Most of us in this country have faced a dilemma at one time or another regarding Thanksgiving.  Typical challenges are “whose house should we go to?”, “which family or in-laws should we favor (or worse — offend)?”, “how do we survive the horrors of intercity travel during the holiday week?”, and “do we have to eat Turkey?”

With a son in Arizona and a daughter and family nearby in Massachusetts, the prospects of everyone together were non-existent.  So this year we chose to have a private dinner for the two of us, and I made a lobster pasta special dinner.  Barbara cooked a small turkey early in the week to share with a friend, so she could satisfy her own craving for turkey-stuffing-cranberry sauce sandwiches, so she was all ready for my creation.  Needless to say, none of this fit our normal vegetarian or vegan tendencies.

I reserved two lobsters with our friend, Chris, my fish supplier of 31 years.  The major effort was preparing the lobster sauce, which is made from further cooking the lobster shells after extracting the meat, along with vegetables, herbs, wine, and cognac.  It’s about a three-hour labor of love, but worth it.

Spaghetti with Lobster Sauce

The next day I ate the leftovers and sucked up the sauce with a marvelous 2010 Leon Barral wine from France.

It can be done.  Sometimes, small rebellion is fun.