Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. We are delighted to have younger son Lev home, but we dodged a culinary bullet. We nearly had to dine on Russell’s famous Thanksgiving fried liver.
The trouble was, I was late in getting started cooking. I’d worked on a short story, gone to the gym to work out, and strolled to the store to get the butter we’d forgotten. Plenty of time, methinks.
We’d decided to skip turkey this year, opting for a huge pork shoulder. But when we got it out of the fridge and unwrapped it, the carcass smelled like roadkill. I checked the sell-by date: Oh. This past Monday.
“We have liver,” said Nonna, my Russian wife. “I like your fried liver.”
“Not for Thanksgiving! We can’t eat liver. It’s un-American.”
She checked the freezer. “There’s pelmeni.”
“No! We’re treasonous enough not eating turkey. We can’t possibly eat pelmeni. Or liver. They’ll strip us of our citizenship.”
“I’ll never understand these Thanksgiving traditions of yours. What does it matter what we eat?”
“God is watching.”
I dumpstered the dead hog flesh, dashed to the store (by car this time), and got another ample pork shoulder. After speeding home, I hastily Grokked how long I should cook a six-pound pork shoulder, and…. What!? Seven hours!?
By now it was one o’clock. And I had to pick Lev up at the Greyhound station in 50 minutes.
Oh, well. Thanksgiving dinner at 8 PM. We doused the hog meat in olive oil and our very delicious mix of herbs and spices and stuck it in the oven.
When I picked up Lev, I broke the bad news. “Looks like we’re going to have to cook liver if you’re hungry. The pork shoulder won’t be ready until 8.”
“I’m down with that,” he said. “I like liver.”
How long, O Lord, must I dwell among the Philistines?
Luckily, as it turned out, the AI lied. Three hours was enough to cook us a crispy-crusted, tender, delicious heap of pork. And the liver can wait for another day.
The Elephant Box 