Eat, Drink, Man, Car.

At the comfortable age of self-dependent, and having split parental units, holidays for my brother and I are becoming quite a little two man road trip.

With Thanksgiving and a new car, this year's fattest 48 hour holiday consisted of a spontaneous sunday/monday jaunt across southern ontario visiting as much family as possible between Kingston, Peterborough and Whitby. The funny thing about the modern 20 something born in a family of multiple households is that holiday's return the young men of a family pack to nothing more than a primal creature on food hunts across the urban desert. Mine and my brothers weekend consisted of a multiple hour long drives, a few hour long visits, which was all focused around the consumption of large piles of food, which have been commonly dubbed as Thanksgiving meals.

Now I'm not one to judge, but my definition of meal, consists of an appetizer perhaps, glass of wine, then a main course, maybe a salad, some desert, and a coffee or aperatif after dinner. Now thats a MEAL, you know a big shake your fist, cry meal in the air kinda dinner. Thanksgiving takes this meal concept to a whole new world. To me, one does not sit down for a thanksgiving dinner, one sits down for a thanksgiving PILE. A crafty experiment in plate dimension where honorary nods and approvals are shown between men at the table who have created the most efficient pile.

By efficient I do not mean contains all the necessary food groups for a balanced diet. Thanksgiving efficient means, the pile creator has discovered an ability to merge stuffing and potato to make room for the unexpected turnip puff, that if put as a frame around the corn will act as a sauce laddle of sorts, collecting the desired flavour drippings to be applied properly to any bite not featuring adequate gravy allocation yet, the barrier has acted as a magnificient shield protecting the cranberries, pickles, and dinner roll from any soggyness that would otherwise result in a uncontrolled sauce positioning over the turkey and ham and occasional sweedish meatball.

Do not get me wrong, I love a giant gorge as much as the next guy, and the downer like drug that is produced from turkey consumption on my psyche is worth the experiment on paralleling exhaustion and consumption alone. I just think its hilarious, that as a bi-product of my welcomed responsibility to be familiar and present entity at family reunions, the result is my stomach ballooning to 9 times its appropriate (okay well as close to appropriate as it gets) size.

I think theres something more to the notion of a holiday. Something more organic and human-natural to having 3 mass perfectly spaced out harvest like consumption days a year. Part of me thinks that humanity's relationship with the earth is that for three seasons of the year we must engage in a feast that acts like a organic bonding ritual where its important that humans see how much they can eat in one sitting to connect them with the plants, animals, and liquids of ole mother earth.

Personally, my harvest's are at Thanksgiving, arguably the calendar date marking the beginning of fall, Christmas, the peak of winter, and Easter, the end of spring. Summer is the off season 'cause no one needs to feel that full in summer, its the work out season, and we cant exactly put gorging on cheetos and peanut butter at 3am on the same scale, though it is equally organic if ya know what i mean.

What the hell are trees man, what the hell are trees. I think I'm still goofed up on turkey.

posted by mr. tomas ubik @ Tuesday, October 11, 2005