Thanksgiving menu

[ljgeoff]

The more Thanksgiving meals I cook, the more bored I get with the menu. But the family *loves* to have that traditional meal, all the things that we have just once or twice a year; the foods that means it's Thanksgiving.

Here are ours. What are yours?

Turkey
Mashed white potatoes
gravy
bread stuffing (not southern cornbread stuffing because that's weird) (and they were dubious of the chestnut stuffing, too)
Savory rice ring - this is the cornerstone and lets us all know that This Is Thanksgiving
cranberry sauce
broccoli slaw, the one with the raisins and sunflower seeds
some type of sweet potato - this year will be a maple souffle
homemade bread or rolls
pumpkin pie and something else, this year a cherry pie too.

-- Savory Rice Ring is made by putting a green (bell) pepper, 1/2 a red pepper, a couple of yellow onions, and a pound of mushrooms through a grinder, sauteing this with a stick of butter or margarine for about 20 min, with garlic, salt, and pepper, adding this to enough prepared rice that it looks right, and baking it in a greased ring form. Note that the veggies must be put through the grinder; you don't get the same rice ring if you use a food processor -- it'll be good, but it won't be *the same*. "The right amount of prepared rice" is usually around 3-4 cups. The rice ring is placed in a water bath (I usually use a black skillet) and baked for 45 min at 350 F.

Comments

[kaffy_r]

Hmm. When we do Thanksgiving - which we haven't for a few years, because we have friends who invite us out every year for a restaurant Thanksgiving - I always tried to vary at least one thing, to prevent boredom. (Mostly on other people's parts, frankly; I'm a cheap date who will happily eat the same thing year after year, although I'm always up for a change.) But on average, let's see:

1. Turkey (Goose is for Christmas.)
2. Two kinds of stuffing (one for each end) I usually add sausage to one stuffing, and sometimes I try new things with that one, like mushrooms or chestnuts.)*
3. Potatoes and gravy made with the turkey drippings.
4. A green vegetable. Often it's sauteed spinach, but occasionally it's green beans. I'd love to do peas, but Bob doesn't like them.
5. One other vegetable, which we experiment with. One year it was two flavors of spaghetti squash, another year it was parsnips.
6. Cranberry orange relish
7. Pumpkin pie. If I have any energy, I try to do an apple pie as well, for those who don't like pumpkin.
8. Green Slime. No, really, that's its name. It's lime jello, Too Much Sugar, cream cheese, maraschino cherries. pineapple bits and sometimes walnuts. It's from a recipe of Bob's mother, and it's become a holiday must-have. If I don't make it, people complain.

Also, will try to contact you about the kitty.

*When I do Goose, I do dressing, not stuffing, because stuffing a goose ruins the stuffing - too much grease.

[clawfoot]

Birthday cake? :)

Thanksgiving was never a huge thing for our family, for a couple of reasons. First, we're Canadian, so our Thanksgiving is the second Monday in October, and I don't think it's quite as culturally important a holiday up here as it is down there. For a lot of people, it's just a nice long weekend (there are people for whom it's a big deal, but I don't know many of them). Second, my parents are both British, so Thanksgiving was never even a thing for them at all (their major holiday around this time was Bonfire Night, Nov.5), which just reinforced the "not very important"-ness of the holiday. And thirdly, both my sister's and my birthdays almost always fell in or around that weekend, so it was always much more about our birthdays than Thanksgiving anyway.

I think we only actually had a traditional turkey dinner a couple of times while I was growing up. It included the turkey, gravy, both roasted and boiled potatoes, carrots, and brussel sprouts or cauliflower. Sometimes there was cheese sauce for that. No cranberry sauce at all. For fancy dinners, my mother often made both lemon meringue pie and a cake (either chocolate or gingerbread), or an apple crumble with custard.

[ljgeoff]

I just saw someone else mention parsnips; I've never had them! Do you have a favorite way of preparing them? Also, I've had green slime and it's yummy.

[kaffy_r]

This is a vegetable I heartily loathed growing up, possibly because the parsnips of the early-mid-sixties were a lot woodier than modern parsnips. (It's a little like the difference between turnips/swedes/whatever you call 'em of that era and the really tasty turnips/etc. of today.)

Both Mum and I hated them; it wasn't until I met up with Bob, and the modern version of this particular root vegetable, that I started liking them. Bob has a family recipe where you sautee sliced parsnips with maple syrup or brown sugar - or in his case, both *rolls eyes* - which is really good. But I've discovered they are wonderful on their own, boiled til they are just tender, or boiled to mashing tenderness. You can roast the suckers around a cut of meat, put 'em in a stew, etc. They're great in Japanese curry.

[lokifan]

I'm English, and the idea of meat and/or bread stuffing blew my mind. I suppose just because in my family chestnut stuffing is *the thing*, or other nutty/herby stuff.

[ljgeoff]

Chestnut stuffing used to be a big thing here, especially in the East, but in the early 1900s, the chestnut blight wiped out the American chestnut. I've had chestnut stuffing and I loved it but the rest of the family was "meh" so I haven't gone through the trouble since.

[bibliofile]

Yours all sounds good. The rice ring is new to me, and I'd try it if I cooked enough.

For me, what makes it Thanksgiving is pumpkin pie. I just use the recipe on the back of the Libby's pumpkin can, with spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, possibly allspice) until it tastes right.

Of course, figuring out that I could make pumpkin pie AT ANY TIME was a pleasant power to discover, but the big Thursday meal in late November must have pumpkin pie to meet the proper holiday conditions.

[ljgeoff]

Yep, same here, down to the Libby recipe - I have it taped to the inside of my spice cupboard door.

[carbonel]

I've never made my own Thanksgiving dinner. Mostly I go down to Chicago where my sister-in-law is now the one to do Thanksgiving. (My mother says that some time ago, she asked for a holiday to be in charge of, and my mother offered her the choice of Thanksgiving or Passover. She took the easy one.) This year, we were down to nine people and fit comfortably around the dinner table. It was trickier when there were as many as twenty.

Dinner is generally a group effort, with my SIL making the turkey and some of the sides, and other people bringing other stuff.

Unfortunately, my SIL doesn't really understand stuffing/dressing, which is just about my favorite traditional food. It's always either too damp or too dry. This year, the stuffing was okay but there was only a tiny amount of it. The dressing was flavored cubes of dry bread.

Ratatouille is probably the most nonstandard thing that's part of our Thanksgiving tradition. My mother makes it and brings it to dinner, along with cranberry sauce. Other standards are baked sweet potatoes, rice (for the ratatouille to go on top of), and of course, turkey. No gravy, which I miss, but so it goes. Oh, and my cousin brings the appetizer: veggies and homemade hummus to go with it.

Dessert is apple pie and pumpkin pie, both from Costco. Given the quality (high) and the cost (low) of Costco pies, I can't really argue with that one. And one of SIL's friends traditionally brings a fruit plate to provide a healthier option. Most years, I bake something and bring it, but I didn't manage that this year.