Taigan Fetch Magazine by Taigan

In December 2001, less than two months after 9/11, The New York Times Magazine asked me to write a holiday food column. I’m pretty sure my editors thought they were going to get instructions for a somber celebration that befitted the mood of the times. What they got was a very different kind of how-to guide—how to go all out and show the bastards that they can’t keep us down.

In the piece, I offered up my recipe for milk punch made with brandy and bourbon, as well as with my friend Keith’s excellent recipe for homemade cheese straws. I described in great detail the Christmas Eve feast my friend M.T. and I intended to cook for our families, which included blini with caviar and chateaubriand with black truffle sauce. I mentioned that in reaction to the new sobriety, I planned on sashaying around in my silver lame Manolo mules with the chinchilla trim every chance I got—and I did (along with the festive green felt antlers that were part of my standard present-delivering attire until the dog ate them last year).

After Katrina devastated New Orleans, the Times asked me to do another holiday column, and, again, I was determined to show the flag. I advocated lots of rich New Orleans-centric dishes (gumbo, crabmeat ravigote, shrimp remoulade, oysters Rockefeller, oyster dressing, ambrosia) accompanied by more of the highly successful milk punch and plenty of champagne cocktails. Our house, which had been under renovation before the storm, was still largely unfinished, but we managed to move in both a grand piano and a dining room table seating 24, which we filled at both Thanksgiving and Christmas. In between, I threw so many parties my friend Elizabeth gave me a guest towel reading, “A Fool and Her Money Can Throw a Hell of a Party.”

Yes, she certainly can. But it’s not even about the money. My point is that in times of duress, it’s especially important to don the right attitude. Whether you are confronting the evils of Al Quaeda, an uncertain economy, or just an unpleasant relative, I have found that props (sexy shoes, ridiculous headgear, lots of greenery and lavish decorations) accompanied by good food and drink go a long way. Even the long-suffering pilgrims had a swell time at Thanksgiving.

In fact, that first celebration at Plymouth bore little relation to the rather ascetic Thanksgiving observances that marked the rest of the 17th century. Relieved to be still standing, the pilgrims and their Indian saviors had a full-blown three-day harvest festival rather like ours, complete with hunting and games and lots of food, including venison, lobster, clams, winter squash, watercress, and corn. It turns out that there’s no documentation of turkey being on the menu, just wild geese and ducks, but I intend to have one, a tasty heritage breed (as opposed to those bland industrially raised Broad-Breasted Whites from Butterball, etc) that I’ll order from D’Artagnan or Dean & DeLuca or Local Harvest.

In homage to the menu of our intrepid ancestors, I’ll start with grilled oysters and venison sausage accompanied by a watercress salad, followed by a lobster pan roast or perhaps mini lobster or crab cakes. After the turkey and maybe a butternut squash gratin and/or a corn pudding, we’ll celebrate my own harvest of Meyer lemons from the back yard with the perfect lemon tart from Patricia Wells At Home in Provence along with a pecan pie made with pecans from my friend Bobby Harling’s plantation.

I haven’t gotten around to my Christmas menu yet, but I’m on the lookout for a stole or something equally extravagant to match my chinchilla mules. And I’ve already located a new set of antlers. Even if it means looking like a fool, I think it’s more important than ever to enter into the spirit of the season.

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