Log In


Reset Password
News Education Local News Nation & World New Mexico

Community Turkey Day meal goes off with aplomb

Last-minute shoppers not always culinary experts

All day Thanksgiving, Durango was the site of heroic culinary struggles and no small amount of gender trouble.

At 9:30 a.m., Bread was a madhouse. Men and teenagers – clearly deputized by their downtrodden, kitchen-bound parents – formed a long line for pies. On finally reaching the register, many fathers impulsively partook in unsanctioned croissant consumption, said cashier Tim Krug.

From 8 a.m. through noon, south and north City Market were overrun with last minute shoppers.

Some were tiger shoppers – men and women who roamed the aisles seizing parsley, cinnamon and pancetta with authority.

But many shoppers were more reminiscent of limping gazelles: weak, separated from their pack leader and barely surviving in a hostile environment.

One teenager, in the throes of crisis after losing his iPhone’s battery charge – meaning he’d lost text contact with his mother – desperately asked a reporter whether the vegetable he was holding was, in fact, garlic or an imposter root. (It was an onion.)

Indeed, while feminism has wrought women all manner of opportunities in work and education across the country, there’s clearly more work to be done when it comes to Thanksgiving in Durango.

In the fruit section of north City Market, one burly looking father – haggard in his search for cloves – looked like he was starting to cry when he burst out cursing. Another man rushed forward to comfort him.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You haven’t lost the shopping list. That’s all that matters.”

Alan Batiste’s phone repeatedly rang while he stood clueless in the produce section.

“It’s my wife,” he said. “She knows I always forget one thing. We’re just responsible for taking sweet potatoes over to her mom’s house. But there’s a lot of ingredients to sweet potatoes!”

Batiste gamely acknowledged that shopping would be his final contribution to the Thanksgiving meal.

“No. I’m not going to cook. I’m going to watch football and do homework. So I really can’t complain,” he said.

He said men were trying: “Before, we were all huddling in the nutmeg section, trying to figure out the spices. Everyone was like, ‘Good luck’ to each other.”

Anne Zalbowitz agreed that, in terms of culinary know-how, one had the overwhelming sense that many of the people roaming City Market weren’t the A-Team.

“It’s all men who got sent out of the house,” she said, laughing.

Zalbowitz’s cart, which was expertly loaded with goat cheese and her son, Jyles, said her husband was doing more than his fair share of the cooking.

“And his mother is an amazing chef,” she said.

But she said Thanksgiving meals are inherently intimidating.

“You hear horror stories. Turkeys cooked in bags exploding in ovens. That happened to my brother,” she said.

At south City Market, Fort Lewis College student Sammy Zah said though Thanksgiving can be a highfalutin epicurean ordeal, she didn’t rue the fact that she wasn’t making roux.

“I’m going the cheapo route,” she said, pointing out that she wouldn’t have to cook her ham.

She wasn’t judgmental about the relatively fumbling nature of many men’s participation in the Thanksgiving meal.

“It could be a cultural thing. My family is Navajo, so my dad didn’t really play a role. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, as long as you have a choice,” she said.

In liquor buying, at least, there seems to be gender equality. At Wagon Wheel Liquors, Eric Wiare and Nick Moses said families were coming in together to buy alcohol.

While Durango families valiantly strove to pull off the ever-demanding, ever-difficult Thanksgiving meal, the people behind the Community Thanksgiving Dinner once again made cooking for 1,000 look easy.

A paragon of gender equanimity – 260 men and women of every age alike volunteered – the feast served plate after plate of beautifully prepared turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, yams, green beans, bread, rolls, cranberries, fruit and vegetables on long, perfectly set tables.

Marté Smith, 24, and Josh DeMoss, 23, said the meal was delicious.

Smith particularly praised the turkey, and both said they were certain to get seconds.

“My dog likes it, too,” Smith said, as his border collie Coda sniffed his plate hopefully.

DeMoss said the food, while wonderful, wasn’t what he most appreciated about the dinner.

“When you have no family around, you can come here, and you don’t have to be alone,” he said.

The feeling of the dinner was, as usual, vibrant, human – even giddy.

One of the women greeting people at the front door couldn’t stop saying, “this is the best thing this town does all year.”

Community dinner veteran Gordon Clouser, who again served as this year’s volunteer coordinator, said the volunteers behind the community dinner, while wonderful, are still mere mortals, and in past years, the feat of feeding thousands hadn’t gone without missteps.

“One year, some of the turkeys were undercooked,” he said. “But now they’re all cooked in commercial kitchens, so they’re perfect.”

Chairwoman Tonya Wales said thanks to the talents, resources and sheer number of organizations volunteering with the dinner, cooking wasn’t the hard part. “It’s organizing all the people and dishes to show up at the right place at the right time,” she said.

Kass Kassidy, who directed all the cooking, said this year, the kitchen had run “as smoothly as can be.”

“When you have seven restaurants, eight churches and hundreds of people, it’s a lot to coordinate, but all the pieces fit together.”

Asked how he could concoct a Thanksgiving meal for thousands without breaking a sweat while buying the necessary groceries could apparently slay so many of his fellow men, Kassidy laughed.

“If you just follow the recipe, you never fail. The problem is that most men don’t know how to do that. They can’t even read the directions they need.”

cmcallister@durangoherald.com



Reader Comments