I don't care how many writers shed tears for the good old days before we were so connected, before life sped before our tapping fingers; Web, thee did save me.
My sister and I may not have grown up rife with traditions (when Jill and I hung our socks on Christmas eve, the flat unfilled sight of them the next morning reminded us that Santa didn't stop for little Jewish girls), but darn it, we had the stuffing recipe, handed down from Grandma Millie. If we were on death row, our last meal would be the stuffing.
You could tweak it (Jill uses garlic, I don't) but you never messed with the main ingredients: Uneeda Biscuits and stale rolls. The stale rolls might change from year to year; we're flexible. Recently I've discovered that Bertucci's rolls are perfect, and we make sure to stop by the restaurant where our take-out order is, um, a bag of rolls.
But don't mess with the Uneeda biscuits.
In recent years, Thanksgiving became a little scary. The weeks before the hallowed meal, I became obsessed with finding the suddenly difficult-to-find, blue cardboard cracker boxes decorated with the little boy in the raincoat. Year round, the entire family went on the lookout for these increasingly rare crackers. What was going on with Nabisco?
One year I was able to order them from Amazon. Then not. Finally, I discovered that DeLuca's Market in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston stocked them (I think for nearby frail ladies in their nineties who crumbled them in their Campbell's). For years, I'd drive down and clean them out, sometimes, when only four or five boxes remained. I'd shudder, knowing how close I'd come to a Uneeda-less year.
A year ago, when we were already dangerously close to Thanksgiving, they seemed to have disappeared. My older daughter swore she'd seen them in a Market Basket in a suburb 40 minutes from our house. My husband and I raced over. We scoured the aisles. I called my daughter -- oh, had she forgotten to mention the sighting had been months before? We drove to DeLuca's (surely they'd re-stocked) thinking it an auger of success when we found a parking spot in front (a Beacon Hill miracle.)
Nothing.
A wonderful clerk went to the order form.
Nothing. No longer being ordered.
Nauseated by fear, I went home to, of course, Google Uneeda Biscuits. I learned on Chowhound (my new best friend) that it was over. They were gone. Discontinued. Kaput.
But, oh Lordy, it turned out that Grandma Millie's secret ingredient was known by others. OMG! We were not the only family in America using Uneeda Biscuits for stuffing. We were not the only family in America for whom Uneeda Biscuits were the cure for stomach aches, depression and holidays.
We were not alone.
But wait, there's more. The miracle of Thanksgiving unfolded on my screen. Others, secret byte-sized friends, had already attacked the problem: Goya Snack Crackers. They weren't a clone or a complete match, but, as my savior, Bicycle Chick, wrote, they are quite similar in flavor.
She was correct.
We were saved. Because when it comes to keeping tradition alive, sometimes you have to go online.
Happy Thanksgiving to friends of all dimensions.