Traditions We Can't Do Without? #Thanksgiving

Lucy's mom, Janet, ready for the party

LUCY BURDETTE: When I was growing up, we used to have Thanksgiving with my mother’s sisters and their families. The menus were pretty standard, delicious homemade fare—turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, green been casserole, cranberry sauce from a can and so on. Over the years, I’ve had lots of different kinds of Thanksgivings, sometimes I’ve cooked, sometimes I’ve eaten at other people’s houses, sometimes I’ve even gone out to dinner. I’m less attached to a specific menu these days. The only time I was really disappointed was the year my sister and I had dinner with old friends before either of us were married. These people were very Southern and warm and lovely. We felt very welcome and glad to be sharing their table. Except…rice was served with the turkey and gravy rather than mashed potatoes!  Oh, and speaking of gravy, please don’t add giblets to mine…

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING; Despite being centered around eating, I maintain Thanksgiving isn't really about food. Or rather, about cooking. I've learned over the years that guests and family members will accept one (1) novel recipe per holiday, and after that, you better stick to the pearl onions in cream sauce and whatever dressing is standard for your part of the country (cornbread, sausage, bread, oyster, walnut) I've always actually stuffed the bird with the stuffing (because then you can serve it 'wet' and 'dry', as my family called it) but I'm going to change it up this year because my turkeys have come out on the dry side the past few years. If someone can tell me the definitive way to get a juicy bird - basting? Brining? Rubbing stuff under the skin? - I would be grateful.

RHYS BOWEN: Having not grown up with Thanksgiving I find the holiday doesn't mean as much to me as Christmas does. I enjoy the turkey and stuffing and potatoes. Not a big fan of any of the casseroles that go with it. I find myself making the green bean casserole as my son in law likes it. This year my daughter has ordered a completely organic, free range turkey from Whole Foods. I hope we'll find it tastes better. In the past we have injected the bird with John's secret mixture to make it moist. The secret is not to overcook. it's a fine line between giving your guests salmonella and drying out the breast too much. We don't put stuffing inside the bird but cook it separately. I love all stuffings but John likes sausage meat and I like lots of herbs, mushrooms, veggies in mind. I love chestnut stuffing but chestnuts are hard to find and horribly expensive. Actually it's not the food that matters. It's family sitting around the table and laughing!

HALLIE EPHRON: What I can't do without is my family and pie. Fortunately we all agree on the menu - turkey, stuffing, gravy, green beans, mashed potatoes, turnips. For starters, butternut squash soup. AND PIE! Homemade of course. Pumpkin. Custard. Apple. This year my daughter is hosting in Brooklyn and I am doing whatever she needs me to do. She's in charge. (She'd laugh to hear me say that.... ) I agree with Rhys, it's all about the family and friends.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  SO--this makes me laugh and laugh. I loved the turkey my mother made. Loved. Looked forward to it every year.  And the bed moment of all was when Mom would say--how's the turkey? Nice and dry? And we'd say, yes! delicious!  nice and dry! Seriously, we were taught that dry turkey was a good thing..thereby absolving (we learned later) my mom of the fear of overcooking it. As I grew up, and had other Thanksgiving experiences, I learned dry turkey was not the goal. I still like it better.   So Julia, you are perfection! And can cook a turkey at our house any time. Nice and dry. 

Plus, hot gravy. If I can remember how to make it, a yearly terror, hides any mistakes.

JENN McKINLAY: Dessert, natch. I am the chief baker for the holidays. This year I'm making a raspberry/white chocolate bundt cake (a copy cat of Nothing Bundt Cake's delicious version for Thanksgiving). I'm not a huge turkey fan, but I do enjoy a good stuffing and I adore cranberry sauce. I don't have a lot of holiday traditions for any of the holidays. We're seat of the pants types and will frequently just up and go to the beach or the mountains and get away for a holiday. I find the expectations of the holidays exhausting. It seems, everyone expects a Norman Rockwellesque holiday, where turkeys are perfect, everyone gets along, and people break out into song for no apparent reason, as if we haven't been members of our own families all our lives and should know better. LOL.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: We are always torn about Thanksgiving. It's so much fun to gather round our own table, and to make all the things we really love (my daughter's fabulous sauteed Brussels sprouts with shallots and bacon, cauliflower and cheddar gratin, my yummy sage-y cornbread dressing, and of course my famous cranberry relish) BUT... I have one aunt left on my mom's side of the family, my mother's youngest brother's widow, and my two cousins and their kids, and the kids' kids now. For years we did Thanksgiving and Christmas with them, but because these days we really want to have Christmas at home, and to host Christmas dinner, we just spend Thanksgiving with the auntie. And then usually a second visit to Rick's mom and siblings, etc., etc.,  This year I am just happy to spend time with family and to eat whatever anyone else makes!!!

How about you Reds and red readers, what can’t you do without on Thanksgiving? What do you look forward to most?

And ps, if you developed a hankering for those pimento cheese scones while you were reading, Lucy's recipe is here...

Thanksgiving GOTTA HAVE IT

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Thanksgiving 19...75? May have been the most revealing ever.  Backstory: Every year that I could remember, we had two turkeys, and my mother made two kinds of stuffing. One turkey had the good kind, plain, from Pepperidge Farm, with the addition of sauteed celery and onions, which of course is the perfect stuffing. More on that in a minute. 

In the other turkey was the gross yucky stuffing. It was Pepperidge Farm-based—but

Mom, for some reason us kids could never comprehend, added oysters. (Not in the shells, of course. But the photo without them was disgusting.)

We DIED, even thinking about it. As  a ten year old, when my sister Nina was seven and Nancy was five, we would watch Mom put the oysters in the dressing and then hold our tummies in pretend agony. HOW, we wailed, could anyone eat that stuff? We were so grateful that there was the whole other turkey that had delicious plain stuffing.

So fast forward until 1975, when I was a nicely grown up twenty- something. I was back home in Indiana, in the kitchen, smelling all the Thanksgiving smells as Mom made the traditional two turkeys. She made up the big bowl of stuffing, it smelled fabulous, and then proceeded to dump the can of oysters into the big ceramic bowl.

MOM! I yelped. You put oysters in the whole thing!

Mom looked at me, like, dumb kid. “Honey,” she finally said. “You think I really made two different stuffings every year? I never did. You kids have been happily eating oyster dressing since day one.”

Well, I was shocked.  Parental deceit, and at holiday time, too! But—we happily ate it again. And the oyster stuffing story is one of our holiday traditions.

Liz loved the cranberry sauce from a can, you know, the kind where you could see the ridges? Yuck, but chacun a son gout.

And we also always had black cherry Jello with black cherries in it. Weird, dark dark red jello, made in a bundt cake mold, with marble-sized black cherries floating in it. "Black cherry" is a kind of weird flavor not found in nature (I guess Bing cherries are the closest) but if my mother tried to serve Thanksgiving dinner without Black Cherry Jello mold, my little brother Chip (now a handsome and dashing attorney--age 55--in Colorado) would have a fit. We ALWAYS had Jello.

So what about you, Reds? And Thanksgiving must-haves, deceptions, or family necessities?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: This is Texas, so cornbread dressing is a MUST. With lots of sage, celery, and onion. I love my cranberry relish recipe, although I suspect that no one else likes it as much as me... My daughter and I LOVE fresh Brussels sprouts, sauteed with bacon, but we are in the minority. My aunt still does Thanksgiving dinner, and there is no weird jello, thank goodness!

HANK: Hey, talk to Chip! And Brussels sprouts are now a definite necessity, I’m with you. 

RHYS BOWEN: The one thing I can NOT have is sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on it. I ate my first one when I was pregnant, felt violently ill and can never face one since. I adore good stuffing with lots of herbs. John likes sausage meat stuffing. Clare makes the best mashed potatoes and everyone insists on the family recipe apple crumble.

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Gourmet family that we are, we require Pepperidge Farm herbed stuffing in our turkey. No oysters or cornbread stuffing for us. It’s got to be from the bag, using the recipe ON the bag and following their suggestion to add onions and celery.

HANK: Exactly! Exactly! Hallie, we

should have come to YOUR house.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Now see, I make stuffing from scratch, following the recipe my mother used and her mother used. It's so economical, I suspect it was a Depression-era-or-earlier thing.

I take an entire loaf of white bread - cheapo white no-fiber bread we all ate back in 1964. Leave it out two days til it gets nice and stale. Saute onions and celery in butter while boiling the celery leaves, onion ends and carrot trimmings with the turkey neck for a quick stock. Tear the stale bread in pieces, toss with the onion-celery  mix, sage, and dampen it well with the stock. You must have enough to stuff the bird and make a separate casserole dish, because everybody knows some people like stuffing wet and some like it dry.

Oh, and the must-have from Ross's side of the family? Birds Eye green beans and spaetzle. Not hand-snapped fresh green beans, God forbid, but veggies and sauce frozen in a microwaveable dish. Oh well, at least it frees up one of the burners for my latest attempt at a fancy cranberry sauce that someone might actually eat.


 HANK:  So how about you, Reds? What’s your Thanksgiving must-have? What’s your vote on mashed potatoes? Lumpy or smooth? And sweet potatoes with marshmallows? Yea or nay?

And coming up this week: tomorrow, Gravy!  Wednesday, cooking secrets for emergencies!  And then, surprises.

(And Breaking news: TRUTH BE TOLD  is an RT BookReviews nominee for best suspense thriller of 2014!)