Thanksgiving Recipes

Thanksgiving has always been a strange time for me. Through the years, my family has come apart and come back together in different ways, then apart again. In the early days, we'd get together at Grandma's house in Fort Ord, and later in Lake Tahoe, where it was crisp and sometimes snowy, for a very traditional dinner. I still remember the time we all laughed along with "The Laughing Woodsman" as the music went back and forth between the stereo speakers behind the table. As in a lot of families, there was rivalry and squabbling, to which the children were mostly oblivious. There was always a slightly uncomfortable but jovial mix of clever sarcasm, good-natured fun-poking, and hurt feelings.

I have always loved to cook, and I dreamed of someday being the one to host the family, make beautiful, delicious food, and mend the things that were broken. Over the years, we've all gotten so far away, physically and in many cases, emotionally. My own house has always been too small to be the place to go. The older I've gotten, the more I've realized that the family I wanted to bring together doesn't really want to be together. Nobody wants to travel to or be trapped at anyone else's house. We've all found our own tribes, and it seems like everyone is happy to be where they are. Even my grandparents, who still live in Tahoe, seem content to be among their many friends at favorite restaurants and casinos for the holidays. I used to feel bad about the fact that they were "alone" and took it personally that they didn't want to try and recreate the old family holiday at their house or mine. I have realized that they have a whole world of people who care about them up there, and that is where they prefer to be. Who can blame them?

Maybe everyone had an ideal in their head, based on movies and television commercials where women in frilly aprons lift steamy pies from the oven, and golden turkeys bask in the glow of candles and familial smiles, and we just never were that. Or maybe it was just me. Seems like everyone got disappointed over the years and gave up. There was laughter, and funny things happened, like the time my Aunt Cathy said, "Gee, that's FART!" really loudly at the table when she meant to say "funny and smart." But there were fights, too.

The year my parents got divorced, my dad moved out, and my sister ran away. Obviously we weren't going to Grandma's that year. My mom and I were left to our own devices, so we made lasagna and watched a movie and had a very nice time. Very "you and me against the world"-- at least we had each other. And then after that, everyone had their own thing to do, including Mom, and that short-lived tradition was out the window.

For Mike and I, the holiday soon became a marathon of driving and eating, going from my dad and stepmom's house to his mom's house, and back to my mom's house--or the house where my mom was having dinner, back to my dad's house. At some point, my sister would show up at my dad's with her husband or boyfriend, her children and her migraine, having just run a similar race. Eventually, everyone just decided to do it his or her own way, and that was that. (40 years of family history in a very small nutshell.)

These days, Mike and I enjoy the calm of our house, the fact that no one has to drive anywhere, watch football or shout, and especially our tradition of dinner at Monty and Emilio's. Our gracious friends host a Thanksgiving that is warm, cozy and welcoming-- and delicious on top of that. Maybe we have a nice time because no one there is related. Maybe we just don't know each other well enough yet... Mike and I started going as "strays" a few years ago, but it has become what we like to do, and now it feels like family. I am already looking forward to the oyster dressing.

Mike and I still make up our own Thanksgiving dinner on another day of the week anyway so that I get a chance to cook and bake. It just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without pie for breakfast, leftover stuffing and turkey sandwiches. And it is absolutely required that I make a grand turkey pot pie, usually the Sunday after the holiday, with a big puffy crust and peas, carrots, potatoes and celery. Since this post has gotten so long, I'll post that recipe later on.

Here are my "It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without..." recipes:

Herb Bread Stuffing
1 Acme herb "slab" cut into medium cubes and toasted in the oven or dried
(this is a rosemary-herb "slipper" style bread, sort of like focaccia, without as much oil, very spongy and golden with a tender crust.)
3 ribs celery, chopped
1-2 onions, chopped
1 Fuji or Granny Smith Apple, chopped or diced
1/2 c dried cherries (optional)
2-4 cups chicken stock
Sage
Thyme
Salt and Pepper
Optional: 2 chicken-cherry or traditional sage pork sausages, de-skinned, browned and crumbled

Saute celery and onion (and sausage if desired) until soft and slightly golden. Add sage, thyme and apple. Deglaze pan with chicken stock, stir. Add cherries.
In a big bowl, mix bread, veggies and stock from pan. Keep adding extra chicken stock until very moist. The bread will soak up all of the stock. You can place the bowl in the refrigerator and turn the mix once or twice if you are making this in advance, or place in a sturdy zip-top bag. Just keep adding stock until the bread won't soak up any more. Depending on how fine you like your stuffing, you can mash it around with a fork or leave it more chunky.
Spread into a glass baking dish and bake until brown and crispy on top.

Creamed Onions
3-5 white onions (depending on how many people you are feeding)
butter/olive oil
heavy cream
salt
pepper
nutmeg

Cook onions over low heat in 1/2 butter 1/2 olive oil until quite golden and caramelized. Add cream, salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg. Allow to thicken, but not to boil. Slightly sweet, oniony and creamy, these are a great condiment for turkey.

Dinner Rolls
4+ C Flour
1 1/4 tsp yeast
1 C milk
1/3 c sugar
1/3 c butter
1 tsp salt
2 eggs

Mix 2 C flour + yeast
Melt butter with milk, sugar and salt in a small pan
Add to flour and yeat mixture
Stir in eggs
Mix in remaining flour until soft and sticky
Knead for at least 5 minutes
Rise 1 hour
Punch down
Rest 10 minutes
Shape
Rise 30 minutes
Bake 12-15 minutes- undercooked is better than overbaked
(I don't know which sort of a wash gives these rolls a shiny gloss, but you could use it if you like.)

Butter pie crust
1 c butter (try half butter and half Spectrum shortening)
2 c flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 c ice water
(The original recipe, from Cooking Light, calls for 1/4 cup sugar as well. I find that the pumpkin custard takes longer to bake than the fruit pies for which the crust was designed, and the sugar browns too much. Mom's crust was always a sturdy, straightforward Crisco, flour, salt and ice water.)

Mom's Famous (Secret) Pumpkin Pie
(Makes 2 pies)
2 crusts, rolled and chilled
1 Large can pumpkin (or equivalent amount home-roasted and pureed): Libby is best.
2 cans sweetened condensed (NOT evaporated) milk: Borden is best.
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp eac ginger and nutmeg
+/- 2 C HOT water

Mix and pour into crusts
Bake at 375 degrees 50-55 minutes until center ever so slightly wiggly

THE Cranberry Sauce
My favorite cranberry sauce is the recipe on the bag (courtesy of Ocean Spray):

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 12-ounce package fresh or frozen cranberries, rinsed and drained.

Combine water and sugar in a medium saucepan. Bring to boil; add cranberries, return to boil. Reduce heat and boil gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cover and cool completely at room temperature. Refrigerate until serving time. Makes 2 1/4 cups.

If you are the sort that likes orange zest and stuff in yours, go for it.

Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
I'm noting these because they are essential to the holiday, but I'm not providing a recipe per se. Everyone makes theirs a little differently. I always leave the skin on the potatoes. I'm a skin-eating type of person. I wash everything (contrary to popular belief) but I peel nothing. Sometimes I use Yukon Golds, sometimes regular old brown russets. Never red potatoes. We also always use 1/2 butter and 1/2 olive oil, milk, soy milk or cream, plenty of pepper and a little salt. As for the gravy, just make sure you mix the flour well with the butter or turkey drippings to start, then add liquid a little at a time and whisk. Cold flour, dropped into liquid, will make those nasty lumps.

There's always a green vegetable, like green beans or broccoli, and maybe a salad, but who really cares? Nobody daydreams about green beans the weeks before the holiday, do they?

At Monty's, there are other traditions from his past, like oyster dressing and turnips. The relish plate was always an important feature at Grandma's. A crystal dish with baby corn, little pickles, red and white radishes, celery, and the all-important canned black olives. It is an obligatory part of Thanksgiving to stick olives on all of your fingers and eat them off one by one. When black olives no longer fit on your fingers, you are a grown-up, and you must host your own Thanksgiving dinner. Those are the rules. Grandma (who is an avid recipe collector) made a cranberry sauce at least one year with orange zest and ginger ale in it. Maybe even canned mandarins. It was a very fancy cranberry relish and everyone seemed to like it.

For me, I love to start first thing in the morning with the rolls, getting that warm yeasty smell all through the house, then put the pies in to bake while the rolls are rising so that they can cool and set before dinner. I love to take a walk or do something brisk that gets the circulation going in between cooking and eating, like raking leaves, so that I feel like I've done something physical during the day besides kneading bread.