The Silver Screen Oasis

After reading this funny story in the morning paper about Thanksgiving day disasters while sipping my coffee this morning, I put the bean into hyper-drive finally getting organized for Turkey day. Got the bird thawing (29 cents a pound, whoopee!), broke down and bought a new roasting pan, (Mom's post-WWII enamel pan has just one too many flaking spots on it for me to keep using it in good conscience), made the sage stuffing, have asparagus, broccoli and carrots set for veggies, bought some red bliss potatoes for the mashed, and am now making pumpkin pie and three berry pie. I guess that's awfully traditional, but I'm hoping that the family that will be showing up for this feast might bring something innovative (like a bottle of pinot noir for the cook!).

What are you guys cooking, if anything, for the day? Btw, in case I fail to catch your eye around the SSO hearth by Thursday, I hope that you'll have a happily relaxed day with family, friends or just a few moments of serenity.

We always enjoy a typical New England Thanksgiving, pretty much all the bells & whistles, likely the only differences being that we always order a fresh, local bird, and brine it for at least 2 days in advance, and load it up with a very dense, Appalachian-style stuffing packed with orts & chunks of salt pork, and prefer apple cider for a beverage; there's also the curious tradition, unique either to this exact region or maybe even just my own family line, of including a big ol' pan of toast soaked in meat-drippings/brown gravy . . think this might even have been a Depression-era "get-by", or stretcher menu item.

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Moira,

I am on my way to the grocery store to get the groceries for our traditional feast (which sounds a great deal like your traditional feast). I do the sage stuffing but with a southern and western twist of adding cornbread and sourdough to the bread part of the stuffing.

MrCutter, being an Easterner by birth, likes turnips with his feast. Growing up out west, we never had turnips. More the mashed taters and sweet potato type. So, we comprise. I fix him turnips and fix some mashed taters (small red potatoes with the skins and a hint of rosemary and garlic) for me. He always has both.

I wish I could make gravy like my mom. She is a whiz at that. She gets my niece's husband to take the whole roasting pan out of the oven, drains the bottom of the roasting pan (without capsizing the bird or dropping it on the floor) of its juices and fat and then uses that as the base of the gravy. It is very southern and very good. Mr. C is not up for picking up hot roasting pans (even with big oven mitts) and doing that.

Do you cook the stuffing in the bird? We do and I find that it is always better than the smaller pan of extra stuffing.

We're doing a small bird this year as we are only having friends over for drinks. This is the first year in almost 10 that we haven't had friends over. But Mr.C is recovering from a cold and wants to do simple this year.

So, simple it is. In that vain, I am buying the pumpkin pie (for me) and the apple pie (for him). For Christmas, maybe I will bake.

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday! I hope to get caught up on watching the many hours of TCM movies (and the Johnny Mercer doc) that I have on our Tivo.

Above: Artist's rendering of the gathering of our various clans for Thanksgiving

klondike wrote:We always enjoy a typical New England Thanksgiving, pretty much all the bells & whistles, likely the only differences being that we always order a fresh, local bird, and brine it for at least 2 days in advance, and load it up with a very dense, Appalachian-style stuffing packed with orts & chunks of salt pork, and prefer apple cider for a beverage; there's also the curious tradition, unique either to this exact region or maybe even just my own family line, of including a big ol' pan of toast soaked in meat-drippings/brown gravy . . think this might even have been a Depression-era "get-by", or stretcher menu item.

Hey, thanks for those quick replies, gang.

Whoo, doggies, that sounds like quite a feed, Klon. I've gone the brine route a couple of times, but now I just figure, let the bird be basted and to hell with it. I considered the fresh turkey route too,and it's definitely a tasty bird, but since our local turkey farm is one that I drive past regularly, I wouldn't want to serve anyone on the table if I it might have been a gobbler I made eye contact with in the recent past. As to the gravy bread that you refer to, my Dad (a product of the Depression) used to present this to us as kids and we loved it. Now, we kind of avoid it, since we're giving our arteries their greatest workout on Thanksgiving anyway.

Professional Tourist wrote:I suppose I have a typical Manhattan-style Thanksgiving these days. In the afternoon I order out for the Thanksgiving dinner special from a neighborhood restaurant.

I've been that route too, PF. It's such a relief to avoid the hustle and bustle sometimes. Hope it's a good version of Mom's cooking...unless, of course, Mom wasn't such as great cook anyway. My own mother had a laissez-faire attitude toward housework in general, having grown up with maids and cooks in what now seems another, long ago era.

When I lived in Boston, I'd get home from some sort of observance of the holiday early. I used to like the quiet that descended on the apartment laundry room on Thanksgiving afternoon. It was great to have all those machines to myself for once. Strange, but true.

Lzcutter wrote:Moira,

I am on my way to the grocery store to get the groceries for our traditional feast (which sounds a great deal like your traditional feast). I do the sage stuffing but with a southern and western twist of adding cornbread and sourdough to the bread part of the stuffing.

MrCutter, being an Easterner by birth, likes turnips with his feast. Growing up out west, we never had turnips. More the mashed taters and sweet potato type. So, we comprise. I fix him turnips and fix some mashed taters (small red potatoes with the skins and a hint of rosemary and garlic) for me. He always has both.

I wish I could make gravy like my mom. She is a whiz at that. She gets my niece's husband to take the whole roasting pan out of the oven, drains the bottom of the roasting pan (without capsizing the bird or dropping it on the floor) of its juices and fat and then uses that as the base of the gravy. It is very southern and very good. Mr. C is not up for picking up hot roasting pans (even with big oven mitts) and doing that.

Do you cook the stuffing in the bird? We do and I find that it is always better than the smaller pan of extra stuffing.

I had to pause and take out two pumpkin pies. Love that smell (don't love the calories, alas). A cornbread and sourdough stuffing is something I've never had together, Lynn. Does the sourdough bread give it a bit of tang? I like cornbread stuffing as long as it isn't too dry. Do you cook the cornbread and then crumble it into stuffing? That's how I've had it with dried cranberries and leeks mixed in, which was good. While I'm an Easterner, I gotta confess I hate turnips. Parsnips though, that's another story. I like 'em mixed together with carrots and roasted in the oven with herbs.

We make the taters the same way using "small red potatoes with the skins and a hint of rosemary and garlic" and it is heavenly. I even broke down and went and spent 2 dollars on a potato masher while purchasing the roasting pan. Haven't had a masher in years (had to break up the potatoes for mashed with a ketchup bottle in recent years!).

Cooking the stuffing in the bird makes everything taste wonderful, don't you think? I know, I know, the smarties on the food network and life's nannies want us to cook it separately, but heck, we take all the stuffing out of the bird after its cool and store it in the fridge later. No one has croaked yet. Crossing my fingers now...

Doesn't it look as though they sprayed motor oil on this turkey to make it photogenic?

One other thing we usually try to do for the holiday: every time we go to the store for the umpteenth time, some small something for the local food bank or a small toy for a local drive goes in the grocery basket.

Any other ideas of how you observe the holiday?

moirafinnie wrote:I've been that route too, PF. It's such a relief to avoid the hustle and bustle sometimes. Hope it's a good version of Mom's cooking

It's good, but nah, nothing like the way my mother and grandmother would make the turkey dinner. My mother's side of the family is portuguese, which informed their cooking methods. The turkey was cooked with tomato and onion, with sliced white potatoes roasting in that gravy, and the stuffing contained items like portuguese sausage (linguiça), the innards of the turkey, green olives, and ground saffron. Sage stuffing? Cornbread stuffing? I never tasted those until I left home.

Oh Pro T.,
"portuguese sausage (linguiça), the innards of the turkey, green olives, and ground saffron" sound good!

You sound like me. Everything was exotic to me at one time. I never even had lasagna until I went to college! Pizza? What was that? I'm still trying to work off the 20 pounds that those discoveries cost me. I'm eating very lean protein prior to Turkey day. Gotta go for a walk now...

mMMM, linguicia, mmmmmmmmmmmm

I'm on my own this year and the typical Thanksgiving is the anti=Thanksgiving meal. Dungeness crab season starts the week before, usually. And that is usually on the menu. Not this year.

I've never, ever cooked a turkey. So, since it's me, roasting a chicken, making stuffing with cibatta bread, chicken apple sausage, spices, dried apricots and apple (onion, celery and the usual suspects, but no innards). A green veg and pumpkin custard. This is as close to traditional I will do this year. I'm a sucker for stuffing, got to make that.

linguicia, mmmmmmmm, got to get some, I've met very few sausages I did not love.

In the afternoon I order out for the Thanksgiving dinner special from a neighborhood restaurant.

Since there will only be 2 at the table this year, I decided to go the easy way, and ordered Turkey dinner from the local grocery store. Turkey breast, mashed potatoes & gravy, sweet potato casserole, cranberry/orange relish, sage stuffing. I'm making 2 pies (he'll take home the better part of it to his son who has to work) one a pumpkin, and the other, buttermilk. We will not be having green bean casserole (wasn't there a huge discussion last year on the pros and cons of g.b. casserole????

No matter who you have dinner with, or without, I wish you the very best of the season, and hope you have as much to be thankful for as I do!

gobble!!!!
Nancy

If anyone is really interested in getting some portuguese sausage, this is where we order from now that we have no family left in south eastern Massachusetts: http://www.gasparssausage.com/. I don't know if they'll ship to Bagdad, rudyfan, but they do ship all over the U.S.

We'll be getting together at my brother's house this year, and I think he's doing a ham instead of the tradtional turkey. I'm sure he and his wife will include mashed potatoes, gravy, and stuffing. My Mom is making the sweet potato casserole and a gelatin fruit salad with topping. She also ordered a special chocolate cake with pecans. I'm bringing broccoli, cheese and rice casserole (Yum!) and plenty of it to leave and freeze. I ususally do the green bean casserole as it's a tradition in the family, but I did that with a corn casserole last year, and this year I wanted to do something different.

Have a Safe and Happy Holiday Everyone!

Professional Tourist wrote:If anyone is really interested in getting some portuguese sausage, this is where we order from now that we have no family left in south eastern Massachusetts: http://www.gasparssausage.com/. I don't know if they'll ship to Bagdad, rudyfan, but they do ship all over the U.S.

PT, Gaspars looks great. Local to me is the brand I grew up with and since I'm still local, this is what I usually purchase.
http://www.netosausage.com/, I've tried the chicken sausages, too, very good. I've yet to make it down to their parking lot on a spring/summer day for some BBQ links, one of these days, surely.

Hi, gang!
Everyone's cuisine sounds wonderful.

We will be doing a very traditional mid-west feast at my 93 year old grandmothers, and, yes, it includes turnips. (blech)
And Harvard beets, over which there are two distinct camp being pro and con.

One year I read the poem I'd Never Eat a Beet for the family.

I’d Never Eat a Beet
By Jack Prelutsky
Read by Kathryn Fulton
I’d never eat a beet, because I could not stand the taste,
I’d rather nibble drinking straws, or fountain pens, or paste,
I’d eat a window curtain and perhaps a roller skate, but a beet,
You may be certain, would be wasted on my plate.
I would sooner chew on candles or the laces from my shoes,
Or a dozen suitcase handles
Were I ever forced to choose,
I would eat a Ping-Pong paddle,
I would eat a Ping-Pong ball,
I might even eat a saddle, but a beet? No! Not at all.
I would swallow talcum powder and my little rubber duck,
I’d have doorknobs in my chowder, I would eat a hockey puck,
I would eat my model rocket
And the socks right off my feet,
I would even eat my pocket,
But I’d never eat a beet!

It was popular with a few!

Gosh, I love turnips and beets. Gotta be the Russian in me!