Most of this blog's readers are people I'm seeing this weekend. But for those of you who weren't at yesterday's feast, here are five things we ate yesterday.
How was your Thanksgiving? What dish do you need on the table in order for it to be a "real" Thanksgiving dinner?
1. Turkey. Of course. My brother-in-law Scott did it on the grill, after my sister Peggy brined it in a mix of salt water and apple juice. The sugar from the apple juice caramelized, and the whole bird smelled slightly of bacon. Awesome.
2. Dressing. It's "dressing" if it's cooked on the side (as this was), it's "stuffing" if it goes in the bird. It too wound up being cooked in a big iron pan on the grill. I made gravy to go with the dressing and the turkey.
3. Hash Brown Casserole. Peggy got this recipe from her college roommate's sister, and it is unapologetic White Trash Cooking: frozen hashbrowns mixed with cheese, sour cream, chopped onions, butter and I don't even know what else, baked in a casserole dish and finished with a crust of crushed potato chips. Leftovers are a perfect breakfast food.
4. Sweet and Sour Carrots. You gotta get your vegetables, but it wouldn't be Thanksgiving if we served them plain; these are cooked in a mix of honey, pineapple juice, soy sauce and green onions. Oh, and butter.
5. Birthday cake. Yesterday was a big birthday in my family: my sisters Peggy and Susan, my brother Ed (celebrating his 40th), and up in northern Virginia, the great and powerful Chris Bea. We had pumpkin pie, but we had birthday cake, too.
I thought about posting a list of five things I was thankful for, but it would feel ungrateful to limit it to five, and anyway, even thinking about it makes me cry. But I am thankful, and not just on Thanksgiving Day. Thank you.
4 comments:
No celebrations here, just mild irritation that no one is at their desks in America.
As I said to my film agent when I wished him a happy Thanksgiving - just remember that, as a nation, you're giving thanks for having been safely delivered... from us.
I'd apologize for our double holiday, but today is also Eid, so much of the world took today off as well.
And yes, we give thanks for independence, but the earliest celebrants were proud subjects of the Crown (if not of the Church of England). The first Thanksgiving — depending on your point of view — was in either 1619, at Berkeley Plantation, VA, or in 1621 at Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts.
So Thanksgiving was a tradition long before independence . . .
Pumpkin pie is the ultimate Thanksgiving food. We actually made our own this year, the first time, and I had my friend Cheryl's recipe. It was fantastic. Will never buy another pumpkin pie again.
That's what I was thinking of, Clair, in particular, Garrison Keillor's wonderful line about his Puritan ancestors, "They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time."
But all joking aside, I think Thanksgiving is a fabulous holiday, and as someone once pointed out to me, the only one that has never been completely commercialized.
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