Just be thankful if the meal doesn’t kill you

Thanksgiving is getting to be a responsibility-heavy holiday for me, the chef for our ever-expanding family. Catering to everyone’s palate is challenge enough, but now I am conflicted about what I might serve that could kill us.

For starters, I can never remember what temperature for how many pounds of gobble. I refer to the booklet that accompanies my bird, complete with warnings about bacteria and food poisoning. There are so many stuffing safety rules: Is it going inside the bird’s cavity? Outside? On the side? It’s risky business. Instead, I’m buying a pre-fab box of it and adding -- butter? margarine? olive oil? I need to review the pros and cons of all these cholesterol destroyers or enhancers. And tofu turkey isn’t going to fly -- except with my vegetarian niece, who may be the only one of us to fondly remember the occasion because she will benefit from the green vegetables that may decrease her odds of Alzheimer’s.

Spinach is, of course, an item that must be pulled from the menu, because the specter of E. coli might still cloud the table, along with the gravy boat, lest we sink like stones into the sea of cellulite.

Yams or sweet spuds are P.C. (potato correct), but white is not right -- it’s high-glycemic. I’ll also need to regretfully inform my husband that there will be no marshmallows on that sweet potato casserole. He can have cranberries for his urinary tract.

White wine accompanies turkey, but antioxidant red is better. Two glasses heal hearts, but increases women’s breast cancer risk factor by 30%. On the other hand, my aunt says she doesn’t care about the food as long as she can have her own bottle of Cakebread Chardonnay. She’s a breast cancer survivor, so I say she deserves that, even if the rest of us girls drink Sparkling Catawba like we did years ago at the “kids’ table.” Do they still make it, and in diet?

If the dinner is a bit lacking in grace, there’s always dessert. Pecans are good -- but only six. Pumpkin pie is squash. Cinnamon lowers that pesky glycemic load, so crust won’t count, but no more than one-fourth teaspoon of the spice or we’re all poisoned, I read somewhere recently.

Coffee leeches the calcium from our pilgrim bones, and decaf has to be Swiss water processed or the chemicals will nuke nutrients we garnered from our monitored meal. I’d offer green tea, but then we’d suffer from dry teeth that would also need bleaching.

Maybe I’ll stick to veggies. My previous lack of them, together with the tryptophan in the turkey that puts me to sleep, may be the reason I can’t ever recall the oven temperature or what’s lethal and what’s healthful. If I don’t switch to greens, my niece will be the sole survivor: the only one left to do the dishes and tell the paramedics that I under-cooked.

On second thought, is In-N-Out open on Thanksgiving?

Kathleen Clary Miller is an author who lives in San Juan Capistrano.