First off, let me state I like Thanksgiving at my in-laws. I like the way my mother-in-law cooks a turkey, and I like cooking nothing but green bean casserole.
That SAID, if I were to host a Thanksgiving dinner there would be some changes made.
1. Drinking. There would be drinking. All drinks would taste like caramel apple spiced hard cider or Irish coffee.
2. China. We would not eat off paper plates, we would eat off mis-matched thrift store china that we would then throw away.
3. Turkey. A fresh Amish turkey, never frozen, cooked long and slow. Also, jellied cranberry sauce, dressing and stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy, and perhaps yams. No sweet potato casseroles. I’m off sweet potatoes. I just made a vat of “fall root vegetable” soup, which sounded good until we ate some. (“Fall hot baby food” soup, more like it.)
4. Dessert. Okay, pies, but not fruit pies, and not cream pies. Cake pies. CAKE pies. Essentially, you make a deep dish pie crust, and then a lot of flat crusts. Then you bake a layer cake, and use chocolate frosting to cement the bottom layer to the deep crust, then you alternate a thin layer of frosting, a layer of flat pie crust, a thin layer of frosting, a layer of cake, and continue. Then you put some chewy cream cheese ganache over it all and press pecans into the sides. Serve with creme fraiche.
5. More dessert. Carrot cake. Pecan pie. Apple spice cake.
6. No pumpkin pie. Bleah. Hate pumpkin pie. It’s a pie made of a vegetable. And don’t throw carrot cake back in my face. Pumpkin pie is like carrot pie. Beet pie. Zucchini pie.
7. So after dinner we would immediately freeze the turkey carcass for six months later when we say “how long has this been in the deep freeze? Better throw it out.”
Granted, this is my fantasy Thanksgiving, but to accommodate my needs I had to dismiss Gary’s desires (pumpkin pie and whipped cream sprayed directly into his mouth). Too bad. He can eat grape tomatoes and Southwest Ranch dip, which is what he’s eaten for three days since the root vegetable soup was rejected and he told me tonight that my latest casserole tasted like raw chicken skin.
14 responses to “Thanksgiving Dinner, My Way”
Now that does sound like a dinner I could enjoy (seriously, they serve Thanksgiving dinner on PAPER plates?! Horrendous) with less of the sweetness that seems to feature so prominently – can’t get my head around marshmallows and vegetables, at all, at all.
Except for the cake-pie. In what sensory-elevated state did you dream that one up? And would you expect to survive polishing that off?
The spider’s back. It clearly staged a putsch over the kiwi while I was away. Eughghgh!
Big Dot – “In what sensory-elevated state did you dream that one up?” When a girl becomes a woman, she experiences certain changes in her body every month. Oh, and “putsch?” Not “coup?” I wonder what influences makes the southern hemisphere go with the German term. And I was wondering last night: many of our secular Christmas songs deal with snow. Do you have songs such as “Have a Sunny, Sunny Christmas?”
Cake pie, huh? Intriguing.
Family meals without wine are unacceptable. We had so much that my MIL commented after the fact…
Cake pie sounds to me like you’re messing up a perfectly good cake with pie crust.
We’re very adaptable down here. We can handle the spring/autumn Easter dichotomy, Christmas as winter/summer, all that. It’s like saying Dad to your child instead of your husband’s name – automatic.
(I did have an English teacher once who told us when studying some poem that of course the sun sets in the east in the northern hemispere, but she was just thick.)
We used to even design and print our own Christmas cards with snow on, but we’re comfortable with summer images now. Having had both, I have to say Christmas is so much better in cold weather, though.
We don’t have cake pie, but other than that, we have pretty much your ideal Thanksgiving at our house. For 9 people we had a 20 lb turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, gelled cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes (covered in brown sugar and pecans, though), green beans with shallots and almonds, and homemade rolls, all served on china. Then we had pumpkin pie (sorry – hubby loves it), pecan pie, and a McArthur’s chocolate cake, with sides of cool whip, vanilla ice cream, and chocolate ice cream. Wine and beer were served, and other alcohol would have been welcomed. Leftover turkey is in the freezer.
I’m with you all the way on this, except for the pumpkin pie with whipped cream. One of my favorites. My cooking has been a little odd lately. I’ll cook something fantastic and then something merely passable. Why oh why?
Magpie – You know, if my family had adopted that practice I bet we wouldn’t have had to go to family counseling.Tami – Well, we will see this weekend when I make the preliminary test Cake Pie.Big Dot – I suppose both are unnatural, given the Jesus – December connection is tenuous and the middle east hasn’t either of our climates. Caroline – I didn’t mention, the jelled sauce must be served uncut, bearing the can print. Did you do that? Because that is Key.Hattie – I know: me too. It’s a cooking slump. If only I knew how to snap from a slump to a streak on demand. Maybe the full moon?
I do not know the difference between yams and sweet potatoes. I tried googling it only to find that yams are usually only found international markets and everything in the grocery store is a sweet potato. So I’m curious why yams and not sweet potatoes? Is it they way they’re fixed? Because we just have sweet potatoes baked like regular potatoes and then everyone puts butter or brownsugar on them as they please; kind of like one dresses ones own baked potato.
It is slice into disks, but left in the overall can shape.
Amy in StL – I thought yams were grown in the west and sweet potatoes were similar but came from the south. My mother-in law cooks yams but puts mini marshmallows on sweet potatoes, that the main difference for me. Caroline – I need to get to Moms and rescue her cut-glass jellied cranberry plate (perfect size for the decanted cranberry sauce).
THEY’RE ALL SWEET POTATOES! WE DON’T ACTUALLY HAVE YAMS.
I feel kind of strongly about this, especially since the cans in the grocery store say “yams”. Lying sons of bitches.
Tami – You are right! It’s like Possums in Austrailia, it’s a totally different animal. Now I know.