My Turn: Thanksgiving thrives on differences

Thanksgiving is one day when Americans can all come together for a single purpose — to practice gratitude. Unfortunately, Thanksgiving also elicits the disagreeable tendency among Americans to disagree with one another. White meat or dark meat? Canned or fresh cranberries? Army vs. Navy? Global warming or just a couple of warm summers? Red state or blue?

I first tasted my mother-in-law’s creamed onions during a Thanksgiving Day meal nearly 40 years ago. That was the day I broke with my birth family’s Mediterranean-inflected Thanksgiving table and faithfully committed myself to her German table.

Creamed onions begin with a shopping trip for fresh pearl onions. Do not assign this critical first step to an in-store shopper, who is likely to select inconsistent sizes. As I grow older, my list of things that really matter grows ever shorter. I no longer possess sufficient time or energy for things that once made the list. However, it still matters that frozen pearl onions have no place in the Thanksgiving kitchen; it is a matter of considerable sadness for me to even consider the possibility.

Although my wife’s grandmother took the extra step of peeling the onions without first parboiling them, I consider parboiling a perfectly acceptable shortcut. And if there is an afterlife, I hope not to be judged too harshly.

The next step is to create a white sauce, by combining a stick of butter with flour, cream, salt and pepper, which my mother-in-law called a roux. Somehow this French word insinuated itself into their German American house. Combine the roux with the steaming onions and serve.

My wife’s family celebrated Thanksgiving twice, as two households received free turkeys from ShopRite. Both meals would be eaten at my mother-in-law’s house, with the first one prepared by my brother-in-law Bill and sister-in-law Gloria. Had I known this earlier, I would have married sooner.

As a boy, I would grow anxious as Thanksgiving approached. Dani Rojas, a character on the Apple TV+ hit “Ted Lasso,” declares “Football is life!” But for me, eating is life! And predictably, I would get a nervous stomach just before the magical Thursday. I would be struck with a bit of performance anxiety, fearing I would be off my mark during the greatest of eating holidays, unable to fully enjoy the feast.

I suppose this is the reason I would enjoy our first Thanksgiving so much. It was of little consequence if I was off my game because of a nervous stomach. The pressure was off because second Thanksgiving was only weeks away.

This past Thanksgiving, we celebrated the holiday in North Carolina with our daughter Christina’s new family, the fabulous Coopers. Their Thanksgiving Day table included a Southern dish — sweet potato casserole with Cool Whip.

My gastronomic horizon has again been widened, and I am thankful for the personal growth.