DR JoseSPiano, I was wondering - since you come from a family of caterers, does that up the stakes? I mean, does that provide extra pressure for each and every offering on the Thanksgiving table to be extra fabulous? Or does it tend to go the other way: a comfortable ease with all of the many preparations?
Well, since both my parents basically worked more in "institutional food service", the stakes were never that high to begin with.
My mom worked as a consulting dietitian for years for both hospitals and nursing homes, as well as a few years working for Sysco. My dad was a "culinary engineer" in the Coast Guard, and his last billet was at the mess cook for the Secretary of Transportation - at that time is was Libby Dole. After he retired from the USCG, he stayed on a civilian at the Secretary's mess, and then moved over to the HHS (first under Donna Shalala). When it came to time to cook meals at home, it was more a matter of making sure that they had cooked enough food to feed four hungry and growing boys. My mom would also audition certain new food-service products on us from time to time - we had the McRib long before it was called the McRib. -Oh, and a plethora of TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein) products... blech! But we did love the monthly visits from the Tasty-Kake rep - he would bring a literal car-trunk-load full of goodies directly from the factory for us.
My Dad did take some classes at the CIA (Culinary Institute of America), but those were mainly to increase his knowledge of the basics - and to extend his repertory beyond the typical mess-hall fare. -As well as to get used to cooking in something larger than a ship's mess.
Once my parents "learned" that we were able to cook for ourselves, they would usually just stock the freezer with a lot of frozen meals. Sometimes the frozen dinners came in handy, but after watching hours(!) of cooking shows on PBS each Saturday morning, I started cooking some things that were not in my parents' repertory - which consisted mainly of Filipino food, and some very "meat and potatoes" preparations. In any case... Where was I? Ah, yes... (ah, a "Liaisons" reference...)
Thanksgiving - and Christmas meals - were never fancy at the Simbulan household. As long as the Turkey wasn't dry, and there was a fresh cooker filled with rice, that was a good Thanksgiving meal. And it still is. -Although, there was the one year when my mom "discovered" cilantro, and she managed to find a reason to incorporate it into everything, including a relish made with pickle relish and cilantro...
Thankfully, she grew out of that phase.
