human in history in which we've discovered the one real god and the one true religion? Yeah, I'm not buying it. Look, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Christianity or Judaism or Islam or Hinduism or Taoism or Pastafariansim really is the one true religion. Maybe. We shall see -- or we won't. My money is one the latter.
OK, I think I'll wrap it up here. S took the kids out for a little while, but they are due back soon, and I'm getting hungry. I'm not sure what I'll have for lunch -- probably turkey.
Until next time...
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ReplyDeleteI've never talked with God or really believed, but always identified as agnostic rather than atheist and I'm with you on leaning more towards atheism the older and, presumably, wiser I become. When I read the source texts of the major Western and Eastern religions in college it became clear to me it's unlikely there is one "true" religion. I also read some of Gandhi's writings in which he concluded there is Truth in ALL religions and the key is to look at their commonalities rather than their differences because basically they all have at their core the Golden Rule and the last 6 commandments. That makes sense to me! And what I've realized as I age is not that my life is better or worse with or without God, but that the universe is no less miraculous when you turn to science to explain things; in fact, arguably, it is more so because it all "just happens" with no guiding hand. Even without God I have a deep and abiding faith--faith that people are mostly well meaning, that we are relatively early on in our moral evolution and understanding of our universe, and things are, overall, getting better for us. And, like you, despite being an atheist I am religiously tolerant because I support people's right to worship as they want as long as they aren't trampling on anybody's else's rights in doing so. That being said, whenever the topic of religion comes up I invariably think to myself "this bullshit? Still?"
ReplyDeleteInteresting note: I read there may be a "religion" gene which is why some are more inclined to believe than others and it's possible we could actually evolve beyond religion. (Perhaps we are primally aware of this and there is a fear religion could be bred into extinction so most religions encourage you to have as many kids as possible.)
Another interesting note: one study found kids raised without religion were not only as morally and ethically inclined as kids raised with, but were even more so. The theory is without religion children are taught to do the right thing because it's the right thing, not because they will be punished if they do the wrong thing so rather than being motivated by fear, non-religious children are motivated by their own moral compasses.
That is interesting about the religion gene. I hadn't heard of that.
DeleteGandhi's philosophy make sense to me too, but the catch is that the idea that there is no one true religion explicitly violates the central tenet of many (most? all?) religions.
I know, it's tragic so many get caught up in defending the mythology and practice of their religion when the moral tenets are all basically the same. What's really important? That you pray 5 times a day or cover your hair or take communion or that you don't lie, cheat, steal, murder, and rape? Too many can't see the forest for the trees.
Delete