Jeff Ballweg

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of joining my family for Thanksgiving, you know that we’re a family of noisy, rowdy people. Each year we host the aunts, uncles and all the kids from both sides of my parent’s families, and as a world-wise family hosting a distinctly American holiday, we toss in a half dozen teenage exchange students. Together we represented Denmark, Saudi Arabia, America, (real and otherwise) plus China and Japan. In all we had 25 (or 26) people for Thanksgiving dinner at the house, including something like 9 teenagers, five of them dudes. Mom cooked a gigantic 24 pound turkey, and there were so many different dishes I had to doublestack a few just to get them on the plate. Our diverse group provided the experience of a few dishes that I hadn’t ever tried (or heard of) before. Of course we had the cranberries, potatoes, turkey, ham – and grandma’s famous get-it-now-or-get-none cabbage salad, but we also had some Dolmas (?) which was rice wrapped in grape leaves in olive oil. It was all great, and anyone would say that it was far more than even a family of our size could possibly consume in a single day. Of course, your mistake would be that there were something like 6 teenage guys in the house, and by the time they left there wasn’t a tiny piece of turkey left, and I was regretting feeding a few bits to the dog.

Overall it was a great thanksgiving. We had a giant snowball fight, talked a little politics, played pool, drank wine, ate pumpkin pie and did a lot of what my dad calls “visiting.”  Tomorrow I go to Melrose to see if Julie’s family saved me anything good, but for now I think I’ll let the tryptophan take hold.