festive meals

[kindkit]

Will you be having a festive meal for Thanksgiving or Chanukah or both? I'd love to hear what you'll be cooking or eating.

I was lucky enough to get today and tomorrow off (the first Thanksgiving in three years when I haven't had to work) so I'm going to roast a turkey breast. My original, more ambitious plan was a pork roast with orange slices, but then I started thinking about mashed potatoes and gravy and had to change my mind. Maybe Christmas for the pork. Besides the mashed potatoes and gravy, I'll be making a cornbread pudding with greens (adapted from The Splendid Table's How Eat Weekends and a gratin of sweet potatoes with chipotle chiles and cream. There's will also be pie: raspberry, storebought. And I'm making bread today (four-grain pot boule, now made with actually four grains because I remembered to buy rye flour). Yes, it's all ridiculously too much food considering it's just me, but the leftovers will be stowed away in the freezer for all those days when I don't feel like cooking after work.

The bread dough is slowly fermenting, the cornbread is broken into pieces and sitting out so it will go stale for the pudding, and the slow cooker is full of turkey giblets and chicken bones turning into stock. I've been munching on random snacky foods all day but should probably have a real meal at some point. And I'm a little, weirdly nostalgic for the holiday meals of my childhood.

The only problem with the internet as a family of choice (and believe me, I feel more connection and trust for My Internet Friends Who Live Behind the Screen than I do for any currently living blood relation) is that you all live too far away to come and share holiday meals. But at least we can talk about them.

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

We're doing Thanksgiving, but postponed to next week, as our only other American friend who is near enough to come can't make it till then because of work commitments.

We will have turkey - probably a crown, unless I can find a really tiny one; green beans, which bore me, but Lawyer insists it's not Thanksgiving without them; roast potatoes because this is Britain and somehow it never seems like a festive meal without them; cider gravy; sweet potatoes baked with butter and cinnamon (adding chile is an interesting idea, but I won't try the gratin as cream inevitably makes me sick); some sausages, because one of the guests doesn't much like poultry; broccoli stir-fried with garlic and red chile.

Pudding - I think I will try my hand at shoo-fly pie, what with Lawyer having grown up relatively close to Lancaster County. Also, I can't abide canned pumpkin, and the fresh ones have vanished from the shops.

[tree_and_leaf]

I've come to really love Thanksgiving (and from my perspective it's nice to have a chance to celebrate with loved ones before the sheer insanity of Advent and Christmas breaks loose...)

[kindkit]

That sounds good! The green beans do sound a little boring (I like green beans a lot, but they're a bit ordinary for Thanksgiving), but holiday meals are often a lot more about memory than about taste, I guess.

Shoo-fly pie is the kind with molasses, right? That's a cool idea. I was too lazy to attempt a pie on top of everything else I'm cooking, and I think store-bought pumpkin pie doesn't have enough spices, hence my going with raspberry.

[tree_and_leaf]

Shoo-fly pie is the kind with molasses, right?

Yes, that's right. We'll see you it turns out!

holiday meals are often a lot more about memory than about taste, I guess.

Indeed. I suppose I should be grateful that his family didn't go in for sweet potato topped with marshmallow, which I've always thought was particularly perverse...

[giglet]

I'm contributing to a larger meal. I'm making all-the-dairy-fat crescent rolls and a stuffed turban squash (stuffing is onions, mushrooms, apple, bread and seasonings, plus OMG a lot of cream). I had a little extra stuffing, so I cooked it in a cup. And ate it. So so good.

[kindkit]

Yummy! It's hard to go wrong with a lot of cream. *grins*

[mllesatine]

I don't celebrate Thanksgiving. I think I've never eaten turkey and I'm not sure if you can even buy them in a regular super-market here. I've eaten sweet potatoes two or three times. I like the taste a lot but they are very expensive (compared to the regular kind). Gratin sounds delicious.

But I'm looking forward to Christmas with my family. And it's time to start making cookies. I'm already late this year. :)

[the_rck]

We're having a big gathering with my husband's family. We'll be bringing broccoli and an apple pie. There will be a partial turkey, done on the grill, and dressing. My sister-in-law is bringing sweet potatoes and probably something else. I'm sure there will pumpkin pie.

I'm not sure how many people will be there. Normally, there'd be nine of us, but I think I heard my mother-in-law tell my husband that somebody else will be there.

We're supposed to decorate the Christmas tree first tomorrow. That seems way early to me. My own family usually waited until a week before Christmas to decorate and made a bit of a party out of it with each family member inviting one or two guests.

[kindkit]

That is super-early for tree decorating, I think. Is it a real tree? It'll be nothing but a pile of pine needles and a bare trunk by Christmas.

[the_rck]

It's an artificial tree. Nobody in my husband's family uses real trees (I think it's an allergy thing). That was a bit of culture shock for me when we married. My family always bought a real tree.

[kindkit]

I need to make a fruitcake pretty soon so it'll be nice and mature by Christmas.

[mazily]

I'm rocking a solo Thanksgiving. Trying this turkey with pumpkin, figs, & honey recipe, as well as sweet potato latkes, green beans, and homemade pecan pie. I only decided against mashed potatoes, stuffing, etc. because my roommate will be returning on Saturday laden with leftovers from her mother's dinner.

[kindkit]

That's a really interesting turkey recipe--I'm always torn, at Thanksgiving and Christmas, between the urge for familiar things and the urge to jazz things up. Plain roasted turkey is my nod to tradition this year, plus the mashed potatoes of course, while the rest is a little more modern.

And latkes! For some reason I have never successfully made any kind of potato pancake, so I envy those who have the touch.

[lilacsigil]

Enjoy your day! One good thing about celebrating by yourself: you get to eat all the leftovers! (This is our philosophy about Christmas dinner, which may or may not actually be cooked at Christmas depending how hot the weather is.)

[st_aurafina]

WE WILL COOK! WE HAVE BABY-Q!

[kindkit]

I think that for Christmas you should cook a duckling or a tiny turkey, so that you can tell everyone you grilled a baby on the Baby-Q.

[st_aurafina]

I really, really want to make this stuffing everyone seems to be making. In a dish? And you just, like, serve it up, not from inside a bird? I don't know why we don't do that here. It's genius. (Is it genius? Or is it horrible? It just looks so convenient and not from a body cavity.)

[kindkit]

I've never stuffed a bird, but my understanding is that stuffing cooked separately (some people called it "dressing" in that case) is better for both the turkey and for food safety. Stuffing inside a turkey tends not to get hot enough to kill any potential microbes, but if you do cook the stuffed turkey until the stuffing reaches the safe temperature, then your turkey is basically charcoal. So, yes, convenient, not from a body cavity, and less likely to cause salmonella.

[tree_and_leaf]

The official advice here in Britain is the same. I don't know how many people still stuff the stuffing in the bird (after all, you only tend to see what your family or close friends get up to), but judging by the number of packets of ready-made stuffing divided out into convenient, easy-to-bake bite-sized portions, I think a lot of people don't.

Now I know what Americans mean by dressing. I had assumed it was a sauce.

[lilliburlero]

Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy your feast.