How many birds are you cooking up this year? Anyone doing the deep frying thing? Who’s going to win the football games? Got any good recipes?
Here are the links to the Thanksgiving Recipe Swap we did in the cafe last year:
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Thanksgiving Harvest 2005 clik to enlarge
Stone Soup
This tale of Stone Soup was written by Sandi Cooper:
Enjoy!
Happy Thanksgiving!
This of course is a favorite among storytellers. 🙂
I think the first time I heard it was on Captain Kangaroo when I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old.
appreciate that story Omir.
OT, but I still miss the Sunday Griot…have a great holiday!
You’re not the only one who has confessed to this. 🙂
And truth be told, I enjoyed doing it. Hopefully I will be able to find the time to start it again. The fact that the Democrats are starting to reclaim the country doesn’t mean there are no more progressive stories to tell . . .
at my sister’s — including one niece (and one greatniece) from Portland and one niece (and her husband) from San Diego. I was going to play it low-key and head for the in-laws, but the out-of-town visitors sold me.
Heading for BevMo for vino; I always get stuck with the easy stuff like wine or Brown ‘N Serve rolls (known in our family as Burn ‘N Serve after an unfortunate incident involving my mother and aforementioned bread product). I’m the baby of the family, and have no kids, hence the belief that I don’t know how to cook for a crowd. One of these years I’m going to insist on bringing actual food…
Football:
Cowboys over Bucs
Dolphins over Lions
Chiefs over Broncos
Need a vacation from politics for a couple of days…but for me that would be like a vacation from, oh, say, breathing…
I was unsuccessful in convincing my wife that the Pilgrims actually ordered Chinese takeout at their first Thanksgiving. Fortunately my sister-in-law is having Thanksgiving at her house, and our share of the grub is going to consist of a couple of pans of stuffing and some pies. We like making pies. Back when we were in more of a position to do so we would invite a bunch of people over for Thanksgiving who had nowhere else to go, usually at least 15 or so. We would make about two dozen pies — apple, cherry, banana cream, mincemeat and of course pumpkin — and watch people’s eyes spin like pinwheels as they counted the pies. The idea was to send some pie home with everyone.
Well anyway, here’s a recipe to share and enjoy. Measurements are approximate, I’ve never bothered to record them.
OMIR’S THANKSGIVING STUFFING RECIPE
4-6# dried bread cubes, unseasoned
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
2 cans cream of chicken soup
2 cans cream of celery soup
1 head celery, chopped fine
1 large sweet onion, chopped fine
2# bulk pork sausage
3# apples (any sweet apple will do), peeled & cored
fresh sage leaves, chopped
fresh parsley leaves, chopped
1# butter (optional)
Crumble and cook the sausage. If you don’t mind the extra cholesterol, reserve the fat; otherwise, set aside an equivalent amount of butter or use a cooking oil. (You may need to add butter or other oil anyway, depending on the amount of vegetables.) Chop the celery and cook it in the sausage until it’s almost tender. Add the onion and apple; cook until tender.
In a large mixing bowl combine the bread crumbs, sage and parsley. I’m guessing we use about 1/4 cup of each herb; we just buy a bunch at the local market and toss it in until it looks and smells right. Add the cream soup and stir until the bread crumbs are moistened. (You may need more or less than the full six cans.) Finally stir in the sausage mixture and mix well. Stuff your bird if you like; bake the rest in a separate pan until the stuffing is cooked through.
Notes:
You don’t need extra salt. The cream soup takes care of that, in spades. You might like to add other herbs and spices (pepper, rosemary, thyme, savory).
I’ve added some outrageous mix-ins over the years, like mushrooms, water chestnuts and pecans, but various members of the family either don’t like them or won’t eat them, so nowadays we leave them out. Feel free to experiment.
You can substitute chicken stock for some of the cream soup.
lower-fat versions of the cream soups are available (there’s also the Healthy Request versions that are lower sodium as well as lower-fat), that’s not too bad a recipe.
Oh, forgot the number of turkeys above — most likely two; a few days before Thanksgiving, my oldest sister borrows an extra Weber kettle barbecue from my second sister, so we have dueling barbecues. She’s trying to avoid going to three, but we’ll see about that…
Now that I think about it you might want to rinse the sausage after it’s cooked too. It’ll taste just as good but probably save a few calories (which you can then donate to eating pumpkin pie).
a crustless pumpkin pie in addition to regular pumpkin and her famous apple pie, because my sister-in-law (brother’s wife) can’t eat wheat products. I’ll probably go for that — I like the filling best anyway.
She also uses potato flour for thickening the gravy instead of regular flour — easy to find around here in the kosher foods section of the market. Can’t tell any difference…
Hey, I’ve got one of those in my family, too. Since I’m in charge of the sweet p’tater piiie, I’m doin a crustless mini-piiie also. But I did just get the crust made for the big ‘un, boy that’s a bi-atch and a half… Now I’m boilin the p’taters….
Ok, here’s the poll question: Nutmeg or Cinnamon?
Nutmeg AND cinnamon! (about 1-3 ratio, I think)
Well, I searched the innertubes for sweet puhtater piii recipes several days ago and you wouldn’t believe how many variations there are. Some use nutmeg only and some use cinnamon only. And yup, I think I saw a few that had ’em both. I went with cinnamon, as I’m totally partial to it – it’s my absolute fay-voe-riite spice. 🙂
btw, do you have an extra bad vibe filter layin’ around that you could send to cabingirl, please? She needs one for winning the game in today’s news bucket pseudoscience ID contest, and I’m fresh out.
Heck, I just make my own. The tough part is getting toroidal crystals. The toroid shape contains the bad vibes better and the spacing of the turns isn’t quite as important as it is when you use regular crystals.
I’d forgotten that page. It’s a hoot!
but the nutmeg works well as an add on “garnish”…enjoy
Hmmm, sounds good, since I already made it with cinnamon. It’s in the oven now. I’ll sprinkle some nutmeg on a slice tomorrow and see how it goes….
Oh, you mean a pumpkin custard? 🙂
Yeah, we’ve done stuff like that too. Most of the family just really likes my wife’s pie crust recipe. I’d post it but it’s at home and I don’t remember all the ingredients. I do know it takes flour, salt, egg, shortening and . . . vinegar! I think maybe the vinegar makes it nice and flaky.
This is one of my favorites.
Serving: Yields: Two 10-inch pies
INGREDIENTS
Piecrusts:
Pecan Filling:
Bourbon Whipped Cream (optional):
DIRECTIONS
That sounds mighty fine if you leave out the bourbon (never had a taste for it). We used to do pecan pies when we lived in Texas and didn’t have to worry about our blood sugars going through the roof. Try as you might I don’t think you could ever come up with a sugar free pecan pie worth mixing up and baking, much less eating. 🙂
Brown sugar and confectioner’s sugar in a pecan pie is necessary. And I love Bourbon, especially when it is used in pastries.
And don’t forget the corn syrup. Can’t make it without corn syrup. We often refer to dishes like pecan pie and baklava as “sugar with sugar bits in sugar sauce.”
I never use syrup in pecan pie. Dark brown sugar, a little flour, eggs, butter, and vanilla and a bit of salt. It’s absolutely incredible.
Baked one today and almost had to lock myself in the living room to keep from plunging my face into it.
Another withit that can’t be beat. Simple to prepare if you have a food processor, and it really tastes good.
CRANBERRY ORANGE RELISH
1 bag cranberries
1 medium orange
1 cup sugar
Wash the cranberries and orange. Process the cranberries just until they’re kind of chunky. Remove the nub from the orange, discard the seeds (if any) and cut it into 4 or 8 pieces, with the peel still attached — whatever will fit into your processor. Process the orange until it’s the same consistency as the cranberries. Stir the orange bits into the cranberry bits and add sugar to taste (usually for us, about 3/4 cup).
Usually we substitute Splenda for the sugar, but I don’t think we can this year because my sister in law thinks artificial sweeteners are evil (well, she’s right, but don’t try eating this relish without sweetening it). I’ve never tried it with honey or stevia; if you do, let me know how it works out. Occasionally I’ll supplement the sweetening with a little bit of orange juice from a carton (it can help the processing as well).
This is one my sister sent me. It is an excellent side dish.
Ingredients
1 pound fresh or frozen okra 3 tbsp canola oil
1 cup chopped onion 1 cup green pepper
1 16 oz can wholes tomatoes or 1/2 pound fresh chopped tomatoes 1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp Tabasco sauce optional
Directions
Stove Top Method: Wash fresh okra. Remove stems and cut okra into 1/2 inch rounds. In a cast iron or heavy saucepan, cook the okra in the oil over medium low heat stirring continually for about 15 minutes until the okra is not very stringy. In another skillet, saute the onions and green peppers in one tablespoon of cooking oil until wilted. Combine the cooked vegetables. Add the tomatoes, salt and Tabasco. Cook for 10 minutes or until the tomatoes have cooked and dwindled down. Check your seasonings and serve as a vegetable side dish with rice or make the okra and shrimp gumbo. Cei cest bon!
Oven Method using Rotel Brand Tomatoes: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Defrost the frozen okra in a microwave or at room temperature. In a large Magnalite pot or Dutch oven (need cover), spray with Pam or add the oil. On the stovetop add the okra (3 one-pound packages of cut up frozen okra), the chopped onion and bell pepper and one can of Rotel. Stir and heat until the pot is warm. This is done to speed the cooking process. Cover the pot and place in the preheated 350 degree oven. Set your timer for 1 hour. Take out and stir thoroughly. Repeat this step at 1/2 hour intervals. After two hours you can judge if you need to cook longer. Do so by continuing the step. (What I like to do is cook this dish in the late evening I cook it for two hours and then turn off my oven and leave it in the oven until the next morning. The heat left in the oven will continue to smother (“cook it down”) the okra. No need to stir. At this point it will look just like you remember Momma’s smothered no slime okra.)
Pronounced “mock shoe,” this Cajun dish is a little spicy. If you prefer, reduce the amount of black pepper. This recipe makes an excellent side dish.
INGREDIENTS
* 12 ears fresh corn, husked and silked (or 9 cups frozen)
* 4 strips vegetarian
* 1 1/2 cups diced yellow onion
* 3/4 cup diced red bell pepper
* 3/4 cup diced green bell pepper
* 2 teaspoons ground black pepper
* 1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
* 2 teaspoons salt
DIRECTIONS
4 strips vegetarian? Bacon? Turkey? My friend Pete?
vegetarian bacan, as i am vegetarian, and no, i am not pete.
if you eat meat, you may use bacon. but do not feed it to anyone who practices kosher.
makes it even better, for some reason… 🙂
There are some kick ass recipes in this thread. I’m just sayin…. BOOKMARK IT!
My Nana used to always make a different kind of pumpkin pie – now its been my pleasure to carry on the tradition. So here’s her recipe for pumpkin chiffon pie:
2T gelatin
1 1/3 cups brown sugar
1t each of salt, cinnamon, nutmet and ginger
2 1/2 cups pumpkin
6 egg yolks
1 cup milk
6 egg whites
1/2t cream of tartar
12T sugar
Blend gelatin, brown sugar, salt, spices, pumpkin, egg yolks and milk in sauce pan. Cook over medium heat stirring constantly until it boils. Place pan in cold water – cool until mixture mounds slightly when dropped from a spoon. Beat thoroughly. Fold into a meringue of egg whites, cream of tartar and sugar. Pour into cooked pie crust. Makes 2-3 pies (depending on size). Cool in refrigerator and serve with whipped cream.
This is the most amazing pie!! Light and fluffy with all the wonderful pumpkin pie flavor. One of my friends who ate it a couple of years ago said its the 2nd best pie he’s ever eaten. The only thing that beat it was a $7 piece of “death by chocolate pie” he ate in a restaurant.
Oh shit. I was planning on my usual friend’s feast and they just told me that their plans had changed. Ok…so it’s 10:00 p.m. on the night before Thanksgiving and KamaKid and I have no plans, are in a new house and everything in boxes and I have to wing a Thanksgiving dinner based on what I can find in the store in the morning. I got rid of most of my old kitchen stuff in the hopes that I would buy new later, so I don’t even have the basic tools.
Oh dagnabit…it looks grim. Who says the Pilgrims didn’t have Chinese take-out? :>)
Kamakhya —
I’ll call you first thing in the morning. I have two extra places at my table and would love for you and Cypress to be there.
And yes, we have TWO turkeys — but no deep fryer. Our heirloom turkey was too small for the group we have coming, so we added a “standard” free-range bird. We’ll actually have TWO Weber grills going this afternoon. Here are my contributions on the recipe front:
Oyster/cornbread/pecan stuffing (you either like it or you don’t):
And pecan pie:
My long-time friend who has spent a lifetime experimenting and refining pecan pie recipes SWEARS by this one:
She says the key is the maple syrup.
Personally, I ventured out this year and tried a persimmon pie with a ginger snap/walnut crust. I was intrigued by the recipe, which calls for the persimmon pulp to be mixed with brown sugar, honey, orange juice and BEER. I just finished baking it, however, and am a little dubious. Oh, well, I guess I can always make a pumpkin pie later this morning.