Starch, anyone?

Nutritionists say starchy foods should make up about a third of a healthy human diet that should include carbohydrates (aka starch), protein, fat, vitamins, minerals, fiber and water.

I'm pretty sure my family, several generation back, stopped listening after carbohydrates. They definitely heard the "fat" portion and took it to mean fat wa essential to make all the other stuff palatable.

Evidence? A plate from Thanksgiving past ➨
Here you have your basics of a decent holiday meal:

• Noodles on a base of mashed potatoes
• Macaroni and cheese
• Corn
• Not pictures but surely within reach is one of Donna's home-made, buttery rolls (soft butter if Jason Bradbury is in the house.)

You really only need two color schemes to have a fabulous Bickel holiday meal: white and yellow.

There will be other colors available, but they're not the stuff people dream of and fight over:

• Orange for the sweet potatoes with or without marshmallows depending on who's hosting but surely with butter
• Green for the green beans bathed in either cream of something soup or swimming in a bacon-grease shimmer and featuring great hunks of iron-skillet fried bacon from a pig that may have spent the better part of a year with you.
• Pink because that pig had more to give and you must have both ham AND turkey available
• Brown for the turkey, which could be roasted, grilled or deep-fried.
• Beige for the gravy that goes with the turkey but not the white potatoes because they get the full-fat chicken-stock broth that makes another kind of gravy.
• Camouflage which is the only color I can ascribe to the dressing, which may or may not include oysters but started out with bread, butter and a bunch of herbs.

We got to host Thanksgiving this year and all of the above mentioned items were there. Our Jasheway friends brought a mac-and-cheese that was every bit a Bickel production. My guess is there were two pounds of cheese for every box of pasta and probably the same portion of butter. Kirstin attended a family wedding with me once, so I think she must have gotten infected then.

Alison's friend Jason Hickman (not to be confused with my nephew, Jason, Donna's cossetted baby boy for whom she ensures there's softened butter for the rolls. Jaime, Donna's eldest daughter and her daughters claim they get cold, hard butter if Jason isn't around...) made the pies. Including home-made crust.

One pecan and two pumpkin. We had a bit of an issue with the pecan pie but it did get consumed first. Ali's chocolate-chip pumpkin cookies were also a big hit.

Jeff deep fried four turkey breasts after brining two of them. Jim Bradbury kept watch over the flames from the chimenea and made sure Jeff didn't burn anything down with the fryer.

My main job, per usual, was sous cheffing and clean up. It's just safer for everyone. I peeled 30 carrots, six sweet potatoes, 10 pounds of white potatoes and halved about a million brussel sprouts. Two pounds of bacon went into the weekend, but Ali and Jason ate half of that. The rest was for green beans and a shrimp appetizer.

It all seemed to go fairly well. We moved the couches and added tables so everyone could be together, and that provided ample room for euchre with  dessert.

In my least hospitable act, Jim and I handily beat our guests, Joyce Jasheway and Jason. To make up for it, I gave Joyce a recipe and fed and housed Jason and then promptly abused him by having him help with Thanksgiving prep soon to be followed with Christmas decorating.

It was a really great day despite Rachael (IU Hoosier freshman) making the most of the bitter in-state rivalry with Alison (Purdue Boilermaker freshman) and the usual claims of cheating at euchre. 

Like pie tops off a great meal, our holiday finished with a visit from Eric, Tracy and Elizabeth.

Next up is Christmas. Ali got up early and is visiting some high school friends. But Jason is now awake, and he made the mistake of saying that at home in California, his day-after-Thanksgiving job is to decorate outside. So, he and I can get to work while we wait on Ali to come back and tackle the tree. I really thought he'd still be asleep, so this is like an extra bonus.

Jason is my new best friend. He and I will be in the shed soon figuring out the inventory and where lights should go. He's tall! I love him. I would totally soften the butter for him.

Jeff started out the day at 4:15 a.m. at a beer share/Bourbon County beer shopping so I expect he'll be down for the count and out of my decorating way any time now. Because I'm an excellent wife, I tried to get him to nap in our bedroom. (It's more comfortable there. Plus, he won't hear what I'm planning next and try to interfere...) From the looks of thing to my left, I've lost that battle.

It's not going to last for him, poor thing. Because part of the tradition of decorating the tree involves cracking out the House of Merle Christmas CDs. I know Auntie Jen will be doing the same, so we'll decorate together even though we're apart.

And later, I'll review the starch inventory. We sent a lot away with hungry college students, but there's plenty of white and yellow food to heat up. We'll be fully starched before our traditional Friendsgiving with Team Jackson tonight.

It truly is the best time of the year.