Bits & bites

The Web can supply your holiday food.
The memories are up to you.

WE ALWAYS had what I thought was a fairly typical WASP Thanksgiving: fabulous food, civil conversation -- at least until the meal was over and the gloves came off. My sister still isn't invited to my father's house, and my brother moved to Alaska to get away from it all.

But this year, the petty stuff feels irrelevant. I crave the companionship and warmth that come from spending time with friends and family. My keep-in-touch strategy of e-mail and instant messaging just won't cut it.

In fact, rather than wait for the traditional Thanksgiving to roll around, I added in a new one, with some good friends, a few weeks early.

But what to feed everyone? Sure, some people (like my stepmother) can whip out a flawless feast, where even the Brussels sprouts taste good. For the rest of us, though, just roasting the turkey can be more stressful than a first date or the first grade.

Of course, I looked for high-tech help. Technology already has conquered distance: Satellite TV has turned Baywatch into a global hit from India to Iran, while e-mail lets my Uncle Jay in New Jersey get daily updates from his old Vietnam War roommate in Abu Dhabi.

Could all that technology cluttering up my life also help to create the magic of Thanksgiving? Could it allow a culinarily challenged fellow like me to put a decent feast on the table? And could it even conquer time? Could I really score a tasty turkey dinner for eight without wading through aisles of Halloween candy looking for cranberry sauce, etc., and then toiling for countless hours over a hot stove?

Two years ago at TechTV, we found a range of tasty Thanksgiving dinners available online. But today, most of the sites we used, including Webvan and Cook Express, are gone. So I set out to see if the Internet could still help.

The good news is that there are a few places online that will send turkey -- and all the fixings -- right to your door. There's even a site that will let you send a virtual holiday dinner to anyone who has an e-mail address. It's not the same thing as being there, but it's the thought that counts, I guess.

So with some trepidation -- Would it arrive? Would it taste OK? -- I ordered dinner online, set the date and cleaned the house.

While heating up the techno-turkey and side dishes, I learned something important: That sticky, spicy scent of baking turkey and stuffing is a big part of Thanksgiving. Something about that aroma emanating from the oven brought childhood Thanksgiving memories flooding back -- both happy and sad. My friends felt the same way. They all commented as they walked into the house: "It sure smells like Thanksgiving here." No one cared that the smells originated in cyberspace.

Of course, that compelled a few to share their worst Thanksgiving dinner disasters. My favorite: the time Chris' grandmother served a turkey roll --"the meat equivalent of fruitcake."

It was great to see my friend Patrick, who brought his new wife, Stephanie. Two other friends who came had lost their jobs recently; I let them take home the leftovers. And for part of the meal, my 2-year-old son, Sam, sat next to me, participating in the conversation. Of course, no one understood what he was saying.

In the end, it all worked out. We all sat together around the table. I relaxed, at least until cleanup -- no robots to do that yet. The meal sparked the memories and then channeled the magic that transported us directly to Thanksgiving. From the blessings we whispered before eating, to the reunion of friends, to the easy conversation around dessert, everything was just right. My friend Mark put it best: "The food was good, but the conversation was the highlight of the gathering."

Technology is doing an increasingly good job of fabricating reality. Computers trick our eyes and ears -- and with small motors, even our hands. They take us places we've never been and show us things we've never seen. Having made distance irrelevant, they're now making pretty good headway on time, too.

Happily, we still haven't figured out how to digitize tradition and togetherness. Because then we could evoke those Thanksgiving memories at will, without friends, family, food or ritual: a virtual Thanksgiving, without the virtue.

Illustration by STUART BRIERS for USA WEEKEND