Let’s talk food! Do you celebrate Thanksgiving? If so… what are you cooking this year? I’d love to hear your family traditions and recipes in the comments!
I’ll go first.
My childhood family Thanksgiving food was foursquare and simple. My parents were born in neighboring small towns in northeast Iowa – a place of Roethlers (that’s pronounced ‘rattler,’ like the snake), Guetzlaffs, Nielsens, Thomsens and Christiansens.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this was Lake Woebegone territory, as white as it comes. Folks arrived in America in the late-nineteenth to early-twentieth centuries, got as far as Iowa, Minnesota, and Nebraska, and put down their roots. (I’ve always imagined that the wicked winters reminded these immigrants a bit of the homes they’d left in northern Europe.)
The Thanksgiving menu in my family was a predictable product of that ethnic background: a combination of simple, inexpensive, seasonal ingredients; special home-canned, baked, and frozen delicacies; and the very occasional store-bought luxury that we’d push the boat out for only a few times a year. We ate:
- Turkey. This was an enormous bird with slightly over-cooked breast meat, moistened by a simple gravy made with pan drippings and a dash of broth or cream. While my Da’s father (my Bedstefader) always kept a bottle of aquavit under the back counter in the kitchen, there was never any liquor at my mother’s family farm – and in both homes deglazing the pan with white wine or sherry would have seemed a mad, alien notion.
- Stuffing. An unassuming, delectable stodge, steamy warm in the center, and with a crackly crust if it’s cooked in a separate buttered dish. Made with stale bread, minced onion and celery, poultry seasoning, and BUTTER. Lots and lots of butter. It’s still the stuffing I make today, although I have replaced the poultry seasoning (which, face it, you only use once a year, and annoyingly have to buy every time) with Big City Fancy fresh sage. My Aunt Sarah, the rebel, tried over the years to introduce variations – inclusions of sausage in the basic mix, or cornbread stuffing, or even one year a decadent mixture featuring mushrooms and oysters – but these invariably met mighty opposition, were rarely made more than once, and were never the only stuffing option.
- Mashed potatoes. These are made, of course, with lashings of fresh butter. The buttery mash is loosened with heavy cream and seasoned with salt, pepper, and a handful of minced fresh dill. Together with the turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes form the ruling triumvirate of Thanksgiving, and are not to be abused with variety or tarted up in any way. One year when my back was turned my cousin Jaspar, the rebel’s son, tossed in some minced garlic and toasted sesame oil, and the ensuing fight was epic.
- Cranberry sauce. This component of dinner underwent the most evolution over the years, from cran-in-a-can when I was a very little kid, to a roasted confection made with cranberries, oranges, and booze that Aunt Sarah introduced after she became an acolyte of Julia Child, to the final iteration my Da presented in the 1980s – raw cranberries minced with raw onion, sugar, and sour cream. (This is now my personal favorite.)
- A relish tray. With the exception of obligatory green beans, the relish tray was the only hint of green or raw vegetable matter on the table. My maternal grandmother excelled at these. She’d break out her fancy lazy Susan and pile it with festival foods: green olives (store-bought, from a jar), black olives (also store-bought, from a can), celery sticks, carrot sticks, and an amazing assortment of homemade pickles from the root cellar. There were her dill pickles, put up at the height of summer, each jar stuffed with an entire head of dillweed. There were spiced apple rings, bright red from the cinnamon candies she used in canning. And there were my favorites, watermelon rind pickles. I loved these so, and you don’t see them much now. They’re gorgeous – delicate luna moth green, creamy white, and pale pink, with a taste that was candy sweet and a just-slightly-crisp bite.
- Pie. Oh, the pie! Pie is, or should be, an intensely seasonal treat, with peach, ground cherry, rhubarb, and elderberry pie on the menu in summer, and for Thanksgiving, apple, pecan, and pumpkin. Yes, all three. Both of my grandmothers were epic bakers who were born in the years surrounding the turn of the 20th century, which is basically the definition of old school. In pie world, old school means a lard crust. There’s no flakier, more shatteringly crisp crust than a lard crust. In an extended family where butter usually ruled, the exception was pie crusts. A butter crust is tender, and just isn’t as short or flaky, full stop.
Now that I’ve grown up, gotten married, and moved away, the Thanksgiving meal I prepare has evolved, moving away from what I grew up with and expanding to welcome in other food ways, and other favorites.
I married a Black man from New York City, and so different traditions of this most American of meals have come together on my table. From my mother-in-law I picked-up the habit of serving a dish of St. Louis style ribs, cut into individual segments, on the side. Some years I make a peach cobbler instead of pecan pie. Of course we still have a turkey, but my husband’s family introduced me to the Thanksgiving ham, and now I make one every year - sometimes roasted, sometimes braised for hours in a huge pot with sliced onions and about a gallon of Madeira. We always have collard greens. I used to seethe these with a couple of big meaty hocks, stewing them for hours at the back of the stove. But the evolution continues, and now I use my sister-in-law’s recipe. She’s a trained vegan chef, and sautés the greens with plenty of fried garlic and no pork. They’re still delicious.
And so that’s enough about my table. I’m getting very, very hungry and ready to cook. Which means it is time to ask: for what are you thankful? What’s going to be the point of this big, bounteous, over-the-top feast this year?
I had to think long and hard about this. At times there hasn’t seemed to be much.
The White House is crowded with dull-witted, grifting con men and liars.
The country is riven with anger and hatred: Neo-Nazis are abroad in the land, marching proudly and being defended by a twittering fckwit who didn’t win the popular vote. Toxic racists are out and proud and not even bothering to dog whistle any more. And the president* (thanks, Charles P. Pierce!) is tweeting about how black men haven’t been sufficiently grateful to him for his largesse in helping to get them out of prison in China (and doubling down to one of the young men’s dads).
Obamacare is still alive and just about kicking, but there’s a tax bill about to be jammed down our throats that might as well be dubbed The Plutocrats Delight.
Obama-era regulations are being rooted out as fast as this otherwise incompetent administration can yank them.
Judge Roy Moore, christianist whack job and alleged child molester, may be a member of the Senate very soon. Louis C.K. is disgusting – Russell Simmons might be a rapist – and even Al Franken is probably a groping tool!
Kellyanne Conway (ptooie! feh!) still has a job.
So it’s a tough task right now, but there are some things I am thankful for.
I’m thankful for my friends and family. Goes without saying at Thanksgiving, right?
I’m thankful that the press seems finally to have gotten some of their mojo back. There’s some excellent reporting and some straight talk going on right now, and that’s heartening.
I’m thankful that, so far, we don’t seem to be hurtling pell-mell toward nuclear war, or a dictatorship. Caveats abound, I know, but I feel pretty sure we won’t be warming our hands over a thermonuclear holocaust – or bowing to a dictator – this Thanksgiving.
I’m thankful for this online community. That’s something I never thought I’d say, but I am. I’m not talking about this as a “liberal echo chamber that reinforces my pre-conceptions.” I’m talking about it as a place for (generally) polite and informed discourse, where I feel there are many kindred spirits. That’s not nothing.
I’m thankful for all of the grassroots activists out there, fighting for the progressive cause. I’m thankful for the voters in Virginia! I’m thankful that we might have a fighting chance for a Blue Wave in 2018. I’m thankful that the president* is up for reelection in 2020, and has not installed himself in power in perpetuity, or somehow managed to wangle a line of succession that starts with Melania and moves on to Barron.
I’m thankful for Robert Mueller.
Yes, things are pretty terrible, but for those of us lucky enough to have family and friends to sit down and feast with, at least there’s some glimmer of hope. It isn’t much, but it’s something.
So let’s sit down and enjoy a lovely big meal, and when the holiday break is over, keep on fighting for those American things we’re supposed to be celebrating: liberty, equality, freedom from want, freedom of expression, education, and the opportunity to thrive. May all of our hard work pay off with the election of many many more Democrats, so that next year and the year after that may be much, MUCH better for all, even those benighted Americans among us who can’t seem to stop voting against their own best interests.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Update, 1:15pm PST... OMG, Community Spotlight! That is sooooo cool! Thank you. :-)
Update, 3:22pm PST… Thanks for such great comments, you guys! This has been really fun! I have to get offline now, but will log back in tomorrow and see what wonderful suggestions turn up. Happy Thanksgiving!